c h a p t e r s a m p l e
MOTHER BLESSINGS
honoring women becoming mothers
-by Anna Stewart
Introduction: Honoring the Mother
“What?” he cried when he saw the home pregnancy test lying on the dining room table. “Already?” We got pregnant the first time we tried, much to my husband’s disappointment.
I had already called my mom with the news in between pacing around the house. “I’m pregnant!” I told the cat. Then, “Oh my God, I’m pregnant.” I screamed at the cat.
And that’s what pregnancy is like. One second we feel such intense joy, our heart grows two sizes. The next we are scared to death.
I’d go to a prenatal appointment and be proud of my perfect weight gain and then I’d think, “Oh no, I don’t know how to use a car seat.”
It got worse. My prenatal screen for AFP3 came back elevated, which meant there was a chance I was carrying a child with Down syndrome. I was visiting my mother when the doctor called to schedule the amniocentesis. After a few more “Oh-my-gods”, I did what mothers all over the world have done and still do with their babies. I talked to him. “Okay, my dear, I think you’re just fine however you are, and we’re going to take this test so that Daddy and everyone else knows that. Let me know if you need anything.”
We barely spoke as we drove to the hospital. I was too busy talking to my baby—my first, but not my last, experience of comforting my child. I was also comforting myself. Maybe it was just denial, but I was sure my baby was fine.
Though my bladder ached (part of the deal is you have to have a full bladder), I was cheerful throughout the procedure. And I was fine for nine more days until the day before we were going to get the results. Then I let my fear get to me and I wondered how I would handle it if my child were born with a disability.
My son was fine. (Though two babies later I did have a baby with special needs, and she’s fine, too, but that’s another story).
The other thing I did—which women all over the world are doing—is I had a gathering of women. I had never heard of the term “Blessingway” so my sister and I called it a baby shower. We ate my mother’s chicken salad and passed around a polished crystal so everyone each participant could imbue it with her loving words. We sang Irish lullabies and made a collage out of old photos and pictures and words from magazines. I laminated it and my son used it as a play-mat when he was a baby.
That simple ceremony, in the house I grew up in, changed my attitude. I had always been a “do-it-myself” kind of girl and I figured I’d be just fine doing the mom thing. But having to face my child’s mortality made me think that, perhaps, I wanted them people waiting on the shore when my ship came in. I wanted to know that they would feed me, hold me, or drive me to the doctors if I asked. After the Mother Blessing I knew that they would listen to me all night if I needed it, and I knew, more than anything, that they loved my baby. Thank the stars, because about that time I was starting to realize that I was going to have to have this baby alone, just like every women, every where, for all time. For the first time in my adult life, I knew I needed to allow myself to really trust my family and friends.
Part of me liked the secret inner life I held —I daydreamed about my child who danced within my womb. I wondered what he would look like, be like, and taste like. I loved that he shared my heart, my blood, even my ice cream.
And part of me was terrified. Never having seen a birth, or even a naked pregnant women, I had no idea how much my body would change. But the inner changes were much more alarming than my swollen feet and aching back. What were we thinking when we decided to have a baby? Why hadn't anyone told me about the huge change I was about to go thorough? I knew just enough to be sure it would change my life.
My husband spent most of that first pregnancy mourning. Every time we would go out to a fancy dinner or meet friends for a spontaneous hike, he’d come home and say, “Well that’s the end of that.” It drove me crazy. Not only because it made me think he was having major second thoughts, but because I knew that loosing private, couple time was going to be the least of the changes we were about to experience. “My god man,” I wanted to yell at him, “We are going to die!” Who cares about dinner, I thought to myself as I snacked on yet another plate of cheese and crackers.
I was not depressed, remember—I was ecstatic; and also acutely aware that I had entered a portal, like a secret doorway my pregnancy had the key to unlock. I hadn’t even seen the door before, but I could tell that women who’d given birth had been through it. They had gone through the portal of birth and emerged as mothers. And, like I was about to do myself, they had entered the portal alone, stepping into the unknown, hovering between life and death, boldly going where no man has ever gone. They, literally—we, literally—hold life in our hands. And not one of us is ever the same again.
