BY KIDA BRADLEY
Dying Womb
Trigger warning for terminology relating to sexual assault and abuse.
Earth Mother carried us. Gaia carried all of us to full term and mothered us in her own way, by letting us figure out the world on our own and pave our own destiny. The Earth circulated refreshing water for us to suckle on, and nourished us with her other offspring. Not just any offspring either, the tangy, sweet, spicy, tender, and juicy organisms that sprouted from her ebony-rich soil. The offspring that fueled our hunger—cooked over fire and smothered with her bountiful minerals. Magna Mater knew it was a sacrifice she had to make to ensure we survived.
And then Earth Mother gave us more.
Gaia cannot “taketh away” nor can she deny us of our most outlandish pleasures and desires. We have taken our Earth Mother for granted by abusing her and continuously destroying what makes Gaia beautiful. Call her Belle and Venus because Gaia radiates a viridescent and cerulean beauty like no other planet in our solar system. The Earth introduced us to every color on the electromagnetic spectrum by taking from the universe and absorbing the endless light so that we may gaze and dream about her soft rainbows. The masterpieces made with those colors further cement Earth Mother’s ability to cultivate a wonderfully beautiful world.
Sadly, we have abused Magna Mater’s generosity by sucking the chemicals from the Earth’s ecosystems to make indestructible multicolored plastic and lethal elixirs that gets ingested by her smaller and naively bliss offspring—damaging habitats, forcefully destroying Gaia’s unique essence, and poisoning her womb. Our species takes so many nutrients from Terra’s systems that she struggles to function properly, causing extreme reactions that shake, flood, and disrupt her offspring’s collective development. In a matter of seconds of our Home Planet’s life, we dump toxins and waste into her, constricting her ability to provide for her children. The human race has raped Terra of her dignity and respect, taking more than what we could ever need. Our Home Planet will never be able to replace the natural wonders and organisms she blessed our senses with. They have become lost to time and our memories. The powerful elite have denied Gaia any semblance of bodily autonomy, building empires and corporations on her commodified carcass.
Gaia’s womb is dying, our home is violently decaying away. We need to revive and protect our Earth Mother.
Gaia’s Wrath
I wish I could have had the opportunity to witness the abundance of life that white settlers saw when they sailed into the shores of the Americas and Africa. To be able to gaze upon the flourishing ecosystems in the aegean blue sea and fern green landscapes.
I wonder how animated the Amazon rainforest must have been before brutal colonizers started to raze down its elders to embers. The symphony of songs from the birds, insects, and rivers would have fueled my daydreaming slumbers.
I wish I could have seen the galaxy through the uncongested lens of the atmosphere. Just to have a glimpse of the universe transforming on our tiny blue marble.
I wonder what the dodo bird and golden toad would have been like, before they went extinct. I can’t help but imagine funny sounds coming from them, echoing in their ecosystems.
I wonder how transparent the ocean must have been centuries ago. Perhaps, I could have seen with absolute clarity, the peaceful constant ebb and flow of life throughout Earth Mother’s waters
I wish I could have witnessed the marvelous migration of birds that signaled the change in seasons. The wisdom I would have gained from their melodious groove across Gaia’s endless skies.
I wonder what the untouched and euphoric serenity would have been like, before the catastrophic impact of the human race. True peace is when nature is at balance.
Those wishes and wonders will never be anything more, for we have taken those experiences from mother. Terra’s punishment will be lethal, her wrath slow, and her forgiveness absent. Mother is mad, she is very displeased. Gaia creates a calm before the storm, giving us a false sense of security. Our dreams and hopes wash away with every disaster she condemns us with.
People say it's only natural to want to dominate the planet, it's in our biology. Humanity created the diverse and collective belief that a creator beyond our universe “instructed” us to subdue Gaia, as if she is a wildebeest that can be tamed by the hands of Man. The destructive justification that our species should have dominion over every living thing that moves has led to the collective decay of Terra’s ecosystems. Humans have created a vicious cycle of abuse and wrath between ourselves and Earth Mother. If it is in our nature to conquer her ecosystems, destroying them in the process, then it is in Earth Mother’s essence to discipline her kin and put us in our place with her vitriol wrath.
Gia blessed her lands with a cornucopia of vegetation, giving us a rainbow of nourishment to settle our rumbling bellies. Earth Mother shares her nutrients with us, hoping we will grow strong enough to take care of her when she can’t. In return, we uproot the Earth’s soil in a repetitive and abusive cycle to fulfill our gluttonous hunger for food. We spray her lands with harsh chemicals that kill Terra’s most vulnerable and hardworking children. Gaia responds by spreading the toxins back in our faces with ferocious winds, riddling our body with cancerous man-made diseases. The earth, in time, over many centuries, will heal—our bodies and consciences will not.
Earth Mother built an atmosphere to shield us from the dangerous rays of the sun. She cultivated towering trees to give us shade and relief during the hottest of days. Magna Mater blessed us with rushing rivers to cool us down as a sweet relief from the heat. And we took advantage of it all. Our incessant production has filled Gaia’s warm embrace with chemicals that give her an ever-rising fever. She does not suffer alone however, Terra makes sure to share her anguish and boiling climate with the ungrateful and the innocent alike. Unfortunately, we have built a world where those consequences are doled out inequitably. Terra’s heat waves parch our lips and deprive vibrant nourishment from the soil. Magna Mater’s ceaseless fury cracks the concrete separating her from the soles of our feet. Her punishment is to withhold water, by evaporating our depleting water supplies. Earth Mother knows our water infrastructure will never outmaneuver her ability to withhold every last drop. We stopped respecting our true elders, the trees that took care of her for millions of years. The microlife that crafted rich soil for plants to thrive in. Terra responds by letting them burn longer and more severely—forcing us to cough up the smoke and behold the death of our innocent siblings. It's a slow kind of punishment, the kind that takes decades to experience, but centuries to recover from.
Will we ever make it right with our mother before our time is up?
My Earth is Me and I am My Earth Mother
My Earth is Me and I am My Earth Mother.
My ebony-infused skin is her life-sustaining coasts and soil.
Her clouds that defy gravity are my lightweight curls that fight gravity.
My curls that struggle to retain water are her clouds that unleash thirst-quenching raindrops onto the Earth.
Her beautiful pacific islands that burst through and roughen her surface is the texture of my skin.
My stretch marks—the tiger stripes—are the terracotta, ochre, and burnt sienna streaks of her grand canyon.
Her dehydrated soil caused by unforgiving droughts are my dried scalp that need mother’s essential oils.
My lungs that capture the toxin-infused air filled with dark plumes of smoke, are her tree elders with extensive root systems, who work overtime to clean humanity’s mess.
Her tiny sprouts that swirl from the ground are my lashes that curl delicately.
My skin that holds and traps moisture in my pores is the salt water that penetrates her shores.
The calming shimmer of her endless ocean is the glimmer in my eyes when I get to behold the beautiful relationship between the sun and sea.
The dark spots I try to conceal are the dark caves she embraces that hold ancient and fluorescent wonders.
Her shifting elevation from breath-taking peaks to hidden underwater caverns are my curves that hold generations of struggle from my African ancestors.
Praising my Earth Mother is praising me, shaming me is shaming my Earth Mother.
If she can find beauty in her features then so can I.
Acceptance comes from love from Earth Mother’s soul.
Love will protect our Earth Mother.
My Earth is Me and I am My Earth Mother.
