Birth as a Rite of Passage

After three years of of taking a break from teaching birth classes, an opportunity arose to start an in- person class for couples preparing for home birth. It felt really good to come back to this calling and sit in circle with people who are becoming something totally new.

The path to motherhood and fatherhood is transformative. Every aspect of our being shifts, changes, and reorganizes in some way. For many of us, the last time we changed in this way is a fuzzy distant dream memory. Puberty was a while ago, and unless we are really thinking about it, it is easy to forget how awkward, difficult, and long the transformation is. Watching my two oldest children become teenagers over the last 3 years has reminded me just how intimate it is to become something new. Going from a child to an adult is like adding dimension to a stick figure drawing. The depth that becomes accessible feels as if you are being pushed into the deep end of the pool when you've only ever splashed around in the shallow section. Both liberating and terrifying. Watching my son and daughter gain access to this animation has been ever so tender and sacred. My love for them has deepened, and also has given me a chance to deepen in love for my own inner teenager. Witnessing and honoring their rites of passage, and allowing the connection back to my own rite of passage creates an opportunity for healing and personal evolution.

The birth continuum (conception, pregnancy, labor, birth, early postpartum) is a really significant rite of passage in our lives. It is not a random event, and in fact, is directly connected to the previous rites of our first sexual experiences, puberty, and our own birth. For each formidable time period creates patterns of information of who we are in the world, how we can best get our needs met, if life safe or unsafe, how we feel about ourselves and our bodies, and how we are expected to behave in our families and cultures .

A renowned Australian midwife, Jane Hardwicke Collings, writes, "Childbirth is not an isolated experience in a woman’s life, it is the expression of her life story thus far, the culmination of her beliefs, attitudes and fears at that point in time on her life journey. We have the births we need to have to teach us what we need to know about ourselves, to take us to the next place on our life journey, our journey to wholeness." As Jane points out, the tendency to focus on the isolated event of pregnancy or birth can often cloud us from seeing the patterning in which our conception, pregnancy, and birth happen. Understanding that the rites of passage in our lives are potent opportunities to illuminate what is operating in our subconscious -( largely our patterns of behaviors, feelings and beliefs) -helps us evolve in our lives while we are in the process of becoming the next iteration of ourselves. Jane also points out, that the patterning that imprints during our rites of passage are not curses. They are information.

This week in my class, we shared stories of the rites of passage around menstruation. The messages and feelings that originated during the preteen and teen years, are resurfacing as these parents to be navigate pregnancy and birth. I heard stories of being instructed exactly how to wrap up a bloody pad and where to put it so that brothers would not see. Memories of being terrified that dad would inevitably find out, and the shame and "othering" that was felt from that. I heard how for some, menstruation was celebrated, and yet there was a pervasive hollow feeling even though there was an positive intention from family members. For one woman, being the last in a group of friends to get a period created a let down and a "no need to make a big fuss over it" feeling. These events become themes in their lives. The hormonal shifts and brain changes during puberty and birth makes us vulnerable to imprinting. As we separate from the person we were, our subconscious awareness heightens as it is scanning our environment for information about the new role we are taking on. What happens to girls, what is said or not said, and what is culturally expected of them during the time of their first bleed, will stay with them forever.

These stories awaken as we become mothers. We have a new opportunity to interface with narratives that have shaped our lives. Once we see this we can courageously own it and change it. This type of transformation is what birthing offers us. From this place of clarity we can make choices that resonate with our own needs, desires, and values, not what our culture tells us we should prioritize. Many women wake up while they are pregnant, and realize they aren't broken. Their bodies are not failing them or something to dissociate from. They can witness their own innate perfection, and that birth works with no need to defer to an expert. Waking up in this way is truly amazing the feel and amazing to witness.

From this perspective, when we heal our relationship to the feminine, and support women from a place of honor and reverence for the bodies, their experiences, their role in humanity, and their innate worth and value, we heal the world.