Blessingway Poem: A Prayer for One Who Comes to Choose This Life

Nov26

A Prayer for One Who Comes to Choose This Life

By Danelia Wild

May she know the welcome

of open arms and hearts

May she know she is loved

by many and by one

May she know the circle of friendship that gives

and receives love in all its forms

May she know and be known

in the heart of another

May she know the heart

that is this earth

reach for the stars and

call it home

And in the end

may she find everything

in her heart

and her heart

in everything

Last week I attended a blessingway for a friend who moved away last year. We didn’t know each other very well when she lived here, but thanks to Facebook, we’ve kept in touch and have bonded this year due to some personal experiences and commonalities. The poem above from the book Sisters Singing felt perfect to me to share with her. She has waited with such hope and love to meet her new daughter.

I also made her one of my polymer clay birth goddess sculptures. I purposely overbaked it to make the pigment more deeply colored. This goddess is holding a heart-shaped gem for love.

Moon Salutation Yoga Series for Blessingway or Women’s Gathering

Oct25

At my blessingway with my second son, my mom led us through a moon salutation together outside and then we all entered the blessingway space via a “birth arch” made with the women’s arms (think London Bridge only all in a row making a channel of arms to pass through). This weekend, we had a women’s retreat with the theme of the sacred body and I found this moon salutation from the book She Who Changes for us to do together—seemed fitting that with a theme of the body, we should actually use our bodies! (In addition to the moon salutation below, I also have a handout with a birthing room yoga series available.)

Moon Salutation
I stand tall, heart open to the world, body full and present in all of its beauty.

(standing with arms in prayer position)

I open my arms wide to bring all of life into my being.

(opening arms and tracing the circle of the moon)

My arms form a temple above me, sheltering and protecting me.

I know that I am on holy ground.

(arms completing the circle extended with palms touching above the head)

Yielding now, softening, my body takes the shape of the crescent moon.

I see visions of women, young and old, helping and loving each other.

(bending to the side with arms still above the head and palms touching)

Rising up and bending to the other side, I know that my softness is my strength. I am tested, but not broken.

(bending to the other side)

Up again, I feel the sweet stillness, always present within me.

(arms above head, palms still touching)

I step wide now into a squat. Mother Earth’s ferocious powers rise up through my strong legs, hips and back. As woman, I give birth to all that is, caring for and protecting life.

(arms bent in priestess pose, legs bent and open in birth pose)

Straightening arms and legs, I am a star. I am the universe. Planets and galaxies whirl within me. I radiate in all directions.

(legs straight and spread widely apart, arms straight out to the sides)

Supple and yielding, I stretch to the side. I open my arms and look up, opening to love and compassion.

I reach, yearning and striving, and yet rest, accepting fully.

(triangle pose)

Turning to pyramid pose, I become quiet. Head to knee, I sense the inner workings of my own being.

(typical runners’ stretch)

Lunging, I stretch long and feel the glorious length of my body.

As I look up, the moon shines on my path.

(lunge pose)

Turning now, I touch the earth, hands on the blessed Mother, strong and steady.

Gratefully and tenderly, I bow my head.

(turning and bending to touch the earth)

Coming into a squat, I am connected with all animal and plant life. My body open and close to the earth, I know my body’s ability to give birth, to love, to work, to pray. I resolve to hold all of these activities as sacred.

(full squat)

The Moon Salutation continues with the poses repeated in reverse order to form a complete circle and cycle of the moon with the whole body. The combination of words and yoga movement creates connections between the body and the mind, enabling the meaning of the words to come into the body. The full meaning of the Moon Salutation can be appreciated only in the doing. It celebrates the female body and the earth body, affirming that the female body is sacred, an image of the body of Goddess. It names the connection between women and the moon, positively affirming cycles of change, in contrast to classical theological traditions. In the Moon Salutation, women’s changing bodies and the process of giving birth become images of the divine creativity of the Goddess. The Moon Salutation celebrates strength as supple and yielding, yet ferocious in the protection of life. These are images of strength as power with, not power over. In the Moon Salutation, the female body is not perceived negatively as it is in traditions associating femininity with the “weaker” light of the moon. Still, it might be asked: Does the Moon Salutation limit women to the body or the traditional roles associated with it? I do not find this to be so. In the Moon Salutation the female body is an image of all the creative powers in the universe. It can expand to include planets and galaxies. The female body is celebrated not only for its capacity to give birth, but also for its ability to love, to work, and to pray.

