Leaving Home

“It’s an old tendency of humans to leave home and strike out across a frontier that beckons as a zone of magic, mysticism, inspiration and holy conversion. When we are at loose ends emotionally we tend to set out on a symbolic journey into unfamiliar territory where newly aroused senses allow us to feel vigilant and reborn. In part this is based on the intuition that to change one’s self one must relinquish all that is known and habitual, cast off from the shore of one’s home and the endearing familiarity of everyday life, whose moods and manners one comes to know like an old friend. …we do not always travel to escape our circumstances but to find ourselves. Why must we do that in a foreign place, having become foreign to our past.

...The wilderness may be an actual frontier fraught with danger, or it may be a wilderness of doubt.

from Cultivating Delight, Diane Ackerman

Sometimes people travel to lose themselves, some people travel to find something they've lost, a nostalgia for their childhood town, or a sense of who they once were in younger years. Some people strike out alone, others in groups.

For myself, my mid-life quest or peri-menopausal quest, has taken me from Australia to India, from Panama to Massachusetts, from Vancouver Island to New Mexico. At least once a year, and often twice, I leave my kids in the capable hands of a caretaker plus my husband (or in recent years, up to their own devices) and go on retreat.

Sometimes it's a long journey amidst a group of fellow seekers, sometimes it's a lone ride in a rental car through the desert. Sometimes it involves camping on a natural reserve on the other side of the world and dealing with jet lag as I meditate amongst the Kookaburras, sometimes it's singing with 45 other women in a convent just south-east of Montreal and sleeping in a tiny room.

The important thing is, I get away by myself. That is, without family to take care of. I take some needed time out, because a year-long sabbatical is out of the question until the kids leave home. I'm used to working alone in my home office, typing away at my laptop, but it's not just solitude I'm looking for. It's the mystical sense of finding 'me' when I remove myself from my habits, my daily routines, my ruts, and plunk myself somewhere new, either in a workshop or retreat, and ask questions of where I am, what I'm doing, what I want to do.

The answers have been slow in coming. Sometimes it's about rooting deeper into my essence. Or jumping fully dressed into a swimming pool at midnight. But it always involves a challenge. Driving into a lightning storm on the desert roads of New Mexico with 2 newly found friends was dangerous, exciting and felt like crossing the fear-barrier inside me. Waking up to coyotes howling every night in a pitch dark adobe dwelling was breaking part of the fear-barrier too. Sitting in front of a blank page, facing the sacred Taos Mountain, waiting for a sign about what my work would be, or should be, or what project called to me, I faced the fear inside. Maybe nothing would come out of it. Maybe I had to stall this project of calling myself a writer and go back home empty-handed.

The answers are rolling in, now, slowly but surely. As I continue to learn, read, study, follow my natural inclination towards researching menstruation and menopause, I am finding my subject, or it is finding me.

I continue to quest. I invite you to read some of the entries on this blog, for pieces of my journey. Perhaps they resonate with your pieces. Or not. We each have a quest, and I believe that menopause is a fantastic opportunity for self-knowledge, self-awareness.

So leave home, if need be, as often as you can. And return. With something new you've learned about you.

nameste,
musemother

Interview with Bella, Part 3 Power in the Passage

Part 3

Musemother: Do you think women who are not yet mothers should hear our birth stories? Or is it part of the rite of passage to ‘not know’? Some women are afraid to give birth after they hear the particular challenges in childbirth, tearings and rippings and long painful labours. What do you think? And what do we tell our daughters?

Bella: I think there is a time and place for women who have not given birth to hear birth stories. Though they will not truly “know” as in initiation, they can serve as a way of opening possibilities for all the varied ways of giving birth. To tell our daughters and sisters and friends our own birth story is to honor the connection of all birthing women everywhere, that we do not do this alone. Every birth is unique and it is also true that we can find strength and support in knowing that as we birth, so too have the women who came before us and so are the women all over the world birthing with us as well. This holds much power for some women.

