I have already shared a fear release for birth exercise here. I also want to share a “courage” reading that could be used for mother blessings:
Courage Ritual:
(write down fears and burn or bury them them)
Friends gather in circle holding hands surrounding the mother and say:
We accept that you have fears
You are not your fears
You are now cleansed and renewed
Go forward with courage at your side.
——–
Simple, but meaningful!
the woman speaks of birthing
After Langston Hughes’s The Negro Speaks of Rivers
I’ve known birthing
Before creation
And older than the labor of mankind
My womb is the mother of life
I carried Adam when seeds
In the garden were gestating
I pushed the head of Cronos from
Between my legs and swaddled
Him in the sands of time
I was midwife to the moon and
Made her crib in my lodge
I wailed with Demeter’s chorus
When armies stole children
Killed the land
And I’ve seen her barren lap
Turn poppy red with birth
In the spring
I’ve known birthing
Before god became a man
by Margaret Arabella Kenney
From Mothering Magazine (pg. 58, Sept-Oct 2008). I love to read this poem aloud at Blessingways. I thnk it is very powerful.
Talk Birth 