toxins, dioxins in particular, had been linked to endometriosis. Meanwhile, the mother grizzly bear visitations continued. This prodded her to learn all she could about bears, including that bears are threatened by the same toxins as humans.
The bear-mother spirit persisted relentlessly in Helen's psyche, calling her to go to Alaska where the bears live. As soon after her surgery as she could, she heeded the call and went to Denali National Park by herself. She did not feel well. The effects of chronic fatigue and the operation had sapped her energy, and travel took even more out of her. She went, like sick people going to Lourdes, with the hope of being healed. Immediately upon entering the park, a mother grizzly with two cubs walked across the road in front of the tour bus. (In Denali, tourists are driven on buses through the park, while bears roam freely.) This was like a powerful waking dream to Helen. The real and the symbolic came together. While Helen may have appeared to be just another tourist, for her this was truly a pilgrimage.
No logical or practical decision brought Helen to Alaska, but rather a persistent and compelling message to come. The mother-bear symbol showed up over and over—not just in dreams and thoughts, but also in outer experiences. Helen encountered bear images in various art forms and in references in conversations. Suddenly, the idea or symbol of bear seemed to be everywhere. The urge or compelling desire to see real bears in their natural setting grew and set her on course for Denali. Only after going to Alaska did she come to understand the connection between what toxins had done to her body and the similar dangers they held for bears—as well as the larger implication of the danger to the wilderness and to Mother Nature herself.
The spirit of the bear gave an urgency to Helen's desire to do something with her new knowledge. She found her means of expression in her work. She wrote and staged a one-woman performance piece that became the basis for the film Send Word, Bear Mother, in which she played the principal role. Through this film and in the work that came from her inner/outer journey, Helen became an activist with a personal mission to foster an awareness of the connection between toxins, infertility, and the danger of the disappearing wilderness. And what's more, she became pregnant one month after she came back from Denali. Nine months later, her daughter, Lydia, was born.
“Send Word, Bear Mother” was Helen's personal healing chant, one that she adapted from a Sioux chant.
Send word, bear mother
Send word, bear mother
I'm having a hard time
Send word, bear mother
Send word, bear mother
I'm having a bad time.
Helen's encounters with the mother-bear spirit had a she-who-must-be-obeyed energy about them that persisted until she heeded the message, went to Alaska, and saw real bear mothers. The bear had a grip on her imagination. The chant was a plea for help to the bear-mother spirit—for healing.
Christine is another woman who had a profound encounter with mother bear, who came to her in a dream. In this dream, her arm was held in the jaws of a powerful mother bear who would not let go. She could neither shake the bear off nor get help from men in the dream. Then she came to a large, familiar statue of a mother bear with two cubs that she had often seen at the University of California Medical Center. In her dream, when she placed her hands on the statue, the bear finally let go of her arm.
As we talked about her dream, Christine intuitively connected her recent obsession about having a baby with the mother bear. She kept noticing pregnant women and women with babies; intrusive thoughts about becoming pregnant herself came into her mind and were followed by anxiety. She wanted and feared this. She had her course set on becoming a psychologist. She had only a year left to finish the academic preparation, after which she wanted to begin a practice. Now the idea of having a baby intruded and she felt that, if she gave in to it, it would mean sacrificing her career. When we explored what putting her hands on the statue of the mother bear could mean, she had a strong sense that, by doing so, she was making a promise. With the promise made, the bear could let her go.
After this discussion with me, Christine went home and told her husband about the dream and its meaning to her. In their talk, they decided that, once she finished her last year of school, their goal would be for her to become pregnant. They would share childcare responsibilities and support each other's work. With Christine's husband backing up her promise to mother bear, her intrusive, obsessive thoughts went away. The mother bear let go the grip she had on Christine's psyche once she felt an inner certainty that she would honor the mother bear in herself.
Bears and Women
“Undressing the Bear” is a chapter in Terry Tempest Williams' An Unspoken Hunger: Stories from the Field (1995). In it, Williams tells bear stories, relates dreams of bears, and shares anecdotes that point to a connection between women and bears. She writes:
We are creatures of paradox, women and bears, two animals that are enormously unpredictable, hence our mystery. Perhaps the fear of bears and the fear of women lies in our refusal to be tamed, the impulses we arouse and the forces we represent.
Among the stories in this particular chapter, there is a description of a bear dream from a bookseller friend of Terry's who tells of sharing it with a male customer:
“I dreamt I was in Yellowstone. A grizzly, upright, was walking toward me. Frightened at first, I began to pull away, when suddenly a mantle of calm came over me. I walked toward the bear and we embraced.” The man across the counter listened, and then said matter-of-factly, “Get over it.”
Terry mused: “Why? Why should we give up the dream of embracing the bear? For me, it has everything to do with undressing, exposing, and embracing the Feminine.” She explains:
I see the Feminine defined as a reconnection to the Self, a commitment to the wildness within—our instincts, our capacity to create and destroy; our hunger for connection as well as sovereignty, interdependence and independence, at once. We are taught not to trust our own experience.
It is interesting that the ferocious protective power of the bear is an attribute of Artemis and not of the Greek mother goddesses, who were powerless to protect themselves or their children from male predators and abusive partners. In fact, in Greek mythology and in the history of the Western civilization that owes so much to the Greeks, women have neither been empowered nor equal to men, however Olympian their social status. Gaia, the personification of earth who birthed all life on the planet, is abused by her husband, Uranus, after he grows increasingly resentful of her fertility. When he prevents anything further from being born, she is in great pain, until her son, Cronos, emasculates his father and consigns him to the deepest and darkest part of the underworld, replacing him as the chief god. Rhea, the mother of the Olympians, stands by helplessly as her husband, Cronos, fearing that he will have a son who will do to him what he did to his own father, swallows her first five children as soon as they are born. Finally, in her sixth pregnancy, Rhea wraps a stone in swaddling clothes and tricks him into believing he has swallowed Zeus, who grows to manhood and, with allies, overthrows his father. Demeter, the mother of Persephone, can not prevent her daughter's abduction and rape.
Good human mothers mirror their children, respond to their happy or sad emotions, and realize that their children's feelings matter. They see their individuality, their strengths, and their sensitivities. Between a healthy mother and child, there is a reciprocity and response that fosters the growth of emotional intelligence.
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