Bio: Batya Weinbaum is a women’s studies scholar, artist, poet, and prolific writer. She founded and edits the journal Femspec, teaches online at various universities and institutions, composes music, and works as a spiritual advisor on numerous hotlines. In 2013-2020, she made a fertility goddess art installation in Isla Mujeres, MX, and in 2022-23 was an artist in residence at the Museum of Motherhood, installing a fertility goddess mural as well. Some of her art can be seen at goddessvibe.org. She is an active exhibiting member of the Town Shore Artists Guild, and sells art at festivals and gatherings. Her donations of art include to the Rape Crisis Center of the Greater Cleveland Area, in OH.
Abstract
In this paper I discuss how I was blamed and shamed for being a single mother, and how I moved from hurting to healing to helping in my process of recovery especially after my daughter left home at the age of 18. I present how I worked through the trauma of abrupt separation largely through painting from photographs of her as a child, including photos of us together. I also sought out universal images of mothers and children, some going through painful separation such as the myth of Persephone and Demeter. My art making, some products of which I will share here, was a form of resistance to the trauma that I experienced, as was seeking healing in a spiritual community in Latin America. I share how later I moved on to offer some of the wisdom I had gained as a spiritual advisor, both to women and men but largely to women’s ongoing experience of similar blame, shame and pain when they reached out for sense-making in crisis about motherhood to psychics on one of the many platforms I have worked on, including Psychic Source, Psychic Center, Psychic Power Network, Meet Your Psychic, Purple Ocean, and Sun Psychics in FL, under other stage names.
MOTHER: Shame, Blame and Pain; The Impact of Resistance and Healing
- JourMS - 