Healing the Mother Wound: Returning to Pakistan, the Mother Land
I recently visited the place I was born and had high expectations for what I thought would happen. Here's the reality.
I closed out 2022 by returning to the motherland on a trip with my mother to stay with her mother in the womb of where it all began: the motherland. At the core of it, there’s no way to avoid the gaping center that is the Mother Wound.
A BRIEF HISTORY & BACKSTORY of the MOTHER LINEAGE
I was born in the middle of the night on a fortuitous Wednesday in April of 1989, merely months before the Berlin Wall fell (probably not related, but citing just in case…) I was born in a busy hospital on a busy street in the heart of one of the most chaotic busiest cities I’ve ever witnessed in my life: Karachi, Pakistan.
When I was less than a year old, my parents left Karachi and chose to relocate our small family to start a new life abroad, hoping to build a better future for their children. Like many great immigrant stories start, my parents followed where my dad’s engineering degree and charming personality got him jobs.
First we went to Cyprus, a small island on the Mediterranean sea known for delicious halloumi cheese. After a couple years, we then relocated to Toronto, Canada known for free health care and also low-key racism. Then, after a few more years, we landed in South Carolina, known for overt history of racism. Eventually, we landed in northern Virginia, where we’ve been for the longest amount of time (going 20+ years strong) and where my family still lives, known for beltway traffic outside of the nation’s capital (where concentrated power is deeply rooted in a history of racism!) Those are all the places we grew up in looking for where to put roots down to start our small but mighty Khan Family Empire.
While we were in Karachi this past December, my dad sat with me in my grandmother’s house and told me that they knew they had to leave Pakistan for the sake of their kids. Pakistan is a really tough place to live, to grow up, to breathe the air (currently ranked as the #1 city with maximum pollution, according to the US Air Quality Index).
It’s hard to say how things got so bad in a country that once had so much hope. Perhaps we were doomed to endure this struggle seeing as we were born out of struggle. After a gruesome genocide resulting from the partition of the area now known as Pakistan from India in 1947, evoked by a colonial British rule that carelessly left millions to duke it out to the death, there was a lot of sorrow woven into our history.
Many Muslims from various parts of India chose to leave their roots and relocate to Pakistan, a new country “dedicated” to Muslims. They estimate that 14-18 million people relocated suddenly with little warning. Among those include my family – my dad’s side coming from outside Bombay, leaving behind land investments lost to the partition, and my mom’s side coming from Lucknow, a journey that I don’t know too much about.
The founder of our country, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, who led the All-India Muslim League through the creation of Pakistan, died only one year into the new nation’s life – in a deeply spooky ironic twist on September 11th, 1948. (You can’t make this shit up, people!!!! Life is a wild mystery.) Perhaps, his death marks the start of a rapid downward spiral. Pakistan’s leadership became increasingly more conservative, extremist-leaning Muslim, and incredibly corrupt – with rule of law merely a formality that could easily be forgotten with a handsome bribe. This correlated with Pakistan’s economy and quality of life degraded over the years, now leading to our current reality where recent reports confirm that nearly 78% of the entire country lives in poverty. For context, that is absurdly high compared to the poverty rate in the U.S. which is estimated to be 14% as of 2022.
My parents decided it was time to leave Pakistan after they got robbed at gunpoint, a story that is unfortunately very common amongst immigrants from that time. There’s a VICE Guide to Karachi made in 2016 in which they name the city as one of the “most violent” in the world. They cite that “in 2011 more than 3x as many people were killed in Karachi than the number of people killed in American drone strikes in the tribal areas.”
It's incredibly hard to grapple with the concept of the place that my entire family comes from is one of the most dangerous places in the world. That’s where my sweet dadi (Urdu for father’s mother) prayed for us every day and let us eat mangos and dance on the roof as children. That’s where my sweet parents fell in love and decided to start the adventure of life together. That’s where many of my sweet cousins still live and raise their children. Like anywhere, it’s safe as long as you stay in the places you’re meant to be in.