Perhaps the question then becomes, not if, but how. Different cultures have different traditions. Here in America at least we seem to have a tradition of recounting horror stories to women at their own baby shower. Along with presents and cake and punch, we tell bits and pieces of our own birth stories and those of our friends and neighbors and they are likely to include a level of warning or danger or misery. The woman who labored for 72 hours or who tore so bad she never really recovered or had a mean doctor or had the baby in the car. Or stories our told about orgasmic births and the underlying message is that if only this woman will give birth the “right” way, she too will have such an experience. It is disconcerting to say the least.

So, how do we tell our birth stories to the women in our lives in a way that does not set out a certain way they must give birth or a way that threatens them with everything that could wrong, but rather offers women a glimpse behind the mystery of childbirth? I would offer that birth stories be shared as a hero’s journey, as I wrote of above. When we tell women birth stories in this way, we are not telling them how to do it or not do it, nor are we saying it is such a complete unknown all she can do is be afraid and wait. We are rather saying, “Here is the labyrinth I walked, the journey I embarked upon. It is sacred and it is personal. May you find here and take from my words what will serve YOU, as you walk your own path, cross the threshold of your own labyrinth, and in doing so join all the women walk not for you but with you.”

Musemother: I experienced pregnancy and childbirth as a great awakening. I did not always want to be a mother, having been little mother to seven younger siblings. However, once out of the labor and childbirth with my son, I wanted to crow to the world! And nominate every one of my sisters-in-law for sainthood, in fact every woman who had given birth. How would you describe the spiritual aspect of birth as a rite of passage?

Bella: I think I have touched upon this in some of the other questions.
I will say here, that what Spirit and even spiritual, means is very different for different women. For some women giving birth is a deeply spiritual experience and they would describe it as such. For some women their faith in a god or higher power plays a large role in their experience of birth and offers support and strength. As a doula, I have come to hold deep respect for the many faith traditions that guide a woman in labor and childbirth. And I have come to experience even that nameless sense of spirit. My work with women is to explore what spirit means to them and to explore ways this might bring power and comfort and meaning to their experience. And yet, some women are not comfortable with such terminology and shy away from birth as spiritual experience. I honor this as well.

My own personal feelings are that birth has a spiritual aspect and yet not always in the ways that this word is assumed to mean. For example, a home birth is not more “spiritual” than a hospital birth, a vaginal need not be more “spiritual” than a cesarean birth. “Spiritual” need not be divided from the earthly matter of blood and the body. A spiritual birth is not one in which a woman transcends such things but rather these very elements of labor and childbirth become the means through which she herself is born. This is a return to a more Feminine way of viewing spirituality. It is not about transcendence towards the sky, but a descent into the earth where life begins.

At its core I would say that birth is spiritual in that it is a transformation. A woman is still herself once she has given birth and yet she has also become entirely new. She has become the bearer of life. Whatever one’s personal feelings and beliefs are about Spirit and spirituality, that we can as women grow and birth life takes us beyond the realm of our understanding and into the terrain of mystery.

Musemother: It seems there is a very loving and accepting way of accompanying a woman in labour and childbirth being described by Pam England and on your web site. How can one reestablish a sense of the sacred in women’s bodies? It seems that we are so far away from ourselves and far away from trusting our bodies. So much complaining during pregnancy, so much fear surrounding childbirth.

Bella: As a doula, accompanying women in childbirth, my work is not to show her the way. It is not within my realm or power to reestablish for another woman a sense of the sacredness in women’s bodies, namely her own. This being said, many women who are pregnant and preparing for birth begin to ask themselves these very questions. They do not feel they trust their body and do not know how. They feel disconnected from that part of themselves that they sense will be needed to give birth. And so such matters are often explored together.

Perhaps we are not so far away from ourselves as we feel. We are always here, living in our bodies. Though we may feel we do not “know” our bodies, they remain present. So, perhaps the question then becomes, how do I listen to my body that is already present and communicating with me? How each woman goes about this will be different. Pregnancy itself can be a time of awakening where we learn to listen to subtle changes and shifts, feel our baby move inside of us, feel tethered to the earth in our bodies that seem to take over and do their own thing. This experience of feeling more fully “in” our bodies during pregnancy can ripple out way beyond the weeks of gestation.