From: Carol P. Christ. She Who Changes: Re-imagining the Divine in the World, Kindle Edition.

Mother Blessing Quotes

Jul15

For the mother blessing ceremony I wrote about recently, I also went through my birth quotes collection (which is becoming quite extensive!) and picked out some special quotes that reminded me of things I wanted to share with the birthing mama-to-be.

“For each of us as women, there is a deep place within, where hidden and growing our true spirit rises…Within these deep places, each one holds an incredible reserve of creativity and power, of unexamined and unrecorded emotion and feeling. The woman’s place of power within each of us…it is dark, it is ancient, and it is deep.” –Audre Lorde

While some people have said they don’t like the use of the word “dark” in this quote, I think it is perfect. In the darkness is where wonderful seeds take root and grow.

“It is so easy to close down to risk, to protect ourselves against change and growth. But no baby bird emerges without first destroying the perfect egg sheltering it. We must risk being raw and fresh and awkward. For without such openness, life will not penetrate us anew. Unless we are open, we will not be filled.” –Patricia Monaghan

Since, as I mentioned, this recent ceremony was for a PAL-mama, I included the above quote. While I don’t really like the image of the egg being destroyed (if I relate the quote to birth), I feel like this is a good quote to describe the bravery involved with consciously undertaking the pregnancy after loss journey.

I also included my top two favorite quotes about birth and pain. The first:

“When I say painless, please understand, I don’t mean you will not feel anything. What you will feel is a lot of pressure; you will feel the might of creation move through you. Pain, however, is associated with something gone wrong. Childbirth is a lot of hard work, and the sensations that accompany it are very strong, but there is nothing wrong with labor.” –Giuditta Tornetta

I love the part about the might of creation. How is that for a bold summation of the potency and power of birth. While some people object to the inclusion of the word “painless” in it, to me the takeaway message of the quote is that birth is too big for the word “pain” to adequately contain or describe it. We need more and better language for it! And, that brings me to the second quote:

“So the question remains. Is childbirth painful? Yes. It can be, along with a thousand amazing sensations for which we have yet to find adequate language. Every Birth is different, and every woman’s experience and telling of her story will be unique.” –Marcie Macari

From the same author, two more quotes, this time describing the transformative power of birth:

“Birth is an opportunity to transcend. To rise above what we are accustomed to, reach deeper inside ourselves than we are familiar with, and to see not only what we are truly made of, but the strength we can access in and through Birth.” –Marcie Macari

“A woman in Birth is at once her most powerful, and most vulnerable. But any woman who has birthed unhindered understands that we are stronger than we know.” –Marcie Macari

And, then, a helpful reminder, that birth is our gateway to conscious, active, full-on parenting for the rest of our lives!

“The natural process of birth sets the stage for parenting. Birth and parenting mirror each other. While it takes courage and strength to cope with labor and birth, it also takes courage and strength to parent a child.” –Marcy White

And, finally, I shared the quote that to me was a touchstone describing my feelings about Alaina’s entrance into my world. She did this for me.

“A baby, a baby, she will come to remind us of the sweetness in this world, what ripe, fragile, sturdy beauty exists when you allow yourself the air, the sunshine, the reverence for what nature provides…” – Sarah Werthan Buttenwieser (in Literary Mama)

Speaking of that sweet baby of mine, here she is at my friend’s mother blessing ceremony. I’m so glad she’s here! And, my heart is full for my friend as she is soclose to her own fresh baby girl. I’m glad my daughter is going to grow up within a circle of strong, empowered, healthy women and girls and I love taking her to blessingways with me, knowing that I am socializing her into a model of womanhood and life that values the feminine 🙂 (and, yes, that is a bindi on her forehead).