That’s why visiting Karachi can get pretty boring – it's hard to go out and explore when my mom keeps warning me I’ll get kidnapped if I do.
I remember visiting Karachi with my family in 2007, the same year I graduated high school, when the assassination of Benazir Bhutto occurred. The entire city was put on lockdown out of fear of extreme rioting. We were there for my cousin’s wedding, and I remember driving to her house for the engagement party. It’s the only time I’ve ever seen the streets of Karachi entirely empty – that is such a rare site in one of the most diverse and over-populated cities in Pakistan. It was eerie. At night we could hear sounds that sounded like gun shots, or maybe fireworks, and we just stayed put. That’s the extent of my exposure to the violence cited above. My family always managed to keep us safe.
The way you survive living in Pakistan, from what I’ve gathered, is having money and living in a safety bubble. The bubble is for our physical safety, but it’s restrictive and, when I was visiting, left little room for the excitement of daily life. In a lot of ways, that’s how I felt growing up – under the strict grip my mother had on controlling how we were raised. I couldn’t appreciate why she chose to parent like that at the time because I didn’t have this historical context or even an understanding of our inherited conditions. I’m still learning to piece it all together – hence this essay.
EXAMINING INHERITED CONDITIONS through the LENS of ASTROLOGY
As a student of astrology, I recently learned that certain natal planetary aspects can be passed down through the lineage. For example, you can look at the birth charts of different members of your family to see if there’s an overlap with certain planetary placements or signs.
I looked up my mother’s birth chart and her mother’s birth chart and compared it to my birth chart and, as it turns out, we all have Mars in Gemini. That means when each of us was born, the planet Mars was in the part of the sky known as Gemini. This is fascinating as I learned this while Mars is in Gemini at the present time, in fact just recently finished up a retrograde, which only happens every two or so years – meaning this came to light in a time of incredible synchronicity and overlap. How special and spiritual.
Mars is the planet that rules how we use our energy. Action is a Mars word. This can include: fighting, sex, anger, flirting, desire, making art, putting oneself out there for an opportunity, conflict. In many ways, Mars speaks to our animal instincts – the most primitive lizard parts of our brains.
It’s fascinating to have shared the most primitive planet with my direct female lineage. I consider both my mother and grandmother to be conflict avoidant, a trait many women from past generations inherited around the world – taught to be “polite” and “accommodating” to the male-dominated world around them.
Perhaps that is the Gemini influence. Gemini, an air sign, rules communication and the exciting, rapid-pace exchange of ideas. Gemini is a mutable sign of the zodiac, suggesting that with Mars here, we have an inherent adaptability to our surroundings – such as making ourselves small to fit into the confined spaces we were given, which, again, is a common experience many women can relate to.
Mars in Gemini suggests a gift creating thinking, self-driven innovation, and great communicators. I can see this for our lineage. I’m a comedian and a writer, milking this gift of gab for all its worth. My mother spoke English so well (perfectionist Libra vibes!) it gave her opportunities and opened doors to get great jobs, study abroad in America, and mingle with professional successful young folk, where she eventually met and married my dad. And my grandmother, who I don’t know so much about her younger life, managed to turn a lot of tragedy and loss into successful abundant gain. After her first husband died when my mom was only 3, she re-married to my grandfather who was highly caring, successful, and helped change the trajectory of my family’s life. There was surely an innate charisma that my grandmother must’ve used to her advantage.
Mars in Gemini also feels inherently chaotic to me. This placement speaks to having a lot of nervous, anxious energy, which can leave us feeling mentally drained and stressed. I have Mars in the 5th house of creativity and romance. I’ve found that I have a certain anxiety around writing, which is something I’ve chosen to pursue artistically since I was young. I also feel a lot of anxiety about dating, which falls into this house, dreading almost every first date ever and then also falling in love too quickly. This seems to be inextricably linked to the trauma around abandonment I inherited through my mother’s lineage. This speaks to that sense of loss that I didn’t experience directly, but that was coded into my DNA before I was even born. The kind of trauma the two matriarchs in my family didn’t have the resources to even process, but for me, the American-raised third generation, I’ve finally found the space and tools to even confront.