It is also worth exploring what we mean when we say we should trust our bodies. To be unsure of yourself and your body is normal. Many women who claim to trust their bodies and therefore have nothing to worry about, assume that trusting their bodies means their birth will unfold they way they want. That if they trust their bodies they will birth vaginally or without interventions or in water or at home. If these things do not happen then the message becomes their body has failed them. There is an environment of guilt and shame over the body that women breathe in every day. And every time we tell a woman that if she trust her body she will be promised a certain outcome, that if she does enough prenatal yoga she will receive the birth she has planned, we feed the judge and activate the victim. It is not her body that is the problem but the voice within her that is making judgment over what her body has done or failed to do.

What are we trusting when we say we are or want to trust our bodies?

Perhaps our bodies are sacred in part because of their vulnerability. We are both remarkably resilient creatures and also our bodies will at some point, whether in childbirth or at a different time, break down or not do what we want. When trusting the body comes to mean believing the body is more than human, we can unconsciously breed distrust.

Trust is not to be confused with control. We do not control birth. We can influence it and work with it, but we do not control it. When trusting our bodies comes to mean if you only trust your body you will control how your birth goes, we can so quickly become rigid. And birth requires surrender, yielding, letting go. We soften as our cervix softens and thins, expand as our body expands to push a baby out. Giving birth is about opening and it is difficult to open when we are set on controlling outcome.

So perhaps trusting our body is to trust that our bodies will and do speak to us, even if it is not what we want to hear. That our body carriers such wisdom and compassion in its intricate ways of seeking life. That while our body is giving birth it is not the only factor influencing the birth. Given all the factors, those seen and unseen that are playing out in childbirth, we can trust our bodies to respond and communicate to us that which is needed in any given situation. I believe women want to trust themselves, not so much that their bodies will perform on command, but that whatever happens she will not abandon herself but remain present to herself. To know that you were fully present for yourself without judgment, doing whatever you needed to do in any given moment, is to nurture trust, which is another way of saying love.

Musemother: How does a woman reestablish contact between her self and her own inner knowing so she can experience birth as a rite of passage, a spiritual journey? Are there steps a woman can take to begin?

Bella: Come to my class. In all seriousness, there are many processes I do with parents in my classes and my doula clients, many of which I learned in my training with Birthing From Within, and they are too involved to write here. The book and Keepsake Journal explore many of them and do not require one be in a class.

Exploring her own deepest question is a place to begin. What does SHE need to know to give birth? This can then offer a guide for her, an avenue for exploring her own needs and fears, her assumptions about birth and from where she will find what is required to birth her baby.

I also encourage women to look at how they are already living their lives. This will tell them how they will give birth. A woman’s own inner knowing is not reserved for only momentous experiences. How does she make decisions in her daily life? How does she cope when things are difficult or painful or not as expected? What does she find to be of comfort and from where does she call for strength? Look no further then your pregnancy, then now. How did you know you were pregnant? From where does this knowing arise? How did you choose your care provider? And how did you know this was the choice for you? When a woman can begin to see that she already does know, finding her own knowing is not a quest for something out there but rather calling upon that which is fully present in her even now.

Musemother: What would you say to a woman who was unsure of herself and nervous about the coming birth?

Bella: I would say Welcome. Of course you are unsure of yourself and nervous. You’ve never done this before. And even if you have given birth before, you never given birth to this baby. It is always new. And as such, an unknown.
Our fear is not the enemy. And telling ourselves to not be afraid only pushes it underground where it grows and acts out unconsciously. Pam England has said the worry is the work of pregnancy. It can motivate us to learn things we may need to know. It can also invite us to explore our own beliefs about ourselves.

A great many fears are not as much about the thing itself, but about what we think it would mean about ourselves. That if we have to be induced we have failed. That if we have an epidural we are not strong. That if we freak out and lose control we are crazy and others will disapprove of us. So, by exploring these fears we get to hear our own negative beliefs about ourselves and offer them compassion. The judgments are not “bad”. They are simply the way we have learned to protect ourselves. And yet, the words of this judgment are not truth. When we can embrace that we are, always, enough, we begin to mother ourselves. The Mother awakened, we are now living ourselves that which we have to offer our baby.

The thing we fear may or may not happen. But it need not have the power to tell us who we are or are not.

Musemother: What has been the greatest lesson for you from working as a doula with birthing mothers?

