What Ixchel Taught Us

There is something about standing in front of Ixchel that feels strangely familiar, even if you have never heard her name before. Maybe it is because mothers know her already. Not intellectually or historically, but somewhere deeper than that.

Before our retreat to Isla Mujeres, I knew the facts about Ixchel. I knew she was the ancient Maya goddess associated with fertility, childbirth, medicine, healing, the moon, and weaving. Women would travel by canoe from across the Yucatán to visit her temples and ask for blessings for pregnancy, safe births, healing, and guidance. She was considered a protector of women and midwives, a keeper of wisdom that belonged specifically to women. I knew all of that, but I don’t think I understood her until I stood where so many women had stood before us.

The temple itself felt quiet. Not physically quiet, because Isla is never completely quiet. There is always wind and birds and water moving somewhere nearby. But the energy felt quiet. Ancient. Patient. Like it had been waiting.

For some of us, Ixchel’s impact was immediate. Julie began crying almost as soon as we arrived at the temple. There wasn’t one single reason for it. It felt bigger than that. Years of surviving her divorce, years of healing her body, years of rebuilding herself after life became something she never planned for. Watching her stand there, it felt like Ixchel was holding up a mirror and saying, look at everything you survived to become this version of yourself. Sometimes strength doesn’t feel powerful while you are living it. Sometimes you only recognize it when you stop running long enough to look back.

For other moms, Ixchel arrived later. Sicari did not have some huge emotional moment at the temple, at least not one that any of us could see. Her Ixchel moment came later when she realized she already carried the thing she had been searching for outside of herself. She returned home and completed her breathwork certification after years of wanting to do it, and then during our retreat in Isla she taught her first practice session. I remember watching her and thinking that this is what women have always done. One woman remembers who she is, and then she reminds another woman who she is.

The ancient Maya associated Ixchel not only with birth but with medicine and healing. She was the goddess women prayed to during transitions, during pregnancy, birth, illness, change, and becoming. Maybe that is because women are constantly becoming. We are never staying still for very long, and maybe motherhood is one of the biggest transformations of all.

My experience with Ixchel happened after I came home. At first I thought maybe nothing had happened for me. The retreat was beautiful, the women were incredible, and the island felt magical, but I did not have some giant emotional release standing at the temple. Then a few days later I noticed something had shifted. Clarity arrived quietly, almost like remembering something I had forgotten. I realized I knew exactly who I was again. Not who I was before becoming a mother and not who I was supposed to be according to anyone else. Me.

Somewhere along the way motherhood had blurred those lines for me. Not because motherhood took my identity away, but because motherhood asks so much of us that eventually we stop asking ourselves the same questions. What do I want? What excites me? Who am I becoming now? The needs of everyone else become louder than our own voice. Standing in front of Ixchel did not give me a new identity. It gave me permission to remember the one that was already there.

One of the things I love most about Ixchel is that the Maya understood her as more than one thing at once. She was associated with birth and destruction, with nurturing and fierce protection, with medicine and storms. Some depictions show her as a young woman while others show her as an older woman carrying the wisdom of many lives. The Maya did not see these as contradictions. They saw them as wholeness.

And maybe that’s what Ixchel taught me. I am more than just contradictions - I am Whole.

There is another piece of Maya history that I think many spiritually connected mothers feel in their bodies before they ever learn it with their minds. While Maya society was complex and varied across regions and time periods, women often held important roles in spiritual life, healing practices, family lineage, trade, and community leadership. Goddesses were not side characters in their stories. Female divinity was woven directly into their understanding of life itself.

For many of us raised in modern culture, that feels strangely familiar and strangely foreign at the same time. Familiar because somewhere deep down many women remember that they were never meant to live completely disconnected from intuition, community, ritual, nature, and the wisdom of other women. Foreign because so many of us were raised to believe our value comes primarily from productivity, self-sacrifice, and how well we care for everyone else before ourselves.

Standing in a place where women had been making pilgrimages for generations to honor a goddess of healing, birth, wisdom, and transformation felt like remembering an older story about womanhood. Not a perfect society and not a fantasy, but a different remembering. One where feminine wisdom was not something to hide or apologize for, where motherhood and spirituality were not separate things, and where intuition was considered knowledge.

I wonder if that is part of why so many of us felt something on the island that was difficult to explain. Maybe some part of us recognized it. Maybe some part of us remembered.

Because mothers are rarely allowed to be whole. We are expected to be endlessly giving but not angry, soft but not powerful, selfless but not lost, nurturing but never exhausted. Ixchel reminds us that women were never meant to fit into one version of ourselves. We are allowed to be creators and healers, teachers and protectors, women rebuilding ourselves after loss and women beginning something new. We are allowed to remember our own voice after years of hearing everyone else’s first.

Maybe that is why women traveled for miles across the ocean to reach her temple centuries ago. Not because she gave women something they did not already possess, but because she reminded them what was already theirs.

I think that is what happened to us on Isla Mujeres. Ixchel met each of us exactly where we were. For Julie, she brought recognition. For Sicari, she brought courage. For me, she brought clarity. Different gifts, but perhaps the same reminder.

Maybe Ixchel was never about giving women power at all.

Maybe she was always about helping women remember they had it.