Now, what I find truly fascinating is that – again, a spooky-ass synchronicity! – we also share this placement with the astrological birth chart of the United States of America (according to the birth time of July 4th, 1776 at 5:10pm).
The more I reflect on it, the more I feel that the U.S. inherently contains all the same chaotic traits of Mars in Gemini. As a country, I think this clearly speaks to the melting pot of so many immigrants – Mars representing the challenging choice to immigrate, Gemini representing the swirling of many different languages and cultures at once. And just like my mother’s lineage has experienced, the downfall is a certain stress and trauma. These same immigrants who move to this country and make it better are treated poorly, face one of the most challenging and broken immigration systems in the world, lack basic rights, and are exploited for cheap labor – scraping to get by.
Not to overwhelm my readers, but to indulge the constant chip on my shoulder begging me to prove myself at every turn, if you wanted to take this astrological experiment a step deeper: one could look at the conditions of Mars in Gemini in each of these birth chart. Is their Mars challenged by hard aspects or soothed by soft aspects?
Let me explain. We all usually have a mix of hard and soft aspects in our birth charts. Hard aspects speak to the aspects of our lives we struggle with the most. These include squares or oppositions, making rectangular shaped geometric lines in the sky between the placements of the planets at your birth. An example of hard aspects could be your Sun squares your Moon, and you are constantly frustrated by your ability to express your emotions.
Soft aspects speak to the areas of our lives we seem to have blessings, luck, and a little more auspicious help from the universe. Life can’t be all bad! These include sextiles or trines, making more triangular shaped geometric lines in the sky between your birth planets. An example of a soft aspect could be your Venus sextiles your ascendant (the part of the sky rising over the horizon when you were born), giving you an attractive easy-going vibe that draws pleasure and connection in to you with ease.
In the birth charts of my mother, my grandmother, and my current home country (the U.S.) each Mars in Gemini is challenged with hard aspects. My mom’s Mars faces a square to Pluto, the toughest planets in the sky, duking it out over power struggles. Makes sense for why she was always quick to yell at me when I left my shoes out and didn’t put them away in the closet, huh? My grandmother’s Mars is in a difficult aspect to Saturn, the other toughest planet in the sky governing restrictions. This makes sense as a woman who dealt with incredible repression as a widow and single mom in her 20s with two daughters in 1950s era Pakistan, facing a deep sense of shame I can only imagine to understand. The U.S.’s Mars is in a square to Neptune, a planet that if in a poor condition can lead to great illusions. And that is a true experience of America: the immigrant dream and succeeding can sometimes be an illusion, while the reality of it is a hard and long journey that few will succeed through.
In contrast, my Mars only faces soft conditions, with a helpful sextile to my Sun, Venus, and Mercury in Aries – helping me speak my truth. It’s not that I don’t have other difficult conditions in my birth chart (don’t get me started on my Moon opposing Saturn and Neptune), but in this particular context of looking at this inherited Mars in Gemini pattern, I am the lucky one.
This makes sense to me. I didn’t grow up in pre-partition India, or post-partition Pakistan, or the U.S. during the early years of genocide, slavery, and deep racism. I got to grow up in the U.S. in the 90s through the early aughts, a time that wasn’t perfect but was definitely better than the times faced before. I am better off because of the struggles of my ancestors. Yes, I inherited their pain, but I also inherited their luck – and the luck they built me with the hard work of starting over again and yet again. I am fortunate to get to live out my life as an American. I don’t see any other way I could’ve turned out to be this weird, queer, artist and woman of color speaking my truth on stage without this help.