Bella: That there is no right way to give birth, to mother. I have seen birth unfold in so many ways, in so many environments and situations and the things that one might think would create for the “perfect” birth do not play such a big factor in determining a woman’s satisfaction and feelings of power in childbirth. There is simply no right way. Women are amazingly powerful and what this looks like is new every time.

And as a doula, it is not my job to make anything happen or to promise any outcome. There are doula who claim this. I am not one of them. My gift is to hold the space as sacred and to bear witness to your own unfolding, to be a face that sees and is nothing more or less then fully present. This is your birth. I cannot do it for you. No one can. You alone must birth this baby, make this descent, enter this labyrinth. You are the warrior here, the hero. And you are not alone. In your moment of fear I will sit with you. In your moment of triumph, I will sit with you. And when, after it is all over and you are trying to unravel the many layers of what took place, I will be here. I will sit with you and welcome you into your own knowing, your mother self, your rite of passage in which you have been in your own way, transformed. --END--

Thanks to you, Bella, for enlightening us on your work, and on the value of Birthing from Within, even for us menopausal women, who are busy birthing our new selves, going through this descent into the labyrinth.

namaste,
musemother

Interview with Bella, part two Birthing Ourselves

see also http://beyondthemap.blogspot.com/ Bella's blog



Musemother: Pam England describes the woman giving birth or heroine’s journey as a “descent into the unconscious and the Dark Feminine”. Can you tell me what you think this means?


Bella: Pam England has a wonderful journal on Inanna’s descent which speaks to this, and I highly recommend it. She leads workshops on this as well. Though I cannot speak for her, I have learned much from her and have explored this aspect of birth and women’s ways of knowing through many avenues.


The Dark Feminine is that which is hidden in the shadows, those parts of self we have silenced or ignored. Our shadow sister may be aspects of self we find unattractive or unpresentable, and are likely those energies within us that do not fit with the image of ourselves that with which we are most comfortable. They are different for each woman. For one, it may be that she requires herself to be sweet and good and fears that part of herself which is angry or defiant or impatient. For another woman it may be her vulnerability that she has denied. She may be highly competent and efficient, capable of asserting herself and being in charge and she has submerged that part of herself that needs to lose control and come unhinged, that which is messy and wild. What makes the Dark Feminine dark is not what is found there in and of itself, but that it has been banished to the underworld and not been invited into our consciousness.


Giving birth is a descent. We abandon old ideas of ourselves and call upon all our resources. We find we must give up things, even those we cherished or thought of as requirements. The very nature of active labor and particularly what is called transition is a state of primal and unconscious work. There is a hormone haze that takes over and a woman is not using that part of her brain which can articulate or think things through. She is accessing the right side of the brain, where her knowing is more instinctual and she is following her body rather then directing it. For every woman there comes a time in her labor when she must cross a gate of great doubt. It may be in the beginning when contractions start and she feels terrified. It may be right before she pushes her baby out. It may be when she chooses to have a cesarean birth. But in this moment, she fears she cannot do what she needs to do. And yet, she does.



It is very often in this moment that she meets the Dark Feminine in herself and must call upon and welcome that which she has found unacceptable. So she finds herself moaning and crying and losing it. Or she finds herself using her voice and telling everyone to leave her alone even though she is not being “nice”. Her own inner judge was the one telling her she could not be these things. And yet, they are what is required to birth her baby. So she metaphorically dies to the old divided self and claims her shadow sister as part of her.


It is not good or bad. Such categories have dissolved. It is love in both its light and dark and the power of claiming herself and owning her full power. It is the work of our conscious self to harness our instincts, to integrate our many faces and to live with compassion and strength. And yet we cannot integrate that which remains hidden in darkness. Giving birth can invite us to descend, to meet our shadow sister and know her as our very selves.


Musemother: What rituals, if any, can help a woman prepare for her own heroine’s journey? And what role does her husband or partner play in all of this?


Bella: I share many different ideas for rituals in my classes. However, I cannot take credit for them. For a great starting place I recommend the book Birthing From Within along with The Keepsake Journal that accompanies it. Mother Rising by Cortland, Lucke and Miller Watelet is also a wonderful resource.


