Children First
Historical analysis as an engineer-turned-mother uncovers how humanity lost its balance. Beginning with her transformative natural birth experiences in a system unprepared for uncomplicated deliveries, the author traces linguistic evidence of goddess figures hidden in words like "Israel" and "Easter," reveals how mistranslations shaped our understanding of gender and spirituality, and examines the systematic dismantling of community supports for families. She demonstrates how Roman imperialism and subsequent cultural forces obscured older wisdom traditions that centered on reproductive power rather than destruction, showing how our disconnection from bodily intelligence and community has led to unsustainable burdens on modern families. The book culminates in practical visions for reclaiming balance—from food sovereignty in backyard gardens to neighborhood redesign—arguing that by truly putting children first, we can address our most pressing societal and environmental challenges while honoring the wisdom that lives in our bodies, our words, and our deepest traditions.
Reclaiming Balance in a World That Forgets Children
"Father, Son, and Holy Spirit."
In the silence that follows these words, I strain to hear what is missing.
PROLOGUE
It began with food.
At thirty, I gave myself a birthday present—a master cleanse program teaching how to prepare real meals: meat, vegetables, smoothies. A coupon and a whim led to revolution. My energy levels soared. The stubborn fat creeping around my belly—resistant even to my toughest workout regimen—finally surrendered.
That same year, he appeared. My future husband, also in transformation, learning to work for himself, practicing yoga daily, inhabiting cafés with his laptop. The universe had waited for us both to arrive at this intersection of being single, healthy, and seeking connection, at the precise right moment in time. It was like the universe heard us and guided us simultaneously with our own epiphanies, encouraging us to break out of expected molds.
"What you seek is seeking you"—a poetic line with multiple interpretations. It refers to the connection between our thoughts, emotions, and the universe. It suggests that what we seek is already within us.
We had no idea that our synchronized awakening would prepare us for what came next: our children, now two and four, who would teach us what all our education had not.
I. FORGOTTEN WISDOM
In the modern Christian prayer, 30% of the world speaks of two men and a ghost. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is the trinity that created everything, the trip that governs heaven and earth in the Christian imagination.
Where is the Mother? The Daughter?
I found something in my research that speaks to the thing that always felt missing. Spirit is a feminine term in Hebrew and Arabic. Maybe She has been there all along, but her identify suppressed and gender removed to silence Her presence.
I am an engineer who had never changed a diaper before having my own children. I never felt like a feminist. But I also did not know how to be what society calls "a woman." My husband stepped beyond his typical role—feeding me while I fed our baby, handling household tasks we used to manage together. We discovered together what institutions should have taught us: the science behind natural childbirth, the body's ancient wisdom, the critical importance of posture and support.
We found a doula who knew us, who protected our space during the magical moment of birth. Without her, we would have been just numbers in a system designed for efficiency, not transformation.
The doctors at UCSF, our "baby-friendly" hospital, were shocked by what they witnessed: unmedicated birth, no interventions. They had rarely seen it. "You're rockstars, we are all talking about you back there" they told us. "You should be on a billboard.” “You should write a book!" I walked to the bathroom minutes after delivery, unguided. Our babies received nearly perfect Apgar scores. With our second child, the doctor was finishing watching the Super Bowl when our son arrived, unaided aside from our doula. "That was a great..." he began, as he walked in. My husband interjected: "Birth?" The doctor finished: "...game."
We didn't need him. Unmedicated, a woman moves in natural ways that guide her baby out. Would you want to be numbed and pulled through a double-sided rock wall? Neither does your baby. Neither does your spine by laying on your back, lining up the heaviest part of the baby—their spine—with your own, in a position designed for the doctor's ease and a mother's discomfort.
Nothing is spoken of posture during pregnancy, a key insight from a simple "Spinning Babies" class: pretend your belly button is a flashlight, wanting to point to the ground. No sitting back in lounge chairs. Work on that posture. Do exercises of mild contractions that provide happy proteins to the baby. DNA-changing epigenetics of mind and body work simultaneously, giving your baby everything it needs to thrive—the real science midwives taught before being pushed out by "professionals" who did not allow women in their ranks.
This wisdom—about food, about birth, about our bodies—has been systematically forgotten. Just as the divine mother has been erased from our spiritual consciousness.
II. PATTERNS IN PLAIN SIGHT
The evidence appears in linguistic ghosts.
Israel: Is-Ra-El. A prayer of balance in a single word.
Isis: the Egyptian mother, the rising sun (aka birth)
Ra: the noon day sun/son, the god child.
El: the Canaanite father god (and revered elder of the setting sun).
… A holy family hidden in plain sight.
I find this goddess on the compass map: East, and our holiday Easter. "Eest," spelled "ist," the Egyptian goddess known to the Greeks as Isis. The egyptian character copied and assimilated, the mother goddess, the eternal virgin who wakes up every day a virgin like the rising sun. The -t sound in the word “east” preserves the feminine ending as known in Egyptian languages, like the -ette (usherette, kitchenette) in French for female or small, or -ess in English (actr-ess). And the Germans had a goddess named Easter who it is said was worshipped for a whole month in the spring, and the month named after her: Aestermonat, as confirmed by Christian historians and French King Charlemagne around 700 BC.
Europa: Another goddess name preserved in an entire continent. It was acutally names like this I was searching for when I noticed, and stopped, at Israel.
The birthday candle—bringing smoke up to moon gods, celebrating our circle around the sun—an Egyptian invention, not a Roman one. Romans mostly celebrated death days, until they took the glory, grain, and gold of Egypt, making the old look outdated while declaring the New Testament the focus of attention.
We follow this mindset that Catholicism and Christianity used in empire-building—a strange religion pushing the narrative of child sacrifice. If God sacrificed Jesus as his son, that means there was someone else God was trying to impress. Here, we find his old lover.