The Blessingway Connection

Jul15

Last weekend, I attended a mother blessing/blessingway* ceremony for a dear friend. I have mentioned her here before, because she is on a pregnancy-after-loss (PAL) journey after having given birth to a tiny boy after 16 weeks of pregnancy last July (my own Noah was born at 15 weeks in Nov., 2009). My friend’s baby had been due in January, the same time my own “rainbow baby” was born. So, I’ve spent the last year being a couple of months “ahead” of her on the very complicated and emotional path of pregnancy after loss. And, now she is preparing to give birth to her own new baby girl any day now. It felt very, very good to come together with friends to celebrate this strong mama, her journey, and her babies. I so clearly remember the feelings of “feeling the fear and doing it anyway” when it came to things like doing a belly cast, having pregnancy pictures taken, and, yes, having a blessingway—each of these commemorative events was tinged with a fear of possibly being a sad memory instead of a happy one. I remember worrying, “what if I look back at my blessingway and have to think, ‘but I was so happy.'” These thoughts aren’t necessarily rational or logical, but they featured prominently in my PAL experience. And, while I truly loved being pregnant and I was happy much of the time, I was so glad for it to be over and for PAL to be behind me. This is the feeling I had for my friend during her ceremony as well—pretty soon PAL will be over and you will be so glad to leave it behind and snuggle your new baby girl (I’m also very familiar with the companion fear of, “but what if my PAL journey ends with another loss? I’m not holding my new baby yet…”)

For many mother blessings, I pick out a quote or a poem or a reading to give to the mother. Considering how much writing I do in my life, it is kind of surprising to me that I usually choose to give women other people’s words rather than creating something new for them (I do say original things aloud to them during the gifting time, in which we each take turns kneeling before the mother and telling her what she means to us). After some looking for perfect quotes, I knew that for this friend, I needed to write something to her from my heart and not from someone else. So, on one of my womb labyrinth postcards, I wrote the following:

Nine months ago you entered into the long, challenging labyrinth of pregnancy after loss. You have walked with courage, strength, and grace. You have been SO BRAVE. And now you prepare to take the final step on the path—to greet the power and intensity of your birthing time. All of your love and hope and fear will become concentrated on the task of opening your body to welcome your precious new daughter into your arms and your life. She is coming. She is okay. And, sweet mama, so are you. This is a time of openness and surrender–in body, mind, heart, and soul. May you give birth with confidence, strength, bravery, vulnerability, and wild sweet joy and relief.

One of the special things about blessingways is the sense of connection with other women. The ritual space creates an opportunity to speak and share with each other with a depth that is often not reached during day to day interactions (and definitely not usually at baby showers!). This winter, my friends and I started having quarterly women’s retreats. One of my reasons for wanting to do so was to bring some of that sense of celebration and power from our Mother Blessing ceremonies more fully into our lives and to celebrate the fullness and completeness of women-in-themselves, not just of value while pregnant. For these same reasons, I decided to pursue a doctoral degree in women’s spirituality—while birth work is still important to me, I feel very “called” to celebrate, work with, acknowledge, and respect the full cycle of a woman’s life.

“We are mothers, sisters, family wrapped in different cloth,
standing under the same wide sky
and we’ve come to the very end of our silence
together we’ve found our voice
and it is loud
and it is beautiful
and it sings a love song for our children”
—Mothers Acting Up

——-

*For a general description and explanation of mother blessings as well as musings on “connection,” see my friend Hope’s post.

*Out of respect for Native traditions, I continue to try to refer to these ceremonies as “mother blessings.” However, my local circle of women has been holding these ceremonies for each other for about 30 years and they have “historically” been referred to as “blessingways.” Blessingway remains the term that feels most right to me—most genuine, authentic, and, truly, is part of my own life’s “traditions,” so a lot of the time, I feel like it is okay for me to continue using the word, rather than trying to force myself to use mother blessing instead.

