Maternal Links Quotes

I suspect that the distinction between a maternal and a paternal instinct is scarcely worth making; the parental instinct, the wish to protect, to further, is not a sex-linked characteristic…

When I engaged in meditation on altruistic love and compassion, Tania noted that the cerebral networks activated were very different. In particular, the network linked to negative emotions and distress was not activated during meditation on compassion, while certain cerebral areas traditionally associated with positive emotions, with the feeling of affiliation and maternal love, for instance, were.

Late-nineteenth-century science had already begun to uncover the links between maternal alcohol consumption and its danger to children.

I suspect that the distinction between a maternal and a paternal instinct is scarcely worth making; the parental instinct, the wish to protect, to further, is not a sex-linked characteristic...

A cowboy is someone who loves his work. Since the hours are long—ten to fifteen hours a day—and the pay is $30 he has to. What's required of him is an odd mixture of physical vigor and maternalism. His part of the beef-raising industry is to birth and nurture calves and take care of their mothers. For the most part his work is done on horseback and in a lifetime he sees and comes to know more animals than people. The iconic myth surrounding him is built on American notions of heroism: the index of a man's value as measured in physical courage. Such ideas have perverted manliness into a self-absorbed race for cheap thrills. In a rancher's world, courage has less to do with facing danger than with acting spontaneously—usually on behalf of an animal or another rider. If a cow is stuck in a bog hole he throws a loop around her neck, takes his dally (a half hitch around the saddle horn), and pulls her out with horsepower. If a calf is born sick, he may take her home, warm her in front of the kitchen fire, and massage her legs until dawn. One friend, whose favorite horse was trying to swim a lake with hobbles on, dove under water and cut her legs loose with a knife, then swam her to shore, his arm around her neck lifeguard-style, and saved her from drowning. Because these incidents are usually linked to someone or something outside himself, the westerner's courage is selfless, a form of compassion.

I was once married and part of their universe, although in the end I didn't succeed in having children. But I was quite focused on it. I wanted children with all my heart and did everything I could , even IVF. I looked at the babies around me, read and thought about them. I saw myself in that maternal role. The entire meaning of my life at the time was linked to having children. I felt somehow that I had to have a baby, that everything would be ruined if I didn't, and nothing else was anywhere near as important. That phase of my life lasted a long time. Almost an entire decade.

when a woman herself becomes pregnant, it is as if she links directly back into an intact matrilineal network where all the mothers, all the wombs, all the foetuses and infants are connected. This does something peculiar to maternal temporality: it has the ability to stretch time out in linear directions to the distant past and future, and equally to concertina in upon itself to a point that is always in the present. Folding out, folding in, the past and the future, hinged together like delicate butterfly wings. In the way that matryoshka dolls can be opened out and displayed in a long line from smallest to biggest, or packed one inside the other, becoming one body, one space, one time.

A good upbringing is necessary for a long life, but sometimes the patience of the young trees is sorely tested. As I mentioned in chapter 5, "Tree Lottery," acorns and beechnuts fall at the feet of large "mother trees." Dr. Suzanne Simard, who helped discover maternal instincts in trees, describes mother trees as dominant trees widely linked to other trees in the forest through their fungal-root connections. These trees pass their legacy on to the next generation and exert their influence in the upbringing of the youngsters. "My" small beech trees, which have by now been waiting for at least eighty years, are standing under mother trees that are about two hundred years old -- the equivalent of forty-year-olds in human terms. The stunted trees can probably expect another two hundred years of twiddling their thumbs before it is finally their turn. The wait time is, however, made bearable. Their mothers are in contact with them through their root systems, and they pass along sugar and other nutrients. You might even say they are nursing their babies.

