\u201cMother Culture\u201d is a worldwide movement that has not received much publicity but is changing the consciousness of women who are meeting in living rooms, coffee shops and businesses around the world to discuss mothering, daughtering, and more. Mothercircle.com describes the movement in this way: \u201cWe are practicing wisdom around birth and sex and money and worth and living deeply from our values. And it\u2019s touching every part of our lives, filtering into our work, our relationships, and our mothering.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meghan Dwyer, a lifelong Chestnut Hill and Mt. Airy resident, is arguably the Philadelphia area\u2019s most prominent champion of this practice. In an interview with the Local, she explained, \u201cIt\u2019s a space where we delve into topics that the mainstream culture isn\u2019t addressing and where one\u2019s children are not always at the center of the conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n
A healing arts practitioner since 2009, yoga teacher, and more, Dwyer runs the \u201cMotherCircle,\u201d a once-a-week gathering of women in Chestnut Hill that stretches over eight weeks. These events hope \u201cto support mothers and build a \u2018Mother Culture\u2019 that is an exploration into the unseen aspects of the motherhood journey.\u201d It\u2019s an interesting direction for someone who has no children of her own. However, as the oldest of seven siblings, she knows a thing or two about that responsibility.<\/p>\n
Dwyer attended Our Mother of Consolation School, Bishop McDevitt High School and Villanova University, majoring in sociology and Spanish. She graduated in 2003. Fluent in Spanish, she volunteered at an orphanage in a small town in Mexico and traveled through Central America. \u201cThat was the best three months of my life,\u201d she said. \u201cI came home and worked for a corporate law firm for one-and-a-half years in 2005. It was the only 9-to-5 job I\u2019ve had in my life.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2007, Dwyer spent 11 months traveling with a friend throughout South America, including stays in Peru, on an Amazon River cargo boat, and in youth hostels. \u201cIn South America, we spent just $500 a month for all expenses,\u201d she said. \u201cIt cost just $5 a night to stay in a youth hostel. I could do it all because I had saved up $8,000.\u201d<\/p>\n
She returned home broke, but she then worked on the Avenue at McNally\u2019s Tavern and Mango while training to become a yoga teacher. She helped to organize the first trip to Guatemala for Teens Inc, a Chestnut Hill-based nonprofit that arranges global youth service projects. In 2009, she began teaching yoga at Blue Banyan in Mt. Airy and at other studios in Conshohocken, Fairmount, and South Philadelphia. She also taught dance to people with special needs and currently teaches yoga at Camaraderie in Ambler.<\/p>\n
Samantha White, a mother of two from Upper Dublin, told us, \u201cMeghan is magic. I\u2019ve known her for eight years from yoga and workshops. Then I went to her MotherCircle, and I\u2019m going to do it again. It is cross-generational and not just about being a mother. It\u2019s also about trying to heal relationships with your own mothers. It was so beautiful and made me feel less alone as a mother. In the U.S., we are constantly being told we are not doing it [motherhood] well, but the MotherCircle gave me a depth of understanding. Meghan is so kind and gentle and understanding. She is the perfect person to run these.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another longtime participant, area resident Sonia Petruse, said, \u201cI have been a student of Meghan\u2019s for over 15 years, both for yoga and as a Shamanic guide. I practice both daily. Meghan is so compassionate and loving. Being in her presence is healing. I am so lucky to know her. I have had a ton of medical trauma, and Meghan has healed me. She has given me the tools to deal with all issues. I know so many people who could benefit from her practices; she has made me a better person.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dwyer also co-founded a \u201cCommunity Grief Collective\u201d in 2021 with, among others, Priscilla Tennant, an associate pastor at Chestnut Hill United Church. The group is called \u201cSalt Trails.\u201d Every third Friday of the month, Dwyer and others in the collective hold an event called \u201cSinging Our Grief.\u201d Participants not only have lost loved ones, but also are coping with \u201cmany other types of grief.\u201d About 30 people participate, usually in a local park.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love it,\u201d Dwyer said. \u201cThe name \u2018Salt Trails\u2019 comes from salty tears.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her work as a yogi, she said, \u201cled me to Shamanism, but I would rather hang out in a bar than in an ashram. I\u2019m a night owl. I like regular down-to-earth people. … and I have gone wherever there is live music: Silk City dance club, Trocadero, TLA, Khyber Pass, Ortlieb\u2019s and Electric Factory. Yoga helped me get more comfortable with my body. When I was younger, I needed a couple drinks first. Not now. I love to incorporate movement into the workout.\u201d<\/p>\n
This comfort in her own skin allowed Dwyer to expand her work from the physical to the emotional. She said, \u201cA great lady from Chile, Luz Clara, a medicine woman, said to me, \u2018Stop complaining. Form a women\u2019s circle. Heal yourselves. The men are not going to do it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Dwyer\u2019s next \u201cMotherCircle\u201d session will be every Tuesday from Sept. 9 to Oct. 28, usually lasting about 90 minutes per session. For more information, email Meghan.anne.dwyer@gmail.com<\/a>. Len Lear can be reached at LenLear@chestnuthilllocal.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cMother Culture\u201d is a worldwide movement that has not received much publicity but is changing the consciousness of…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":198723,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5229,1448,2830,1311,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-198722","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-pa","10":"tag-pennsylvania","11":"tag-philadelphia","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-united-states-of-america","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","16":"tag-us","17":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115144336617146256","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198722\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}