Poem: Woman & Nature

Jun26

Woman and Nature

By Susan Griffin

The earth is my sister;

I love her daily grace,

her silent daring,

and how loved I am

how we admire this strength in each other,

all that we have lost

all that we have lived

all that we know:

we are stunned by this beauty,

and I do not forget;

what she is to me,

what I am to her.

——-

My friends and I had our quarterly women’s retreat today and I used the above poem as our closing reading (I did alter it slightly from the original in the middle). To read it, have each participant read one line and the rest of the group repeat it after her. The italicized section is then read by the group in unison.

I also used the following as our opening reading:

Opening Words/Chalice Lighting

May we be reminded here of our highest aspirations,

and inspired to bring our gifts of love and service to the altar of humanity.

May we know once again that we are not isolated beings

but connected, in mystery and miracle, to the universe,

to this community and to each other.

-Anonymous (Reading #434 in Singing The Living Tradition)

—————–

I like to share these things I’ve collected here as well in case other women are googling for readings for women’s programs, retreats, or mother blessing ceremonies 🙂

Celebrating 100,000 Hits! Mother Rising Book Giveaway

May19

Giveaway is now closed. Shawna was the winner!

Talk Birth has reached 100,000 hits and I’m having a giveaway to celebrate this milestone! When I initially began this website in 2007, it was exclusively for the purpose of providing information about my birth classes to the local community. I never intended for anyone other than local, potential clients to read the information here, I was just using WordPress as a platform to host what I assumed would be a fairly static site—possibly just being updated with new class information and dates. Then, I decided I’d like to add a couple of posts/articles for my prospective clients to read. Before I knew it, the few posts I had made were receiving hits from locations other than my local area and so I started writing posts with a wider/more general audience in mind. Eventually, the class information portion of my site became very secondary to the birth-blog portion of my site. And, I find it somewhat amusing, that now I primarily reach women through my writing rather than through my classes. I have a new class beginning in June, but otherwise, I have been on leave from teaching any classes since my new baby was born and due to my other commitments, I have only had limited availability for classes for the past year or so.

When I first began my journey as a childbirth educator, some part of me envisioned reaching hundreds of couples through my classes. I quickly realized that I wasn’t going to be able to fill group classes in my small hometown and felt like I had an excess of birth-change energy that was being blocked/frustrated by only working with one couple every so often. I used to complain to my husband, “I just want to transform the birth culture in the U.S. Is that too much to ask?” I felt like my drive to change the birth world was just hitting up against a wall and I felt frustrated by living in an area that could not support that packed-to-the-brim, life-transforming classes I’d envisioned offering. Writing blog posts became my way of “discharging” this energy as well as being a birth educator to a wider audience—i.e., whomever stumbled across my blog! This has been a fulfilling way for me to use some of that activist energy and to feel like I have the ability to make some type of change within a large circle. As my classes became more well known, I did build enough of a practice to be working with new clients each and every month of the year and I felt personally satisfied with that—I need direct contact as well as virtual contact to feel like I am making a difference. I love that this website/blog helps me with each of those avenues for change.

In honor of 100,000 hits, I am giving away a copy of the book Mother Rising: The Blessingway Journey into Motherhood. Since my tagline is, “Celebrating Women, Transforming Birth,” I wanted to give away a book that exemplifies the idea. Mother Rising is perfect, because it is literally about celebrating women through blessingways. My friends and I have a long-standing tradition of hosting mother blessing ceremonies for each other during our pregnancies and Mother Rising is a helpful resource for planning them. It even includes recipes for snacks!

To enter the giveaway, just leave a comment letting me know your favorite way to celebrate women.

You can earn bonus entries by doing any of the following and letting me know via another comment that you’ve done so:

Tell me what post/idea you’ve read here on Talk Birth is your favorite!
Become a fan of Talk Birth on Facebook
Subscribe to this blog via email (link this way —>)
Share the giveaway link on your own Facebook page or blog

Giveaway ends next Thursday at noon!