One thing I will note is that there is benefit in having ritual for the mother, the partner and for them together. The birthing mother’s partner, whether he be the father or another mother have their own experiences. Though not giving birth they are being birthed as new parents. They are more than “coaches”; they are parents engaging their own rite of passage. And ritual can offer a means for honoring this.


Ritual can be a catalyst for consciously engaging that which is beyond the realm of what we can know or really plan for. While some women choose to have more formal ceremony or ritual, anything can become a ritual when we bring our intention to it and mark the space as sacred.


Musemother: “ But to complete the heroine’s journey, the hero must answer the last Call. She must integrate the clarity and power she went into the journey to find. That is not enough—she must also bring it back to the world in a form so that it can be a gift to others. Perhaps it manifests as words, images, or some other way. What she has gained she must give to others.
Remember, the hero made the journey, not for herself, but for others.

From Birthing from Within, Pam England, her web site.


What do you think the gift of childbirth that can be shared with others is? (from quote above)


Bella: The gift that each woman has to offer from her journey is unique. No birth is the same and so whatever it is a woman discovers in her process, it is her own offering, her wisdom and beauty, her gift.


If there is a gift of childbirth, beyond that of the unique gifts each woman possesses and offers, perhaps it is that it holds within it an offering of what it means to birth anything in this life, whether that be babies or words or paintings or relationships or new ways of understanding. We can learn from the quiet receptiveness of a pregnant woman, the gestation that takes place in darkness, in the womb. A woman may do certain things or abstain from certain things to encourage the life growing inside her. But she does not really grow it herself. All on its own it grows. In childbirth, much of the work involved is not in “doing” but in surrendering to what wants to be born from us. We follow more then lead. And yet this is not a helpless state, a powerless way of being. For life itself is coming through us.


As we look at other areas in our life, those things that are seeking to be born, we might learn from the hidden nature of life taking root, of the yielding required in childbirth, of the power in letting life do what it wants to do, which is be born and live.


Musemother: In each journaling class I have lead, we have a class where we share our birth stories. Some women relish telling every detail; some would rather forget. Is that part of the journey, the retelling?


Bella: Having a safe place in which to tell our birth stories is a part of the journey itself. It can be one of the ways we mark the Return or Ascent in our journeys. Women often recount the physical particulars of what happened and yet we also need a place to share our birth stories as the hero’s journey and awakening of the Mother, and to have them honored as such.
I lead Birthing From Within birth story workshops and circles. It is important here that all present are practicing deep listening. It is not a space in which we share advice or compare notes. It is also a space in which women are invited to share their own birth stories as a hero’s journey.


For some women, their birth was a joyous occasion and they are filled with gratitude and awe. Women often recount the physical particulars of what happened and yet we also need a place to share our birth stories as sacred. It is not casual, not about comparisons. It is not just about the events that happened, but her own story of descent and rebirth. She seeks to be honored as the returning birth warrior she is.


For some women, their birth story is painful and they fear revisiting that day. If their birth was traumatic, to re-tell it can unintentionally serve to re-traumatize. A woman who experienced birth trauma is as fully a birth warrior as she who speaks of her magical birth. Yet, to rush to this place can serve to discredit a woman’s loss. In these situations, women need a safe place in which to not just tell their story but to grieve. Simply rehashing what happened does not in and of itself heal. To have space in which feel feelings we could not feel because we were in the moment of survival can be a first step. I do not take this lightly.



In birth story circles, there is no commenting on her story. No questioning what she did or offering advice for how she might have done things different or how she should cope or heal. Being present for another’s pain can be uncomfortable for many. The impulse to calm or soothe is often more about the listener then the speaker. Most judgmental comments given to a woman who experienced birth trauma are not about her or her story at all, but rather the listener’s desire to assure herself that this would not happen to her, that she could control such events from taking place in her own life. So firstly, we must listen without rushing in to fill the silence or sorrow, without comparing it to our own experience or offering advice. Just being fully present is enough. When we go to this place the humanity and dignity emerge in all the stories. In the silence there is true connection.