In medieval art, Mary is often depicted holding a book. This is strange—most people could not read in Rome and through the Middle Ages, especially not women. This harkens back to a past Rome appropriated without credit, a past where women were seen as natural holders of wisdom, givers of life. Not just that, but goddesses of love and war. They were there when life started, in her waters, and through her waters at baptism, our rebirth into enlightenment. They were there again at death, when putting bodies in the ground became like planting seeds, burial mounds seen as pregnant bellies in the earth.
The Egyptian word for burial meant "reuniting with the earth." If we equate earth with mother—Mother Earth—we can describe it as "reuniting with the mother."
III. BODY WISDOM
When pregnant, if a mother lacks sufficient nutrients, the baby will take what it needs from her body—her teeth, her bones, her energy. Yet where is the education about nutrition before pregnancy? Where is the preparation for the sacred burden of creating life?
I knew it in my bones. I had a gut feeling I had to do more than be a good patient.
Birth is a natural event.
Sayings that emphasize the rationality of the body over mind.
Our bodies are rational, even when our institutions are not.
The microbiome governing our gut health, mood, and immunity—destroyed by pesticides that don't kill us immediately but slowly erode our wellness. The food system horrifies: animal cruelty, regenerative science ignored, pesticides contaminating everything.
No child is born today with a blank slate. On average, umbilical cord blood shows over 200 harmful chemicals swimming in that tiny developing body, building organs and minute processes we will never fully understand, but know to treat better. We know better. Science knows better. Why do we hesitate to scream this out loud?
The rational choice of the body to make food and sex pleasurable was for a very good reason. We can choose happiness, we have a right to pursue it—an ideal that Greek texts (with Egyptian motifs) reignited when they escaped Constantinople as it fell to the Turks, sparking the Renaissance. Christians had burned these books, disliking this concept of happiness, instead emphasizing pain and sacrificing the ultimate child.
Without birth control, a woman's intuition guides her to pick partners with complementary genetics. This is why we don't like the smell of our siblings. This is why marrying within family makes no biological sense. Birth control, while giving freedom, can interfere with this ancient wisdom.
Do you know why wolves howl? It is a rollcall. And depending on how many wolves participate, mother wolves pregnant at the time will have more or less pups to help replenish the pack. Her body responds to knowing if wolves are missing, she needs to birth more. How does this translate to human genetics? How much do our bodies know, even though they cant see the outside world, only our reaction to it?
The same for support. A study was done on women who had post partum depression. The biggest find was the idea of perceived support. If a woman felt more unsupported, she had more depression. More than nutrition or anything else. It is the idea of security and comfort that drives us. We forget how touch changes us, studies showing a baby needs touch even more than mother’s milk. We should be studying our bodies, absorbing from them the wisdom we barely understand. We should be reading the science that we’ve already known that was pushed out or aside or even, words taken away.
When I changed how I ate, I didn't just lose a couple pounds—I found myself. Food became medicine, a gateway to herbalism, a new way of seeing the world. Birth became not a medical emergency but a natural process my body knew how to complete, and a life-changing experience. Motherhood became not a role to perform but an identity to embody.
IV. MISSING SUPPORT
Everything about bringing our babies home was hard. Not because they were difficult children, but because society is not structured to support parents.
We sat at home, watching youtube videos on how to raise our precious newborn. How had we been so unprepared? I was so ready for the birth, but had no idea what it would be like taking that spark of life home. Our neighbor under us the first morning asked if everything was alright, there was screaming and running, a child that would be labeled as having “colic” for crying more than 3 hours a day (more like 9), hardly sleeping, hardly eating.
Wanting milk so bad, and my breasts swollen and dripping, but not knowing how to latch.
He would only sleep on our chest, or walking around outside wrapped to us, where the wind calmed him and he clung to us realizing he needed us. A phrase doctors use that means nothing, and means they know nothing about what to do about it. It is a phrase that means only, that child cries a lot. How does that help anyone? Is that our best science? My husband and I were not used to sucking at something so badly. That boy would forever be our sparkler, a term a feeding consultant would give him.
For 9 weeks, I followed the “triple feed” instructions: pump, attempt to latch, and feed with a bottle (then do dishes), spending an hour 20 minutes every 3 hours feeding. That is half my hours in a day. Every 2-3 hours awake, getting at most a 4 hour period to sleep longer. Even if it was just an hour, that is 8-12 hours per day literally just feeding. But I wanted my child to be able to breast feed. And I did not enjoy pumping. I could not accept my child just could not drink through a straw. I don’t know how long I would have went, but eventually one day, he just sucked differently. And his eyebrows went up. it was like he discovered something, and we went on to breast feed amazingly for a year and a half. The world is a fog in those first few months, even years. So joyful, but such a blur.
If our first son slept the least amount if what is average for a new baby, our second slept the most. So calm, so content. Both wonderful boys, just so different. We knew to cherish the calm the second time around.
Did the ancients have this phenomenon? What would they have said? What would the midwives have advised?
Backsleeping. There is more evidence to say it is correlated to vaccines. The evidence of deaths are still mostly from poor habits that lead to suffocation which can be easily managed in most cases, often with safe co-sleeping, with no drugs, no alcohol, and no edges to fall: place mattresses on the floor, remove loos blankets around the child, etc. All animals slept on their moms. And the deep sleep some children find themselves in seem to be occurring from being left alone to sleep too young, and this can be mitigated by sleeping within 5 feet of another sleeping being, animal or human, REMEMBERING to breath. It is like the child needs someone to replicate.
And that was before we ventured to try to go anywhere but the park across the street.
Restaurants were uninterested in accommodating children without screens (nobody said this, but the message was clear in side eyes). Bathrooms not helpful for breastfeeding. Few places to let a child walk (let’s face it, run) around.
