Today I celebrate the birthday of my daughter, Almudena.
And in some way, I celebrate my own birthday too—the day I became a mother through my body.
Her name carries a story of its own. Our Lady of Almudena is the patroness of Madrid, the city of her birth, and one of Spain’s beloved images of the Black Madonna. Almudena was born in San Lorenzo de El Escorial, a place deeply connected to King Philip II of Spain, who commissioned its magnificent royal monastery. Interestingly, the name Philip comes from the ancient Greek Philippos, meaning “lover of horses,” a beautiful connection to the path Almudena would eventually embrace, as her love for horses became one of the deepest expressions of her devotion and sacred service.
I believe that the places we choose to be born carry sacred codes of remembrance, healing, and soul purpose. The land, its history, its names, and the stories woven into it become part of the sacred geography of our incarnation. Sometimes these mysteries reveal themselves only as our lives unfold, and we begin to recognize how the places that welcomed our first breath were already whispering something about the path our soul had come to walk.
The name Almudena carries within it the memory of ancient Madrid. Rooted in the Arabic al-mudayna, meaning “the little fortified city,” it evokes the walls of the old citadel, where, according to Marian tradition, an image of the Divine Mother lay concealed for centuries until her rediscovery. In this sacred quarter, a mosque once stood where the original Church of Santa María de la Almudena would later rise, while the present cathedral stands nearby, bearing witness to the meeting of cultures, faiths, and centuries of devotion. Beneath the ancient city, hidden channels once carried the waters that sustained Madrid, giving this landscape another layer of mystery. There is something profoundly poetic in this meeting of the Divine Mother, the fortified sanctuary, and the unseen waters of life: an invitation to remember that what is most sacred often dwells beneath the visible world, quietly awaiting its moment of revelation.
Motherhood has always been sacred to me, and yet physical motherhood was never something I felt I needed in order to feel complete as a woman.
Long before I gave birth, I knew myself as Mother.
I mothered myself.
I mothered my creations.
I mothered my animals, my friendships, my family, my dreams.
I understood Mother as something larger than biology: a primordial capacity within the feminine to hold, nourish, protect, gestate, create, and bring life into form.
And then Almudena came.
And something within me opened that I could never have known before her.
My body became a doorway through which another life entered this world. I experienced the mystery of carrying another being within me, of giving birth, and of recognizing that this soul who had come through me was never mine to possess.
That understanding has perhaps been one of the deepest teachings of motherhood for me.
Our children come through us, but they come carrying their own soul.
And so much of my journey as Almudena’s mother has been about learning to honor who she came here to be.
I never wanted her to become a reflection of me. I didn’t need her to inherit my spirituality, my beliefs, my practices or my way of seeing the world. I wanted to give her roots strong enough to hold her and freedom spacious enough for her own soul to reveal itself.
And she has.
I watch her with horses and witness a language that belongs entirely to her. There is an intuitive communication between her and these magnificent beings—a sensitivity, an earthiness, a capacity to listen without words. Through her, the sacred world of the horse entered my own life more deeply.
She has taught me that motherhood is not only what the mother gives the child.
The child initiates the mother.
Before my visitation from Mary Magdalene, I experienced a visitation connected with Sarah Tamar, who, according to certain oral traditions, is believed to be the daughter of Mary Magdalene and Yeshua. Whether we encounter Sarah Tamar as a historical child, a sacred story, or the living presence of the Divine Child born through their union, her mystery speaks to the sacredness of incarnation, to love becoming flesh, and to the divine life that continues to unfold through the generations.
During that visitation, I was shown an image of my own daughter at eleven years old. I saw her face with extraordinary clarity, her beautiful brown-green eyes and her long brown hair. I remember the intimacy of that moment, the recognition that the mystery being revealed to me was somehow inseparable from the child I had carried in my womb, given birth to, held in my arms, and watched grow.
I began to understand that our children come into this world carrying a sacred story of their own. We may give them life through our bodies, nourish them, guide them, and offer them the shelter of our love, yet they also bring something into our lives that we are meant to receive. They awaken places within our hearts that have been waiting to open. They invite us to heal, to grow in love, to remember the tenderness of our own beginnings, and to encounter the Divine through the daily intimacy of caring for another soul.
Over the years, motherhood has also taken me backward through the womb-line.
To my mother.
To my grandmother.
To my great-grandmother.
Women whose bodies became thresholds through which another generation entered the Earth.
Whatever our relationships with our mothers may contain, there is something extraordinary in contemplating this unbroken passage of life: womb through womb, body through body, generation through generation.
My mother carried me. Her mother carried her. Her mother’s body carried the life from which she came.
And now my body has carried Almudena.
There is something almost beyond words in that.
I experience Almudena as carrying her own particular codes: purification, harmonization, a quality I associate with the angelic realms, while at the same time being profoundly rooted in the Earth. I see it especially in her relationship with animals and horses. She reminds me that heaven and Earth are not opposites. Sometimes the most ethereal soul comes here to place her hands in the soil, to touch the body of a horse, to listen to what cannot be spoken.
I believe that physical motherhood is one of the most sacred paths a woman may feel called to walk. Yet for generations, women have inherited the belief that motherhood is the ultimate fulfillment of womanhood, that something within us remains incomplete unless we give birth. I have always felt that this belief diminishes the vastness of what it means to be a woman.
A woman’s wholeness is inherent. She does not become complete through motherhood, because she was never incomplete to begin with.
The mystery of Mother is far greater than the physical experience of giving birth. It is an ancient, sacred presence within the feminine, a capacity to conceive, nurture, protect, and bring life into form in countless ways. Some women are called to carry children in their wombs, while others give birth through their art, their healing, their teachings, their devotion, their relationships, and the love they offer to the world. And some women simply choose to live their lives in ways that are entirely their own, and there is sacredness in that freedom, too.
To me, the Divine Mother is the mystery of life itself, and every woman has the freedom to discover how that mystery wishes to express itself through her. Motherhood may open a profound chamber of the heart, but it is never the measure of a woman’s worth, her femininity, or her spiritual completeness.
Happy birthdayl Almudena.
Thank you for choosing me as the doorway through which you entered this world. Thank you for everything you have taught me about love without possession, guidance without control, and the sacred responsibility of allowing another soul to become fully herself.
May I always have the wisdom to recognize the mystery that you are.
And may you continue to become exactly who you came here to be.
Ahava,
Ana Otero
