Bapedi people have a saying, "Go ikilela" - meaning "to abstain from", but also "to detox" or "to fast". Go ikilela is a practice people in my culture observe during various life events, including sickness, pregnancy, postpartum recovery and mourning. But this isn't exclusive to the Bapedi. The notion is found in various faiths worldwide, and the youth even have their own version of it, as seen in social media trends such as "75 Hard Challenge" where people dedicate 75 days to developing healthy habits.
It can also be seen in the popular dieting trend of intermittent fasting.
The aim of go ikilela is to rid yourself of unhealthy habits or practices that are unhealthy while actively engaging in those that aren't. It is based on the idea that we need to practise self-care and self-preservation to enable recovery and good mental and physical health.
For Mother Wound victims and survivors, go ikilela is an important elimination process that clears the path and creates a healthy environment for healing, even though some may confuse it with the actual healing. At its core, the practice is about the knowledge that physical, emotional and energetic health and hygiene are integral parts of nurturing ourselves back to health, especially when we are vulnerable. It also extends to our interactions with the vulnerable -- in practising go ikilela, we are better positioned to help others and protect them from anything that might jeopardise their health.
Go ikilela is central to health. Even before conception, a man who wants to father healthy offspring and ensure that his partner has a healthy pregnancy has to abstain from unhealthy foods and avoid stress-inducing situations and risky behaviours that will affect his health and thus the quality of his sperm. Yes, men are responsible for most of the complications that women experience during pregnancy. This isn't my opinion; it's science.
Shocker, right? Especially considering that for centuries women have been blamed for fertility issues in their unions with men.
What will not come as a shocker, however, is that women also have to abstain from risky behaviour and habits that may jeopardise their health to ensure that their pregnancies -- and thus their children -- are healthy. This practice continues once the child is born because the younger the child, the more vulnerable they are, and the newer the mom, the more vulnerable she is. Emphasis is placed on safety (physical and energetic), self-care, nutrition and support.
To ensure the safety of the mother and child, they both go through a period of confinement -- usually three months -- when visitors are not allowed and only the mother and child's primary support structure (often, the village) assists in caring for them. The mother doesn't have too much freedom of movement outside her home. In some cases, she doesn't leave her home until she is no longer motswetsi (a nursing mom).
Go ikilela is the communal care of mother and child to ensure that they aren't indirectly, through their village support system, exposed to harm. Regarding, the mother consumes only what is healthy for her and her child. If she is a drinker or smoker, all that stops. It is how she recovers. It is now widely known, thanks to social media, that pregnancy, birth and postpartum recovery can be traumatic experiences for women. You, too, may be a mom and know very well what is required to fully recover. Go ikilela then becomes the antidote to the trauma and ensures that the child grows strong and reaches the developmental stages.
Things are, however, slowly changing as more women join the workforce and move further away from their relatives. As a result, the notion of community has also shifted. All these dynamics pose a challenge to how mothers show up for their children in their formative years.
This ancient knowledge holds the answer to many of our questions about motherhood, childhood development and the rise in mental health problems.
This is where we start our Self-Mothering journey. Where better to start than at the very beginning, in infancy, with the ancient knowledge that is now backed by science? We start as capable adults whose motherly instincts have been activated so that we can hold space for the inner child's pain and trauma.
Embedded in the practice of go ikilela are the fundamentals to reparenting and self-mothering that lay the groundwork and sustain the work of healing. Without this foundation, healing doesn't begin and isn't sustained. As these lessons are slowly being forgotten and capitalism engulfs every part of our being, including motherhood, we ought to remember and evolve with this practice at the core of our existence if health is important to us.
In his book The Brain's Way of Healing, Dr Norman Doidge calls this part of neuroplasticity healing the "correction of the general function of the neurons and glia", which simply means "housekeeping" for the body and brain's cellular processes, suggesting that nutrition, self-care and safety are important aspects of healing.
In this section of the book, we focus on housekeeping, or go ikilela, not simply as a care practice for our inner child but also a core strength of our new responsibility for our own care and protection. This is how you begin to become a loving adult to your inner child.
The following chapters focus on the pillars of go ikilela and housekeeping -- self-care and safety -- to ready ourselves and continue to build the strength we need to process the pain and trauma of our mother wounds.
We will start easy. In fact, it may feel as though we aren't doing much at all, but that's entirely by design lest you become overwhelmed. Do not attempt to skip ahead to later lessons because these initial lessons build on each other and allow you to pace yourself as you gently heal.