Mortification

by Fay Loomis

Image credit: Uliana Kopanytsia on Unsplash

I made an apricot pie for a gathering. It was a flop. I slipped into shame, humiliation, embarrassment, because it wasn’t perfect, and I hadn’t brought pleasure to the people who had come together to celebrate community. I was horrified when I cut into the pie. It was a soggy mess. Not that anyone said anything. They just didn’t eat it.

I had been contemplating the pleasure of making this pie with a large basket of apricots I had bought earlier in the week. I started with the intention of buying a small basket for $6, then realized I could buy a larger one, filled with considerably more fruit, for $13. I envisioned taking a mouth-watering pie to the Saturday group.

On the day of the pie making, I mixed up the filling and put it into the crust. I could see there was room for plenty more apricots, so I kept happily slicing and adding more layers. What I didn’t think about was adding more flour and sugar. Hence, the apricot soup.

I had intended to bring the pie back home, add the thickening ingredients, and bake again. But, in the three trips to my car and the desperate need to get into the bathroom and pee, I forgot the pie. Oh, my.

The slip began to slide into a spiral, which fed into dreams of death in the following days. Added to that was my anxiety about speaking at an upcoming town board meeting where I could meet criticism, rejection, and even mortal wounding.

The fact of the matter is, I was wounded as a child and have been struggling to find my way from worthlessness to worthiness ever since. It isn’t surprising that I was raised by parents who knew little self-love. Same-old, same-old for many of us.

Fortunately, a friend had sent me an audiobook, Warming the Stone Child, by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola-Estes, which had been waiting for me to carve out time to listen to it. The disk, and my friend, called to me. Clearly, the time of waiting was over. As dusk settled in, I sat on my porch and listened to this intriguing tape.

This is what I heard: when we feel abandoned and unmothered, we must mother ourselves. We must find the warmth and light of intuition, know that we are a beautiful human being of great value.

Later that week, I was discussing with therapist, Dr. Stephen Larsen, about my discombobulated feelings that were gripping me and my disgust at not being able to pull myself from their claws. He said many things to help me work my way out of the den of darkness. One of those was the word “mortification.” 

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, mortification means: 1) the subjection and denial of bodily passions and appetites by abstinence or self-inflicted pain or discomfort; 2) necrosis, gangrene; 3) a: a sense of humiliation and shame caused by something that wounds one's pride or self-respect, b: the cause of such humiliation or shame. It comes from the Latin root mort-, mors or death.

I connected what Larsen said with Dr. Estes’ words about how when we feel unmothered, we feel mortified, want to become invisible, and wish to die.

Lest there be any doubt, the word “necrosis” makes the death image even stronger. It comes from the Greek word nekroun, to make dead and nekros, dead body.

One of the ways to heal from shame is to develop humility and to engender the ability to accept and love oneself.

Both Larsen and Estes look at the good news. Larsen suggests the death of old thoughts, feelings, and patterns; Estes points to fanning the divine spark of intuitive knowing. In both cases, death brings birth and new life in an ever-upward spiral.

So, I give thanks for mortification, that I might die daily, as St. Paul said, to be born ever anew. Even if I have to ruin a few more pies.

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Fay Loomis

Fay L. Loomis leads a quiet life in the woods in Kerhonkson, New York, and is a member of the Stone Ridge Library Writers and the Rat's Ass Review workshop. Her poetry and prose appear in numerous publications, including five poetry anthologies. Fay is the author of three chapbooks: Sunlit Wildness (Origami Poems Project, 2024, Living the Verb (Cyberwit, 2025) and forthcoming Fragments of Myself (Porkbelly Press). She is a Pushcart Prize nominee.