Parks with trees removed, replaced by plastic off-gassing in hot sun, grass covered in pesticides or artificial turf collecting germs. Do you know what some of those slides feel like in the sun? I have friends whose child got third degree burns from a slide’s heat.
Playgrounds locked after school hours due to insurance models. Mega-SUVs in suburbs without safe places to walk or bike. No streetlights, dangerous crosswalks. Amsterdam changed its whole city design in the 90’s to accommodate bikes. Bikes take precedent over cars in accidents.
We've bubble-wrapped childhood while making the world inherently less hospitable. But street designs are a choice.
Doctors note fewer broken arms from playground falls, but more catastrophic injuries.
Modern society, beginning with Rome, pushed men out of the birth room, not wanting his biology to change, not wanting his hormones to sync with his family. Not wanting him to fight for country and leave his family behind to fight someone else's battles.
Couples expect entire villages of support from single partners, which is unrealistic. We're all overwhelmed. Women today are told: "Sure, go get a job, but do all the housework as a hobby." Think of any news story showing a person with several families—you'll find many examples of men, few of women. When couples in long relationships lose a spouse, men remarry almost immediately, while women often remain single. The relationship requires more work from her. She is more needed, more burdened with expectations.
We can learn from same sex couples: trading who is on night duty with the baby every other night. True equality. A mother cannot just shut herself off to this night duty, she has to feed, and wakes up to the cries, and has to wake up her husband to participate, which is often wakeful in itself. A child's cry is the first thing to wake a young mother, yet not even in the top ten for a father. Our biologies are different, yet complementary. But he can help, he can do more than put a mask on and earbuds in. A partner is essential in these months, and I would argue for a newborn, a 3:1 adult to newborn ratio is required. A father needs time to relax and bond as well. We all need skin to skin contact, as much as possible. Wisdom lies in that touch.
We do not need to be heterosexual to be good parents. Many children exist, unwanted, all over the world. We need allo parents, adults that are not family to help us out. I tear up every time i hear of stories like a mother with newborn twins and new partner, and elders from a local church stepping up. We need community.
A vow to our children is the real vow to the divine—to our inner wisdom, that scientific thread that makes us stardust, the same material stars are made of. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed. The heat within us, the sun, the earth, and all life cools to ambient temperature when breathing stops, but the past lives on in our shared ecosystem.
V. MISTRANSLATIONS
In Roman stories, Isis was a virgin, but in Egyptian understanding, every woman was "born again" a virgin daily with the rising sun. No woman can live up to the ideal of a mother who had no sex, nor should we have to. Men created this narrative to justify controlling women's bodies, declaring them property under Roman law.
Marrying a woman off before puberty ensures she has no say in how her life unfolds. The Virgin Mary herself, a preteen when her boss, God, asks her to do the impossible thing—carry his child. We would see this as totally inappropriate today for good reason: it means she has zero autonomy or choice. She is being manipulated, like many other women in biblical stories.
Yet there is wisdom in these narratives if you can tease it out—stories copied from older, pre-Christian, pre-Roman sources that guide our modern celebrations of mother and child, of telling stories midwinter, all about children if we remove modern materialism. What Christmas is really about is the young family.
We have inherited a mistranslation of the past—Roman misunderstanding that warriors can run away and create life alone. Our Bible is a translation of a translation, with mistakes and interpretations accumulated over time.
The founding myth of Rome includes the rape of the Sabine women, with no succession plan until they threw a fake party to steal women and create the founding royal families. The Bible includes people begging robbers not to rape their sons, but to rape their daughters instead. Homeric epics teach that the hero should say goodbye to his young family.
Now we know the original protagonist in these Egyptian stories was Isis, a woman trying to save her husband, traveling through unknown lands. The first writer was a woman royal priestess in Mesopotamia, writing to her goddess Inanna, the ultimate creator and destroyer. We need to destroy to create life. We are eternally short on resources, specifically time.
What did the Romans change the name of Judea to? Palestine, a form of the ancient people, the Philistines, Greek pirates and ancient enemies in the Bible. Romans wanted to wipe Jewish people off the face of the earth, as they did with Egyptians. But we found Egypt's voice with the Rosetta Stone. The word "Palestine" literally means "invader," as did the Greek pirates entering Jewish lands.
Prior to this shift, social organization was often matriarchal, because motherhood was visibly evident while paternity remained uncertain. There were no DNA tests. Women and land—both equated with Mother Earth—needed to be fenced in and tightly controlled, in story and in life. Morality is conveyed through narrative, and our narratives have been corrupted.
VI. RECLAIMING BALANCE
The mother is here. She always was. When she ruled, I imagine a world that put children first. It may not have been perfect, but we can use her past examples to guide us today, when we are more lost than ever to find our moral compasses.
Where is true east? Along the horizon, where Horus of the Egyptians gave us another word. He also gave us the mother-son image of Mary and Jesus. Yet again it was her: Isis, Astarte, Inanna, our eastern star that gave us words like "star" and "annual."
If we put children first today, everything would change:
Organic food would be standard, not luxury—it would be "food," or "food with sprayed chemicals." These chemicals should cost extra for their filth, future medical bills, and damage to our water system.
If we removed food subsidies, often guided by lobbyists, we would allow freedom of choice and educate with the goal of nutrition, not feeding an insurance model managing sickness, creating long-term patients with chronic pain.
We would incentivize healthcare to prevent problems, not cause, delay, or mask them.
Maternal and paternal care would not be a disability but a necessity. There is zero federal expectation for a mother to have time after birth, let alone a father.
Elderly and babies would intermingle, not be shunned to the edges of society in locked buildings.