WHAT I WAS HOPING FOR WHEN I WENT TO PAKISTAN
I don’t know exactly what I was expecting or hoping would happen when I went to Pakistan on this recent trip, but on some level deep-down I was hoping it would be illuminating and healing. I thought if I could see where I come from, where my mother comes from, where my grandmother comes from I could somehow understand all of us better and heal the deep trauma in our lineage so we can move forward with strength.
I was hoping returning to Pakistan would heal me – so I no longer must carry this abandonment wound in my chest for my mother and her mother. So I no longer have trouble with dating, attracting unavailable partners who are afraid to commit to a long-term relationship with me, recreating a pattern of emotionally unavailability and criticism that I experienced with my mother early on. All while I’m only accelerating through the non-stop passage of time from my early 30s to my mid 30s and the biological window that would allow me to start my own family is very apparently: Right. Here. Ticking. Away.
But, like literally all of life itself, things didn’t go according to plan. There weren’t really any mystical insights. I spent a lot of time bored – trapped at my grandmother’s house. I hung out with my cousins and had a lot of fun with them. When they were busy, I felt so utterly bored. I was bored by my grandmother’s surface level politeness and my family’s general emotional repressed, a learned-behavior to deal with all the trauma that’s too much to face. I found reprieve hiding in a study upstairs, reading books, journaling, listening to podcasts, whatsapp messaging my friends.
Truthfully, I mostly spent the time reflecting on a rift that occurred with someone who I was dating before I left, a relationship that eerily lasted the entirety of the Mars Retrograde from October 2022 to January 2023. Ironically, dealing with my own Mother Wound right then and there in my Grandmother’s house in the Motherland – my pattern of connecting with partners who aren’t emotionally available for the commitment and intimacy I crave, the abandonment hitting in a deep, familiar, centuries-long way.
Karachi was challenging and normal in all the ways everyday life is. Some days were fun, some days were boring. I got sick a lot. Food poisoning is easy to get there, if you’re looking for a quick way to lose weight! One day, I accidentally ate a yogurt that was made at a biryani place in town, mixed with tap water, which will always get you sick if you’re not from there. In my last few days there, I caught strep throat and spent the entire 20+ hours of travel back to the US trying to breathe through my nose and tend to my sore throat.
In the recent weeks since getting back to my home in America, I wasn’t sure if my trip to the Motherland was healing or deeply spiritual in the ways I hoped it would be. I wasn’t sure if it led to the rapid healing I wanted so I could fix up all my old wounds and be able to love in a way that didn’t hurt anymore.
When I came back to New York finally, I met up with my TBD boyfriend where we had our official break up conversation. Things weren’t working out. We both really care about each other, but ultimately he’s not ready for the kind of relationship I’m ready for right now. Despite the sadness and the many tears I shed, it was one of the most mature break ups I’ve ever experienced in my life. I found this newfound respect and admiration for him, for the way he showed tender care for me even while he was letting me down. Maybe we will actually be friends one day. That’s the first time I really meant it when I said that to an ex-lover.
In a way, maybe that was the healing I needed – perhaps that we all needed. Maybe in every day attempting to navigate the hard situations of life with more maturity than we could muster the day before, with more resources than the generation had before us. Maybe this is the inter-generational healing work that is the most practical, conducive, and realistic.
Now that I’ve had more time to reflect, I see that’s the healing I actually needed and that I actually got in Pakistan. Not one huge overhaul that would fix our lineage in the snap of my fingers so I could learn to love without fear of pain and have a baby before 35. Rather, I saw the patterns of our inherited conditions play out slowly every single day. That is the reality of living life – our patterns play out daily in front of us, largely unconsciously. All we can do is try our best to observe, try our best to heal, and slowly…eventually…one day, we get better and better. That’s what we can pass on the next generation. Make the world a slightly better place than we found it. At least that’s my interpretation as of right now. Here’s to trying :)