Unity

Mar18

I keep wanting to write an update post about Alaina and never finding enough moments in one day in which to do it—I joked the other day about, “instead of taking care of your sweet little self, I want to write a blog post about taking care of your sweet little self!” ;-D Overall, I’m surprised by how easy she is to take care of. I love having a baby again—I’m surprised I ever found it hard to take care of a baby! Her needs are very simple and easy to meet and it just isn’t very complicated to figure her out. Older kids are a different story altogether! Though, taking care of her while taking care of my other kids adds a different level of challenge and isn’t itself actually easy. But, caring for her when considered on its own is very easy and natural and good. I was concerned about “starting over” and taking care of a baby all over again and I’m pleased to discover anew how much I love having a baby.

She does have an interesting habit of being awake until about 1:00 a.m. every night. Not sure what is up with that and keep puzzling over changing the pattern. With my first baby, I remember remarking that at night I felt in “perfect harmony” with him, but during the day I found him somewhat confusing (and also kind of fussy/unsettled). With Alaina, I feel in perfect daytime harmony with her, but the night is the confusing time. It is also hard to write about her without comparing her to my other babies—I’d like to consider each child on their own, rather than using the others as a yardstick, but I also think it is a natural thing to do. I feel like she is my happiest baby yet. I’d worried she would be an anxious or difficult baby, because of all the fear I “marinated” her in during pregnancy, but she is a happy little soul. She is also incredibly quiet. It is weird, actually, sometimes I look down at her and she’s just riding along quietly and I get kind of a start, like, “oh, you’re still here!” She does not really ever cry—just occasionally commentary type “wahs” of protest or alert or notice. I remember the boys becoming unsettled more easily and also being harder to calm down. For example, yesterday she was asleep when we got home from the park. I hurried to bring in my stuff and when I got back out to the car she was awake and crying pretty hard—I was horrified and ran to scoop her up. The second I picked her up, she made not another peep. I know for a fact that my other babies would have kept on crying for a couple of moments just for emphasis, as well as just taken a little more conscious effort for me to calm them back down. She smiles a lot and enjoys watching her big brothers play.

While the feeling isn’t as intense as it was when she was first born (she is two months old tomorrow!), I continue to marvel at her every day—“HOW did you get here, you amazing little thing?” I feel almost startled that she is here with us, happy and whole and engaging with the world around her. I don’t remember having quite the same sense of miracle about the boys. Sense of magic, yes, but the sense of surprise and/or disbelief about their existence, no.

Aren't they cuties?

I think she looks remarkably like my oldest in this picture, but in baby pictures at the same age and to my eyes in person, she doesn’t look so much like him.

I am enjoying experiencing the symbiosis of the nursing relationship again. I sat nursing her a couple of days ago and remembered a quote from the book The Blue Jay’s Dance by Louise Erdrich in which she is talking about male writers from the nineteenth century and their longing for an experience of oneness and seeking the mystery of an epiphany. She says:

“Perhaps we owe some of our most moving literature to men who didn’t understand that they wanted to be women nursing babies.”

I am currently reading three different books about spirituality and one of them has this focus on “oneness”—I was reading it while nursing her and that quote popped into mind.

Responsive Readings for Women’s Rituals

Mar14

As I noted in my previous post, I’m choosing some readings for an upcoming women’s retreat. Our theme for the spring is “personal power” and so these responsive readings from the book Readings for Women’s Programs by Meg Bowman and Connie Springer seemed perfect to me. The capitalized (or italicized) sections are read in unison by the group and the non-capitalized/italicized sections are read by the facilitator. I think they could work for any type of women’s ceremony (blessingways, etc.):

Self-Love

At my blessingway for my second son, May 2006

Self-love is respecting my own uniqueness,

my creativity and my talents.

LEARNING NEW SKILLS,

BEING ASSERTIVE

HAVING CONFIDENCE IN MY ABILITIES

Self-love is acknowledging my good qualities

and following my own guidelines.