Jesus was executed under common Roman punishment for causing disturbance—he did not sacrifice himself; the empire killed him, then made him a martyr and mascot 300 years later. The Romans did NOT like Jews; this is unquestionable. They expelled them from their homeland, killed those who would not convert, and made Hebrew officially illegal to speak, rendering it a dead language for 200 years. It was through brute internal drive that Judaism survived to today, a miracle that preserves for us the origin of stories and prayers like those in the name: ISRAEL. What did the romans change the name of Judea/Israel to? Palestine, a form of the ancient people, the Phillistines, which meant “invader”, for the Greek pirates and ancient enemy recorded in the bible. Romans wanted to wipe Jewish people off the face of the earth, since they rebelled too much for Roman’s cruel rule, and would not accept Roman religion. The Romans wanted them to be as they did with Egyptians and at least 25 other counted cultures. But we found Egypt’s voice with the Rosetta Stone, and sustained cultural interest even after 2,000 years of silence. The word “Palestine” literally means “invader”, as did the greek pirates entering the lands of the jews.
The true sacrifice comes from mothers. They offer their bodies, their sleep, their autonomy. Young families sacrifice their sanity. They need support, not judgment or impossible standards.
EPILOGUE
My children play in the backyard, digging in soil I've tested for toxins, eating berries from bushes I've planted with my own hands. My husband prepares dinner—we take turns cleaning, truly nourishing each other, knowing we each have passions and needs to grow beyond the strict lines society places around us. We live in an imperfect balance we constantly recalibrate.
This story isn't just for feminists. It's for EVERYONE who is in charge of raising the next generation—and that doesn't mean everyone with children. The next generation is those boys and girls who will inherit our mistakes and our wisdom. They will need to do their own work. They do not have to inherit the rules and generational hatreds that have propelled wars for the last couple thousand years.
We can find empathy in the people, planet, and ecosystem around us. We can find similarity in the stories we tell when we look up at the stars, in the aches and blessings of being parents allowed to view this legacy of love creating life.
This story is ours to tell. It can be of pain and neglect, of humans being a cancer on this earth that grows unchecked and spoils everything, killing its host. Or we can learn we are better than "survival of the fittest." We have altruistic bones that get us to jump in front of buses for strangers. We thrive in cooperation. We thrive with empathy.
Let's stop the sleepwalk. Let's help children start with as blank a slate as possible. The world will be trouble enough; let's not burden them with toxins and exploitation we've created. Let them see we can be passionate and good for this planet. Because we can be.
Let's use our big brains to pay attention to the mushrooms breaking down toxic radioactive garbage. Let's enjoy the dandelions that bring nutrients from the deep earth no matter how much we cut them down—the "weeds" that are only bad by the name stamped on them, the life that emerges from cracks in concrete when we walk away.
This version of our shared story—not just his-story—doesn't blame any person or group, but questions our collective thinking. We need to become more adaptable, more educated, more connected to our bodies' ancient intelligence.
As an engineer, I was taught to solve complex puzzles. The erasure of the divine feminine is one I never expected to tackle. Yet here I stand, at the intersection of science and spirituality, reason and intuition, past and future—seeking balance in a world that has forgotten how to honor its children, its mothers, and the sacred act of creation that binds us all to the stars.
We are all fragile beings in a universe indifferent to our existence. The only warmth comes from each other. The only meaning, from the stories we tell. Let us tell better ones.
Summary
An engineer becomes a mother. A personal experience combined with solid historical and linguistic research.
She jumps right in with this question, “Where is the mother?” We have the father, the son, the Holy spirit, but where's the feminine in that Trinity? There is this very obvious lack of a female figure within the Christian trinity.
It's a seemingly simple question, but it has some pretty big implications. Even when you look at Mary in Catholicism, she's, revered, but she's still separate, outside that core trinity. It makes you wonder how that whole story developed and whose voices were included or not. How did religious doctrine evolve? Whose voices ended up being the ones that are represented?
Consider the name Israel. What if it's a code, a hidden message?
Isis, Ra, and El: three very well known gods from the past with perfect timing and associations to be aligned in a way that would shock most. A forgotten holy family embedded in a name. A whole prayer in a single word. It's a pretty bold claim, but the point is that names do hold power. Nobody can say these connections CANNOT exist. Stories pass on through generations with or without a supreme right to continue. Place names hold history.
And, the very foundation of a nation's identity in this case could be built on a history that's been obscured or reinterpreted over time.
It makes you wonder what other hidden messages we might be overlooking. It's like approaching history like one big puzzle. And using an engineering background to find the connections and the patterns. It's like a problem solving mindset to uncover these things that lead to some pretty interesting observations. The Rosetta Stone, and how deciphering it gave us access to this whole civilization that had been basically silenced for centuries. It was like giving a voice back to the voiceless. She uses that as this jumping off point to ask what other voices are waiting to be heard? What other histories are hidden in plain sight? There's so much more we could uncover. We still have many undeciphered scripts, from Etruscans, the first Italians, and Minoan Linear A script. These were not insignificant cultures, they were the ones who brought writing to the Europeans, the Greeks a thousand years before a totally separate Greek writing system formed again. The Italian Etruscans were the ones who brought the jewish alphabet to the Latin Romans. The lost languages we do have were deciphered by oddballs and outsiders, obsessive individuals breaking boundaries. In France, Champollion deciphered Egyptian, though reluctantly allowed into major literary institutions, in Linear B, a russian breaking rules during communism. So who knows what kind of insights into ancient worship might be locked away in those symbols we don’t know to honor. Much of the past is still a complete mystery to us, potential codes hidden in plain sight.