These words show that the libido has now sunk to a depth where “the danger is great” (Faust, “The Mothers”). There God is near, there man would find the maternal vessel of rebirth, the seeding-place where he could renew his life. For life goes on despite loss of youth; indeed it can be lived with the greatest intensity if looking back to what is already moribund does not hamper your step. Looking back would be perfectly all right if only it did not stop at externals, which cannot be brought back again in any case; instead, it ought to consider where the fascination of the past really springs from. The golden haze of childhood memories arises not so much from the objective facts as from the admixture of magical images which are more intuited than actually conscious. The parable of Jonah who was swallowed by the whale reproduces the situation exactly. A person sinks into his childhood memories and vanishes from the existing world. He finds himself apparently in deepest darkness, but then has unexpected visions of a world beyond. The “mystery” he beholds represents the stock of primordial images which everybody brings with him as his human birthright, the sum total of inborn forms peculiar to the instincts. I have called this “potential” psyche the collective unconscious. If this layer is activated by the regressive libido, there is a possibility of life being renewed, and also of its being destroyed. Regression carried to its logical conclusion means a linking back with the world of natural instincts, which in its formal or ideal aspect is a kind of prima materia. If this prima materia can be assimilated by the conscious mind it will bring about a reactivation and reorganization of its contents. But if the conscious mind proves incapable of assimilating the new contents pouring in from the unconscious, then a dangerous situation arises in which they keep their original, chaotic, and archaic form and consequently disrupt the unity of consciousness. The resultant mental disturbance is therefore advisedly called schizophrenia, since it is a madness due to the splitting of the mind.

As the most perfect subject for painting I have already specified inwardly satisfied [reconciled and peaceful] love, the object of which is not a purely spiritual ‘beyond’ but is present, so that we can see love itself before us in what is loved. The supreme and unique form of this love is Mary’s love for the Christ-child, the love of the one mother who has borne the Saviour of the world and carries him in her arms. This is the most beautiful subject to which Christian art in general, and especially painting in its religious sphere, has risen. The love of God, and in particular the love of Christ who sits at’ the right hand of God, is of a purely spiritual kind. The object of this love is visible only to the eye of the soul, so that here there is strictly no question of that duality which love implies, nor is any natural bond established between the lovers or any linking them together from the start. On the other hand, any other love is accidental in the inclination of one lover for another, or,’ alternatively, the lovers, e.g. brothers and sisters or a father in his love for his children, have outside this relation other conceI1l8 with an essential claim on them. Fathers or brothers have to apply themselves to the world, to the state, business, war, or, in short, to general purposes, while sisters become wives, mothers, and so forth. But in the case of maternal love it is generally true that a mother’s love for her child is neither something accidental just a single feature in her life, but, on the contrary, it is her supreme vocation on earth, and her natural character and most sacred calling directly coincide. But while other loving mothers see and feel in their child their husband and their inmost union with him, in Mary’s relation to her child this aspect is always absent. For her feeling has nothing in common with a wife’s love for her husband; on the contrary, her relation to Joseph is more like a sister’s to a brother, while on Joseph’s side there is a secret awe of the child who is God’s and Mary’s. Thus religious love in its fullest and most intimate human form we contemplate not in the suffering and risen Christ or in his lingering amongst his friends but in the person of Mary with her womanly feeling. Her whole heart and being is human love for the child that she calls her own, and at the same time adoration, worship, and love of God with whom she feels herself at one. She is humble in God’s sight and yet has an infinite sense of being the one woman who is blessed above all other virgins. She is not self-subsistent on her own account, but is perfect only in her child, in God, but in him she is satisfied and blessed, whether. at the manger or as the Queen of Heaven, without passion or longing, without any further need, without any aim other than to have and to hold what she has. In its religious subject-matter the portrayal of this love has a wide series of events, including, for example, the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Birth, the Flight into Egypt, etc. And then there are, added to this, other subjects from the later life of Christ, i.e. the Disciples and the women who follow him and in whom the love of God becomes more or less a personal relation of love for a living and present Saviour who walks amongst them as an actual man; there is also the love of the angels who hover over the birth of Christ and many other scenes in his life, in serious worship or innocent joy. In all these subjects it is painting especially which presents the peace and full satisfaction of love. But nevertheless this peace is followed by the deepest suffering. Mary sees Christ carry his cross, she sees him suffer and die on the cross, taken down from the cross and buried, and no grief of others is so profound as hers. Mary’s grief is of a totally different kind. She is emotional, she feels the thrust of the dagger into the centre of her soul, her heart breaks, but she does not turn into stone.