SURROUNDING MYSELF WITH PEOPLE

WHO NOURISH ME AND ENHANCE MY SELF-ESTEEM.

Self-love is taking time to enjoy each day.

SURROUNDING MYSELF WITH COLORS AND BEAUTY,

GIVING PLEASURE WITHOUT GUILT

KNOWING THAT I DESERVE THE BEST

Self-love is loving and respecting my body.

REALLY TAKING CARE OF MYSELF

PHYSICALLY AND EMOTIONALLY,

GENTLY AND LOVINGLY

Self-love is seeing myself equal to others,

accepting myself and letting myself win.

NEVER PUNISHING MYSELF

OR HARMING OTHERS

TURNING MY NEGATIVE THOUGHTS

INTO POSITIVE ONES.

The more I love myself,

the more I can love others

and the more others will return my love.

SELF-LOVE

IS BEING MYSELF

AND ENJOYING MY LIFE.

Blessed be.

—-

To Be

BE healthy enough

To live each day to the fullest

BE strong enough

To know that I cannot do everything alone.

BE wise enough

To realize I don’t know everything

BE courageous enough

To speak my mind and to change my mind

BE understanding enough

To listen to those with differing views

BE secure enough

To reveal my own unique personality

BE generous enough

To assist those who need my help

BE frugal enough

To take care of my own needs

BE realistic enough

To let go of the past and live in the present

And above all, BE loving enough

To BE loved

To BE happy

To BE whole

To BE myself.

Blessed Be.

Blessingway Readings & Chants

Mar14

I’m looking through my files to choose a reading for a mother blessing this weekend as well as choosing readings for a women’s retreat this weekend. Anyway, I felt like sharing some of them here for people who might be googling around looking for something to share at a blessingway:

From the book Joyful Birth: A Spiritual Path to Motherhood by Susan Piver

The path of motherhood has a beginning, but no end. It’s constantly changing and constantly challenging. Along the way, we encounter our personal limits over and over. We fall in love over and over. We ride the sharp edge of hope and fear. On this path of discovery, as on any spiritual path, our pretensions are shattered, our minds are blown, and our hearts are opened. We cry, we laugh, we bumble around and make countless mistakes. Through it all, we are gently—or abruptly—poked into greater honesty, lovingkindness, and understanding. It is a truly joyful path.

The memory of [my child’s] birth has become a talisman that I hold in my heart as I journey deeper and deeper into motherhood. For these moments come again in every mother’s life—the times when we are asked to walk straight into our pain and fear, and in doing so, open up to a love that is greater than anything we ever could have imagined: all life’s beauty and wonder, as well as all the ways that things can break and go wrong…Again and again, motherhood demands that we break through our limitations, that we split our hearts open to make room for something that may be more than we thought we could bear. In that sense, the labor with which we give birth is simply a rehearsal for something we mothers must do over and over: turn ourselves inside out, and then let go.

This is the reading we often use for symbolically summoning the four directions. It is from the book Mother Rising: The Blessingway Journey into Motherhood:

Blessed be this gathering with the gifts of the East: communication of the heart, mind, and body; fresh beginnings with each rising of the sun; the knowledge of the growth found in sharing silences.

Blessed be this gathering with the gifts of the South: warmth of hearth and home; the heat of the heart’s passion; the light to illuminate the darkest of times.

Blessed be this gathering with the gifts of the West: the lake’s deep commitments; the river’s swift excitement; the sea’s breadth of knowing.

Blessed be this gathering with the gifts of the North: firm foundation on which to build; fertile fields to enrich our lives; a stable home to which we may always return.

From previous posts here is:

After my blessingway with baby girl, January 2011

A birth blessing

Full moon poem

Courage reading

Fear release for birth

Birth warrior affirmation

Two birth poems

Birthing poem

And, finally, here is a handout of the chants we often use. It is formatted with the chants in two columns so it can be cut in half to distribute.

Talk Birth

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