From there, more clues were found in the most unexpected places. These ancient blue beads dating back to 2000 BC trace a journey right from the Mediterranean all the way to Germany. These beads and other artifacts reveal ancient trade routes and an interconnectedness of cultures across vast distances. They tell a story of exchange and influence that goes way beyond what's typically presented in our his-story books.
Tiny archeological objects can hold so much information about the past, holding clues to a much larger story. Beyond physical objoect, many place names, like Europa itself, are derived from women names, often goddesses. As I was trying to make a list of them, I stopped at the word Israel.
El is a known name for god, espially for the canannites, the pre-jewish people. He morphed into Yahweh, and the modern idea of God. But that word: el, survives in many names like Ezikiel, Gabriel, etc, known religious names and accepted by authorities as to their origin. Why cant other syllables stand for other gods of the past, especially major ones. When you stop at Israel, Ra stands out, the Egyptian sun god. This makes sense. to them, he was sometimes the main father god, but more significantly in this sense, the child of Isis. And she is there, right at the start. The mother, the child, and the father. The order matters. The Egyptians, and many that followed in their footsteps, loved a solar analogy. Isis was the morning sun. Ra was the child at noon, the god incarnate at his highest power, and the setting sun, the father of all, the ancient wise one of old. A compilation of dieties and names in a single workd, a single prayer. I looked into it. The hebrew word for spirit is actually feminine. The christian trinity is the same, just inverted, and the female hidden. This no longer felt like a fringe theory, but one nobody could refute. It fits in semantics, phonetics, and timing. THe first notices of the word israel were around 1200 BC, but as a community already defeated. Their history ties back to a time before the Isreaelite religion formed as we know it, right in that 1400 to 900 BC time frame, at its earliest stages. The religion around 900 BC is one of the destriction of the kingdom of Israel, demolished by neighbor Assyrians, but told in story as if the people were punished for worshipping a woman: Astorath. This is not so far off from Astarte in the Phoenician religion, the local semitic population that traded all around the known world. She gave us the word for star, and is tied in many ways to Isis/Inanna/Ishtar of Greece, Egypt and the Middle East, then eventually transferred to the Mother Mary. Nobody can say the connection is impossible. If I can see it across thousands of years, I can only imagine the story was impossible to ignore back in the day.
This all suggests that there's this whole deeper, older history that's been layered over by more recent interpretations. I started finding this forgotten feminine presence in all kinds of places. Women as the first drummers, and a beautiful theory that our heart beats next to babies in the womb really were the first drumbeats, and women passed on this tradition into real drum circle roles. So many connections in seemingly unrelated places. The physical artifacts and the language examples falling in place like a sudoku puzzle I didn’t know was in front of me.
Then I start to connect it all together. What happened just before the jews left Egypt? When were Jews officially Jews? This 1400 BC time period comes straight into focus. Just a couple hundred years earlier, major change starts. 1600 BC, there was a major earthquake that wiped out the Pre-Greeks on the volcanic Island of Crete, an world with palaces and sophisticated plumbing, people that worshipped goddesses and has that Linear A script we still have not been able to read. They also had known Egyptian synchronization and trade. a hundred years later, a rogue Semitic (I saw jewish fringe warrior group) called the Hyksos, took power in Egypt with chariots and weapons from Babylon, picked up from their trade relations with literally everyone. And those chariots were invented to chart around a life size goddess statue for parades, then weaponized. For a hundred years after this, jewish people ruled Egypt. There were jewish kings in Egypt for a hundred years. Where is this in our history books? This was after thousands of years of contact and trade and friendly, and sometimes not, relations from Cananites dating back to 7,000 BC with Egypt. THIS is what soured the Egyptian/jewish relations. Once Egypt got its power back, it retaliated, hard. It kicked out the jews from their lands, and took over all the lands of Judea through military control. THIS is when we see Israel forming. THIS is when we see judaism forming. Jews become jews in the exodus, they are the people leaving Egypt, following Moses (a very Egyptian name), to the mountain tops and desert. Nobody was slaves for no reason, and this is where all that comes from. People from Canan moved to Egypt for generations when famine pushed them elsewhere, but somehow this relationship soured. This answers so many questions. There have always been rogue military sects of every religion. In my simplified understanding, this makes perfect sense. It should not define all jews, we should see this as a subgroup that did sour all relations for them in the Egyptian eyes.
Then we can look at this ancient goddesses Isis. Evidence suggests that the Roman Empire adopted and reinterpreted many of these older traditions, and may have deliberately obscured the role of the feminine. This is where I start to challenge the traditional narrative of how Christianity developed. I use linguistics to support the argument by pointing out the similarity between Amun, the Egyptian creator God and the word Amen that we use in prayers, across so many different religions. Just this raises a question of whether this common word could have much older context than we realize.
Then we can ties all this back to the idea of balance. The tradition of Easter can be seen as a celebration of the spring equinox: a time of equal day and night. The dating of it are all very sun and moon orientated, and literally caused a break in the east and west churches, known officially as “the Schism”. This moment in time represents a perfect harmony between light and dark, a yin and yang. It's this powerful metaphor for the balance between masculine and feminine energies that I am trying to reclaim.
And this is where my personal story as a mother becomes even more central. I went through this incredible transformation, moving across the country, starting over, learning to eat real food, finding increased energy and better health. It's amazing how much our bodies can do when we give them what they need. I even met my husband during this time, who was going through his own parallel transformation. This personal journey highlights this theme of reconnecting with nature, with our own intuition, and figuring things out for ourselves on our own terms.
It suggests a wisdom in reconnecting with our bodies in more intuitive way of being. This can lead to some really profound personal growth, and even societal change. So this is beyond history, this connects us to today. Those ancient ideas can connect us to the past to the challenges we face in modern life.
So far, we've been uncovering this idea of the forgotten mother and how maybe ancient traditions could help us create a more balanced world.