Celebrating, honoring and grieving, and often times these all exist within a woman’s story, is powerful in its own right. There is also a gift we give to ourselves in the very way we tell our birth story. I invite women to tell their birth stories as a hero’s journey. The events are what they are. And yet, how were they experienced, and how does she honor her journey as that of a hero and warrior? Before beginning the time of sharing birth stories I set the space as sacred and invite them to ask themselves questions as they sit with their memory before beginning to speak. When did you first hear the Call? What did you have to give up to enter childbirth? At one moment did you feel like giving up and turning back? What did you do next? How did you know to do that? What part of yourself did you discover in birth that you did not know was there? What did you have to do that you did not know you would have to do in order to birth your baby? What moment in your birth were you brilliant and powerful? What do you know now that you did not know before?


The telling of birth stories is one of the ways a woman can integrate her experience and find in its telling her mother self awakened. In inviting birth stories to be shared as warriors returning from battle, hero’s returning from their quest, we offer women the dignity of their experience and the power of claiming their birth as Mother. There are many places where a woman will be asked to recount the birth of her baby. We need to also have spaces in which to share our stories of birthing ourselves as we birthed our child.



to be continued with final part 3

Interview with Bella Part 1

Listening to Body Wisdom, Birth as Transformation and Rite of Passage

Interview with Bella Hoskins, Doula and writer: Our conversation begins with the moment of childbirth but encompasses all three stages of initiation into the Feminine Mysteries: menarche, pregnancy and childbirth, and menopause. I am thrilled to have discovered Bella’s blog, and her work with Birthing from Within and Birth Story Circles. Bella’s is a doula, childbirth mentor, storyteller, myth maker and weaver of words. She has been supporting women in pregnancy, birth and postpartum for the past seven years, honored to bear witness to each woman's unfolding as she gives birth to herself as mother. See her blog at http://www.beyondthemap.blogspot.com/, web site: http://www.chicagobirthrite.com/

Musemother: In a world where masculine principles of competition and success reign, it is hard for a modern woman who has spent her life preparing for a career to suddenly realize she wants to be a mother. And then have to deal with the lack of female companionship once she decides to stay at home with her baby. Our feminine life processes often seem foreign to us.
What knowledge are we missing about pregnancy and childbirth, apart from the medical knowledge we get in pre-natal classes?

Bella: In an energetic or archetypal sense, childbirth is the embodiment of the Feminine. And for some women, this can be a shift, an awakening of long buried parts of themselves. I do not view this as knowledge that is missing, as much as it is an innate knowing which may have became buried or disowned, forgotten or devalued. Childbirth and motherhood can then offer the opportunity for a re-awakening or reclaiming of that which has always been.

What every woman needs to know to give birth is unique to her. In her book Birthing From Within, Pam England speaks of this, that within each woman resides her deepest question. It is not something that can be found in a book or answered by a care provider, as it resides within the woman herself. Only she knows what she needs to give birth. Digging deep to unearth this question and then living with the question is the work of preparation, far more so then having all the answers.

In the end, we cannot truly know or be prepared for birth, at least not in the ways our culture has promised. There are things that cannot be learned but only lived. Preparation has more to do then with opening oneself to dwelling freely in the unknown than in attempting to manage and control outcome. Having life grow within our womb in which we cannot see, all of the letting go that comes with pregnancy, this shows us the way.

Musemother: I love to hear birth described as a ‘hero’s journey’. Joseph Campbell said this about motherhood and I firmly agree. Women face the greatest challenge in giving over their bodies to another life. Then the further sacrifice of putting another life’s needs ahead of their own for many years. Is that what the initiation into motherhood is? About the need for self-sacrifice?

Bella: The very nature of initiation is that it is not something to be known until you have arrived there. Still, we look to those who have been initiated and ask them what it is they know. Not so that we might get to avoid the process, but so that we will know we are not alone when our time comes.

And what is this initiation into motherhood? Self-sacrifice is part of it. As women our bodies are quite literally inhabited by another and this begins what will be a life long process of a giving of ourselves to and for our child. Though many paths can bring us here, mothering is one path in which we are asked to often set aside our own small wants and desires for the sake of another. And yet, I am hesitant to suggest or to feed the climate of dichotomy we live in, a combative relationship that pits mother against child. This is the perspective that says we can tend to our own needs or our child’s, but only one can win out. This has been the seed of much mother guilt and it is helpful to neither mother nor child.

