I was listening to @moveincircles today on Rebel Wisdom and I was absolutely floored by a section in which she talked about motherhood.

She talked about how it felt to have her daughter grow inside of her, and to all of a sudden become two people at once.

Mary and I know each other and we've had some conversations about archetypes or aesthetic sensibilities for women.

All day on the TL you see pictures of the man with the jawline. And you get it. He is power, virility, competence. He is the chad.

But who is the female chad?

Mary came to the brilliant conclusion that women need three chad archetypes because the source of their power shifts through their life stages:

maiden
mother
matriarch

The maiden we know well. She is the archetype we have filled out, because she is the part of womanhood that can be bought and sold, both to men and to herself. She is fertile, beautiful, bold, capable. But at this point in life she is independent. Not interconnected.

This is where our current social structures that value independence (and the consumer utopia that follows) fails women who move into the motherhood and matriarch phases. Because in these later phases our power comes from interdependence. But this can't be bought and sold.

Since we are coming up on mother's day I'd like to humbly offer you the chad mother meme. It's me. Moments after the birth of my youngest. Every mother has this photo.

I'd like to start a process of reclaiming the power inherent in motherhood, and interdependence.

We mothers build humans in our bodies. We are the reason human life exists. We become two (or more) people, and that doesn't end when we give birth. We feed them with our bodies (if all goes well) and they are attached to us through an extended infancy.

We make a culture of a home out of which a generation of people will structure their lives. Our work and successes in our spousal relationship and our relationships with them will determine the strength of their wellbeing. Our strength and will transfers to them.

We take care of shit. We see everything that's unseen and we take care of it. We don't ask for everyone to notice when we do these things. They need to get done, no one else will do them. This is duty. And everyone relies on our strength to do these tasks.

We create not only life from our bodies, but works of art, writing, we find time to pursue that which brings us meaning.

I was floored the other day in a group chat with fabulously accomplished women talking about strategies for cleaning house. Based.

I wish I knew more about the chad matriarch. So I could will her meme into existence. I know she's next level interdependent. We all rely on her for her wisdom. I know she's more free now from the daily tasks of small children, which makes her wild and spiritual.

My sense is that modern consumer capitalist culture has stolen our power from us.

Not only women have to take it back, we all do. We have to find our archetypes again. Who shall we emulate? How then shall we build the next world?

I think mothers and matriarchs are often too busy being in the world to will memes into existence, but more and more our power and status comes from taking up space in the online world (for better or worse). I welcome memesis of chad women. As a gift for Mother's Day.