How does that connect to all the problems we see in modern society? That's where the author's personal experience as a mom really comes in. She argues that a lot of the issues families face today come from a disconnect from that ancient wisdom about nurturing and balance. She talks about the lack of safe spaces for kids to just play freely, the prevalence of processed foods, too much screen time. And then she brings up this pretty alarming statistic about umbilical cord blood containing over 200 harmful chemicals now. It's bleak when you think about the environment that we're bringing children into these days. But this is not all just doom and gloom. She actually offers some really practical solutions. She approaches these problems with that engineer's mindset we talked about earlier. Breaking down complex issues into smaller, ore manageable steps.
What can we do to create a more supportive environment for families?
We can redesigning our neighborhoods to prioritize walkability and free play.
Advocating for organic food to be the norm
and rethinking our whole education system to focus on practical life skills as well as intellectual development.
I am not saying we all need to go live on organic farms and homeschool our kids. My point is we need to shift our priorities as a society. We need to start valuing things like connection to nature as a shared ecosystem, looking for more ways to have community support, and hands on learning for young and old people. We all need passions and hobbies.
I believe these things are essential for raising healthy, rounded children. And the ancient wisdom gives us some of these modern solutions. We're not starting from scratch. There's so much Knowledge and experience from past cultures that we can learn from. Children had moments of initiation, and our holidays preserve so much of these seasonal celebrations without even really having to change a whole lot, but obviously taking out the materialistic aspects. When we look at the religoius side, the “real meaning of christmas” is not a christian one, it is a pre-christian idea of celebrating mother and child in the harsh of winter, when the light conquers over darkness on winter solstice.
It's about adapting those principles to our modern context. What else can those traditions teach us that we are already celebrating? And maybe we've lost something valuable in our pursuit of progress. A lot of modern advancements, while they've been beneficial in some ways, have also come at a cost to our connection with communities, nature, and even our own bodies.
I also don't shy away from talking about the complexities of relationships. This has trickled into the modern world where there is unequal expectations often placed on women in relationships, and how that imbalance can lead to a lot of stress and resentment. Women, when they're not on hormonal birth control, might subconsciously choose partners based on genetic compatibility. It makes sense biologically. It ties back to her whole exploration of the body's innate wisdom. Maybe we're overriding our natural instincts and biological processes with societal norms and technological interventions. And it started with making the self seem like something to control, with religion.
So I’ve laid out these problems. I’ve offered solutions. I shared her own personal journey. My goal in all of this is to share the voice to the past that helps us all connect to these ancient rythms and wisdom. I am calling for a return to balance: a balance between masculine and feminine energies. A balance between our modern lives and our ancient roots. And a balance between our own needs and the needs of future generations.
It seems like such a big abstract concept, but we can bring it down into more concrete actions. I emphasize the importance of recognizing our shared origins in Africa, understanding that we all come from the same place and we're all interconnected regardless of our differences. So it's about acknowledging our shared humanity and working together to create a better future for everyone. She also talks about the importance of maternal and paternal care.
Not just as a personal choice. But as a societal necessity, it's about recognizing that vital role that parents play in shaping the next generation. And providing them with the support they need to truly thrive. It goes beyond individual choices, it speaks to a larger societal responsibility.
It's about shifting our values and recognizing that investing in families and children is an investment in the future of humanity as whole. It's about building a world where everyone has the opportunity to reach their full potential. She paints a pretty hopeful picture of what that world could look like.
Organic food neighborhoods designed for play education that fosters a connection with nature. She's challenging us to dream bigger. To imagine a world that truly prioritizes well being and interconnectedness. And to remember that those ideals aren't new. They're rooted in ancient wisdom that we've somehow lost sight of along the way.
We have to believe that a better world is possible, transformation is not new, and then we know of certain actiond that can make it happen.
We have both personal responsibility and collective action. It starts with small changes in our own lives, in our own families, in our own communities. It's not about waiting for someone else to fix things, it's about taking ownership of the change we want to see. I’d love to see big changes, but there will be enough resistance that our own lives will be better spent implementing them and hoping for a grass roots recognition that changes things at the top.
We're all part of this larger system. Our choices, both individual and collective have ripple effects. We vote with the food on our fork, on the places we pay admittance to, the churches we support. It's about understanding that our destinies are really intertwined. Creating a sustainable and just future requires a shift in consciousness. It's about remembering that we're all connected. We are all made of stardust. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, so we are all made of the same recycled material that circulates in our solar system.
And we have a responsibility to care for each other and the planet that sustains us. The power of stories like this is they bring hope, a sense of direction and optimism. They remind us that even in the face of what seems like these insurmountable obstacles, there's always hope. There's always the potential for change, there's always a possibility of creating a better world.
This is a great place to pause for a moment to reflect on everything we've discussed so far. Take a deep breath. We've been on quite a journey with reclaiming the mother. We have been uncovering these hidden histories, exploring this power of the ancient stories and looking at all the challenges that families face today. It all connects.
And it's not just the content, it's like her voice, her passion for these issues that really shines through. It's contagious, honestly. I find myself questioning things I never even thought to question before. That's a sign of a truly thought provoking book, isn't it?
It's not about, simply accepting the author's perspective, but really engaging with the ideas and seeing where they lead you.