Dr. Suzanne Simard, who helped discover maternal instincts in trees, describes mother trees as dominant trees widely linked to other trees in the forest through their fungal–root connections. These trees pass their legacy on to the next generation and exert their influence in the upbringing of the youngsters.18

Tribalism has recently been linked to specific neural systems. As noted above, oxytocin is a neurotransmitter and hormone that is involved in maternal care across mammalian species, one that is associated with increased empathy and trust in humans. It turns out that oxytocin, sometimes described as the “cuddle chemical,” is more discriminating than had previously been thought. Recent experiments by Carsten De Dreu and colleagues show that intranasal administration of oxytocin makes men more cooperative with in-group members, but not out-group members, especially when fear of out-group members is high. Oxytocin also increases in-group favoritism as measured by IATs and shows modest signs of increasing out-group antipathy. Finally, oxytocin affects people’s responses to moral dilemmas that pit in-group members against out-group members, making them less comfortable with sacrificing in-group members, but not out-group members. In

ERV envelope genes possess unique properties that make them suitable for use in forming the placenta: they are fusogenic proteins and they have immunosuppresive properties. Eutherian (placental) mammals distinguish themselves from nonplacental animals in the ability of the female to nurture the fertilized ovum and growing embryo within the body. The placenta is a transient tissue of embryonic origin whose evolution made it unnecessary to partition the embryo into a protective egg, which matured outside the mother's body. It serves two purposes for the maturing embryo: it is a conduit for respiratory gasses and nourishment supplied by the mother, and it provides an environment of immune tolerance. The fetus is necessarily half-foreign tissue, an allograft within the mother. It draws half of its genetic, and hence antigenic, identity from maternal and half from paternal genes. If the fetus is to mature within the mother, it must be isolated from the maternal immune system such that a graft-versus-host response does not reject it. The placenta forms early after implantation of the embryo. Syncytins mediate the formation of a continuous fused layer of cells around the embryo, isolating it from the mother, yet allowing essential nutrients to traverse from the mother's system. Although the observations on human syncytin-1 and -2 were compelling, it was left to scientists to definitively link syncytins to placental formation by studying mice. Here two syncytins (dubbed A and B) from murine ERVs were implicated, and genetic experiments with mice defective in these genes confirmed that their dysfunction disrupted placental formation. Notably, however, syncytin-A and -B were not syntenic with the human syncytins. That is, the human and mouse genes are not descended fron common ancestral syncytins; they have arisen by separate ERV gene capture events from different families of ERV in human and mouse ancestors.

All the great cat goddesses such as Isis, Bast, Diana and Hecate, with their eternal Moon link, combine woman with Cat. Emphasising this empathy, the mysterious feline has always been construed as woman and vice versa. Since time immemorial, women have been thought to possess an ability as mediums, with a talent for soothsaying and clairvoyance. Second sight, too, is deemed to be a natural female attribute. Cats, silently wise and 'knowing', with eyes reflecting the secrets of time itself, arc said to be 'old souls', and the attraction of woman to Cat could be seen to represent a look back to an ancient part of the human soul. And what woman deep within her Moon-centred self doesn't nurture a fascination with the past — the 'unknown'; ancient, forbidden secrets; and the mystical world of the occult? Perhaps, at some distant point in time, Cat and woman with their beguiling ways and inbuilt urge to procreate underwent a transmigration of souls, each now sharing the ' complex psyche of the other. Both are symbols of fertility; both project innate feminine traits of intuitive sensuality and nurture and cherish their young. The female cat, both domestic and in the wild, is known to be a caring, efficient mother and the old French proverb, Jamais chatte qui a des petits n'a de bans morceaux, (a cat with little ones has never a good mouthful) illustrates the devotion and selflessness of the maternal feline.

This movement to delegitimize midwifery rose alongside Jim Crow laws, Hossain argues in The Pain Gap, with doctors and health officials linking midwifery to high rates of infant and maternal mortality as well as “illiteracy, carelessness and general filth.”13 A reliable, safe, supportive system of care was dismantled by politics, racism, and capitalism.

Two teams ran into each other at the local charity hospital in Austin. Both had the same idea to visit the maternity ward to support a new mother who was giving birth to a baby that day. The nurses at the hospital told both teams that there were two single mothers who had given birth that day. Both mothers were certain to need the money. One team gave a card and a crisp hundred-dollar bill. The other team purchased a hundred-dollar savings bond and wrote a card stating: "Because your baby is born on a day that will always be linked to a day of tragedy, we'd like you to have something positive you may share with the child in future years.