To lose old ideas of self and even some things we once thought of as requirements, such as sleep or privacy any time we want or our notions of freedom, can be a difficult adjustment. And yet the path to surrendering our small selves is where we discover a new idea of freedom, which is freedom from living only to fulfill our own wants and desires, and finding ourselves in love or service. This is not the same as sacrifice that turns mothers into martyrs. If a mother “loses herself” in the name of giving to her child, abandoning her own needs as if they do not matter, then from where is she discovering the resources needed to listen and respond to her child, from what Source does she find the capacity to give?

I would say that the initiation into motherhood is what we see in all such rites of passage: the death of the old self so a new self may be reborn. In giving birth and becoming a mother a woman will lose the self she once was and knew and assumed was “me”. Practical life becomes rearranged and there is a new orientation. Her daily life will become quite different then it was before. And yet, it is more. Giving birth offers the opportunity to awaken as mothers to our child and ourselves. It is not just that we will now sacrifice for our child, but that we now we know we have what it takes to make such sacrifices. When a woman has seen the lengths to which she will go to birth her baby and care for him/her, she discovers within herself the capacity to offer this same love to herself. When a woman has descended and embraced her shadow sister, when she has found within herself “She who knows what to do when she does not know what to do”, she arises not as martyr but fierce warrior. She brings this warrior love to her child, herself and the world.

Musemother: How can we understand giving birth as one of the 3 ‘initiations’ or transformations that women experience from menarche to menopause? Is it helpful for women to understand this deeper significance to giving birth?

Bella: What each of these rites share, beyond the biology of changing hormones, is that they are an entrance into a new self. They all require that we lose what we once were in order to fully enter into what we will become. A girl getting her first period has lost something of her childhood as she moves toward becoming a woman. This is a cause for celebration and it also involves a loss of innocence. They come together, the life cycle found in each initiation. When a woman gives birth she must release who she once was in order to birth her mother self. This is the same even if one has other children. Now, she will no longer be the mother of one, but the mother of two, or many. And the loss is mingled in with the new life.

When a woman begins menopause and enters her power as a crone, she is leaving behind her ability to give birth to children, and it symbolizes the loss of youth and fertility in many ways as well. And yet, she is now free for other creative ventures, for creating and bearing life in ways a young mother cannot, as she is busy with the work of mothering young children. (Many great writers wrote their masterpieces in menopause.) Again, the old self dies so the new might be begin.

The other similarity between these three initiations is that though marked by events, they are very much a process. Seeing it as such can be helpful for a woman in understanding the deeper significance of birth.

Menarche, motherhood and menopause are each their own labyrinth. There is a crossing the threshold that begins the journey. This could be seen as getting your first period, giving birth, or the absence of your period. We often stop here, assuming that this is all there is. When really, menarche is a beginning and it is a process of moving from childhood to young womanhood. Giving birth may place your baby in your arms and yet we become mothers not in one moment or event or day.

Menopause, even when sudden through something such as a hysterectomy, is a passage of the waning of hormones and the internal shifts that accompany this experience. We say a woman is going through menopause or that an adolescent is going through puberty. We acknowledge it as a transition, a transformation marked by an event that in reality must unfold over time. There is wisdom here for mothers. There are the weeks of pregnancy which is a process, and so too is becoming a mother a process, a journey we are walking as though walking a labyrinth.

When walking a labyrinth, one cannot often see where she is going. There are turns and curves and though the center can often be seen, we do not know exactly how we will get there. So we do what we can, which is always enough, and that is take one step after another. Only one step at a time. You may feel you are close to the center, only to realize the path is taking you back out to the perimeter again. One step at a time. You cannot get lost. You may feel confused or unsure. But unlike a maze, there are no dead ends. So you take one step at a time. Arriving at the center of the labyrinth marks the completion of something. You are now most definitely not a child but a young woman. You are now not pregnant but a mother.

You are now not going through menopause but a crone. And then we walk back out and must circle and wind back through the labyrinth. This is when we are integrating that which has taken place within us. We are bringing what we learned and weaving it into our story, creating a life from our transformation. After giving birth, this is when we learn how to be mothers and discover our new mother self in relation to the rest of our life. This is the Return of the hero’s journey.

to be continued

thanks for dropping by,

musemother