What's the essence of what this book is trying to convey? I think at its core, it's really about recognizing the power of choice. We have a choice. We can choose to continue down this path of imbalance and disconnection, or we can choose to reclaim this forgotten wisdom and create a more sustainable, nurturing future for ourselves and for generations to come. It's like we're on a fork in the road. That choice really starts with each of us, with the decisions that we make every day in our own lives, how we raise our children, how we treat each other, how we interact with the natural world (ie. our home). It all matters. We're not just these isolated individuals. We're part of this larger web of life. It's easy to feel overwhelmed by all the problems that she talks about, but I also feel this sense of hope. Maybe we really can make a difference if we choose to act. I think that's the beauty of knowledge. It can be empowering rather than paralyzing. It gives us the tools we need to understand the challenges we face. And to envision alternative ways of being. This kind of change requires collective action, more than any individual can do alone. We can, it is just a lot. But we can start the work so our kids don’t have to question EVERYTHING, yet develop that questioning mindset. It's about shifting our collective consciousness, re-evaluating our priorities as a society, and supporting structures that nurture families and children.
This could be our world: organic food neighborhoods designed for play education that fosters a connection with nature. Let’s dream bigger, to imagine a world that truly prioritizes well being and interconnectedness, and to remember that those ideals aren't new. They're rooted in this ancient wisdom that we've lost sight of along the way.
Could reconnecting with this concept of the Divine Equilibrium, this ancient wisdom that's been buried for so long, could that be the key to unlocking a more harmonious and sustainable future? These are complex times. Keep exploring, keep questioning, and keep seeking those hidden connections that can lead us toward a more balanced and beautiful world.
Finding Our Compass
Have you ever stopped to wonder why, in the Christian Trinity, we have the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—but no Mother? This seemingly simple question opens the door to a fascinating journey through history, language, and cultural evolution in the groundbreaking story by an engineer-turned-mother who brings both analytical precision and nurturing wisdom to her work, this book challenges us to reconsider the foundations of our modern world and envisions a path toward greater balance.
Hidden in Plain Sight
One of the most compelling aspects of the book is the author's exploration of linguistic evidence suggesting that goddess figures haven't disappeared completely—they've been hidden in plain sight. Consider the name "Israel," which the author boldly suggests might encode references to Isis (the Egyptian mother goddess), Ra (the sun god child), and El (the Canaanite father god). A forgotten holy family embedded in the name of a nation central to Western religious tradition.
Similarly, she traces connections between "East" and "Easter" to the Egyptian goddess Isis (spelled "ist" and pronounced "eest"). These aren't random coincidences but data points revealing deliberate cultural reorientation away from balance toward hierarchy.
As one reviewer noted, "It's like she's approaching history like one big puzzle, using her engineering background to find connections and patterns."
The Silenced Voices of History
The book draws powerful parallels to the Rosetta Stone, which finally unlocked Egyptian hieroglyphics after nearly two thousand years of silence. Before Jean-François Champollion deciphered it in 1822, an entire civilization's voice had been lost to time.
How many other voices remain silent? The Minoan Linear A script still can't be read. What insights about ancient goddess traditions might be locked in those undeciphered symbols?
The author traces ancient trade routes through artifacts like blue beads dating back to 2000 BCE, showing how these small objects reveal connections between cultures across vast distances. Meanwhile, European place names derived from goddesses (including Europa itself) suggest deeper, older histories beneath current interpretations.
Balance as the Forgotten Compass
At its heart, this book is about reclaiming balance—between masculine and feminine energies, between human needs and ecological health, between present desires and future wellbeing.
The author connects Easter to the vernal equinox—equal hours of day and night, representing perfect harmony between light and dark. This serves as a powerful metaphor for the balance between masculine and feminine that she believes we've lost.
But this isn't just abstract philosophy. The author's personal transformation through changing her diet led to increased energy and better health, coinciding with meeting her husband who was on a similar journey of rediscovery. Their shared experiences with natural childbirth in a medical system unprepared for uncomplicated deliveries sparked deeper questioning about how modern systems often work against natural processes.
From Ancient Wisdom to Modern Solutions
What makes this book truly remarkable is how it connects historical insights to contemporary challenges. The author doesn't shy away from alarming realities—like umbilical cord blood now containing over 200 harmful chemicals—but she approaches these problems with an engineer's mindset, breaking complex issues into manageable steps.
Her vision for a more balanced future includes practical solutions:
Redesigning neighborhoods to prioritize walkability and free play
Making organic food the norm rather than a luxury
Rethinking education to focus on practical life skills and connection with nature
Creating work structures that accommodate the realities of parenthood
Fostering intergenerational connections instead of age segregation
These aren't utopian fantasies but necessary adaptations aligned with what we now understand about child development, ecological health, and human flourishing.
A Call to Remember
"The Forgotten Compass" isn't about blame or returning to some idealized past. Instead, it questions our collective thinking and invites us to remember what our bodies, our words, and our oldest traditions already know.
As the author writes, "Let's stop the sleepwalk. Let's help children start with as blank a slate as possible. The world will be trouble enough; let's not burden them with toxins and exploitation we've created."
Despite addressing difficult topics, the book offers a fundamentally hopeful message: by reconnecting with forgotten wisdom, we can create a more sustainable, nurturing future. The compass that once guided human societies hasn't disappeared—it's waiting to be remembered, reclaimed, restored to its rightful place in our collective navigation.
Perhaps the most powerful question the book leaves us with is this: Could reconnecting with the divine feminine—this ancient wisdom that's been buried for so long—be the key to unlocking a more harmonious and sustainable future?
It's certainly something worth thinking about as we navigate these complex times.
The Story Behind "The Forgotten Compass": My Journey from Engineer to Seeker
It began with food.
At thirty, I gave myself a birthday present—a master cleanse program that taught me how to prepare real meals: meat, vegetables, smoothies without added sugars. A simple coupon and a whim led to revolution. My energy soared. The stubborn fat around my belly—resistant even to my engineer's methodical workout regimen—finally surrendered.
I had no idea this was just the first step on a journey that would lead me from circuit boards to childbirth, from systems analysis to linguistic archaeology, from puzzling over technical problems to questioning the very foundations of how we organize our society.
The Question That Started Everything
Standing in a hospital room after giving birth to my first child—an experience where doctors expressed shock at witnessing an uncomplicated natural delivery without interventions—I began to wonder: Why is our medical system so unprepared for the normal? Why are processes that have sustained humanity for millennia now treated as medical emergencies?
The doctors said they never see a natural uncomplicated birth with no intervention at all, not even in training. They are trained for problems, not wellness. Every nurse who checked on me was visibly shocked by what they witnessed: minimal blood loss, no swelling, no tearing. I asked how often they saw this. Their response stunned me: "We have no idea. We've never seen any different."
That moment planted a seed. As an engineer, I'm trained to identify patterns, to simplify problem statements, to map routes to solutions. I began to apply this analytical mindset to the disconnections I was experiencing between natural processes and modern systems.
Finding the Missing Mother
One night, staring at my sleeping infant, a question bubbled up from somewhere deep within me: Where is the mother in our dominant cultural narratives? We have Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—but where is the divine feminine in this equation? Even Mary, though revered, stands outside the core Trinity.
This seemingly simple question led me down a rabbit hole of linguistic research, historical analysis, and cultural detective work. I began to see patterns hiding in plain sight:
The name Israel: Is-Ra-El. Could this encode references to Isis (the Egyptian mother goddess), Ra (the sun god child), and El (the Canaanite father god)—a forgotten holy family embedded in the name itself?
The word Easter: Connected to "East," which derives from "Eest," spelled "ist" in Egyptian—the same root as the Greek "Isis." She was the goddess of the rising sun, of dawn, of beginnings.
These weren't random coincidences but data points revealing a systematic reorientation of human understanding away from balance toward hierarchy, away from cycles toward linear progression, away from children's needs toward conquest and accumulation.
The Body Remembers
During my second pregnancy, I discovered "Spinning Babies," which taught me about proper posture and visualizing my belly button as a flashlight pointing toward the ground. This simple guidance—barely mentioned in conventional prenatal care—fundamentally altered my comfort and my baby's position.
I realized our bodies contain wisdom our rational minds can't directly access. The microbiome governing our gut health, mood, and immunity has been linked to everything from autism to anxiety. Yet this internal ecosystem is systematically disturbed by modern life—pesticides, processed foods, chronic stress.
No child is born today with a blank slate. On average, umbilical cord blood shows over 200 harmful chemicals in that tiny developing body. We know better. Science knows better. Why do we hesitate to scream this out loud?
The Missing Village
Everything about bringing our babies home was hard. Not because they were difficult children, but because society is not structured to support parents.
My relationship with my husband isn't perfect. Like anything worthwhile, sometimes it feels it would be easier to be alone—until I remember the children. Partnership means sacrifice, renegotiation, constant balancing. We've learned that we must let each other continue to grow, finding both novelty and security in our connection.
Six months into parenthood, my husband was sleeping better, while I still woke if a child stirred. After months of writing this book in the middle of the night—the only quiet time available—I learned something startling: testosterone plummets with chronic sleep deprivation. When I finally saw a naturopath, I discovered I was remarkably healthy except for off-the-charts low testosterone. "I've never seen a parent of young children with normal levels," she told me.
HOW DO WE NOT KNOW THIS? This single piece of information helped me develop compassion for myself, recognizing what felt like depression was my body's rational response to sleep disruption.
As psychologist Esther Perel brilliantly observes, "Today, we turn to one person to provide what an entire village once did." The weight of this impossible expectation crushes relationships beneath it.
Reclaiming the Compass
I want our children to know more plants than Pokémon. On neighborhood walks, I introduce my little ones to elder nature-lovers who can identify every bird by its call, who know which tree branches smell sweetest when broken. I want us to reclaim the folk names and stories—that elderberry's hollow stems made musical flutes for generations, that its berries offer better cold medicine than most pharmaceuticals.
The plant people have always been resistance people. They remember that hemp was used to write the Bill of Rights before becoming demonized. They know that the "witches" burned were often the village healers whose plant knowledge threatened ecclesiastical authority.
Consider the word "marshmallow"—preserving the memory of an Egyptian plant medicine, Althaea officinalis, whose roots were boiled to create a remedy for sore throats. Now most people know only the puffy white confection made of sugar and gelatin—a shell of what it once was. This pattern repeats throughout our culture: Easter chocolate bunnies replacing spring fertility symbols. Halloween candy replacing harvest celebrations and remembering ancestors. Christmas cookies replacing winter community gathering—our grandmas becoming the unwitting drug dealers of sugar.
The Path Forward
If we put children first today, everything would change:
Organic food would be standard, not luxury—it would be "food," or "food with sprayed chemicals"
Neighborhoods would enable free play and community connection
Education would foster practical skills and nature connection
Work structures would accommodate the realities of parenthood
Healthcare would prevent problems rather than manage symptoms
These aren't utopian fantasies but necessary adaptations aligned with what we now understand about child development, ecological health, and human flourishing.
The compass that once guided human societies hasn't disappeared—it's waiting to be remembered, reclaimed, restored. East remains where it always was—the direction of dawn, of renewal, of beginning again with lessons learned from the past.
My children play in our backyard, digging in soil I've tested for toxins, eating berries from bushes I've planted with my own hands. My husband prepares dinner—we take turns cleaning, truly nourishing each other, knowing we each have passions and needs beyond the strict lines society places around us.
This story isn't just for feminists. It's for EVERYONE responsible for raising the next generation. The compass is within us. It has always pointed east, toward the rising sun, toward renewal, toward the possibility of beginning again with greater wisdom than before.
I never expected, as an engineer, to find myself investigating linguistic patterns in ancient place names or testing soils for organic gardening. But the most complex puzzle I've ever encountered is how we lost our way—and how we might find our bearings again by putting children first.