Though we prefer to put a pink dress over the fact that pregnant women are experiencing a life in transition, when you’re pregnant you know it. Although women have been giving birth for eons, each woman has to face the journey alone, and for some women this is a frightening realization. Pregnancy is a vulnerable time —on the edge between life and death. It’s physically unsettling. It brings many women close to the world of “spirits” or the feminine mystery.
In Grandmothers of the Light, Paula Gunn Allen talks about birth being the most important event in a woman’s life. It is her ticket into the adult women’s world:
Having traversed the borderland between life and death in childbirth, she is welcomed and instructed in the woman’s way. She learns the discipline of sacrifice—her body, time, nutrients, psyche, knowledge, skills, social life, relationships, spiritual knowledge and values are called into the service of her children. This passage pushes her to reach beyond whatever limits she thought she labored within, making her stronger and wiser.
No wonder women want to be drugged during this rite-of-passage. It’s a huge responsibility. It’s the biggest even of our lives and we deserve more than a few handshakes and pacifiers. We deserve (at least as much as we need) to be honored for this incredible journey.
After having two more children and attending many meaningful ceremonies, I offer all of you a guidebook to honor every woman you know who is becoming a mother. You can create your own Mother Blessings. Some people use the name Blessingway from the Navajo, and I will use both. Blessingway is a broader term that also works well for parents who are adopting their children. Whether our children come to us or through us, we still go through the portal of parenthood.
Through an intentional ceremony, rich with personal significance, our family and friends offer their heartfelt blessings as they create a physical symbol of their wishes. Mother Blessings focus on giving emotional support, commitment to being in community with the new family, and a deeper appreciation for the life change that follows a baby’s arrival.
Karen Robinson, a doula in Colorado, made a quilt with her friends and family at her Blessingway. “Not having had a Blessingway for the my first baby, I really wanted one to help me deepen the experience of bringing a child into the world. The Blessingway was a way for me to connect with the collective spirit of women and mothers around the world and through the ages who have gone through the fire to bring a new life into being. It helped me remember that all of my female ancestors had successfully given birth and that I would too. It also strengthened the bond I had with the women in the room with me. I knew that I could count on them to help me with anything I needed, especially afterwards during the period of adjusting to being a mother of two.”
As Karen reminds us, Mother Blessings are about honoring the mother (and father or partner) for taking on the responsibility of protecting and ensuring our futures. Every pregnant woman represents our sacred connection to one another, in our past, present and future. Strangers are drawn to our bellies, not because of who we are individually, but because of what we represent collectively. They give bad advice, not because they want to scare us, but because they want to support us. (Well sometimes they want to scare us but only because they too, stood on the threshold between life and death and wondered how in the heck they were going to make it.)
We need ceremonies to remind us of these transitions. We need ceremonies to feel part of community and most importantly, to express our hopes and fears, our dreams and worries, in a ritualized form. Cultures across the world mark special events—menses, marriage, childbirth, war, journeys, death—with ceremonies and rituals. They provide a formal way to understand the changes we are in the midst of, they give us a structure to make sense of the chaos within, and they offer a way to find inner peace and balance. They bring us together to celebrate, honor, and support our loved ones.
Blessingway is simply the name of one kind of ceremony. All of the examples and suggestions I offer you in this book can be used to mark many kinds of life events. You can plant a tree when a grandparent dies. You can make a banner with your friends at your wedding. You can make a necklace for a girl after she goes through puberty. You can make a personal box on your 50th birthday.
Mother Blessings is written for anyone who wants to create a meaningful ceremony to honor a woman as she becomes a mother. This book, my gift to you, provides everything from wording on invitations to instructions on making birth necklaces to deciding whom to invite. It makes it easy for anyone to host a Blessingway. It helps you figure out what elements are important to you, including bringing in your personal religious or spiritual beliefs, to make each ceremony a unique, personal, and meaningful event. Its focus is first to come together with intention; secondly, to listen to and respond to what the guest-of-honor needs as she goes through this rite-of-passage. And third, it is to make something beautiful as a community.
Creating art together gives us an opportunity for play. It helps us reconnect with the innate joy in making things. It reconnects us with the child within as we prepare to guide the child about to be born to us. It is a delightful reminder of how much fun it is to get down on the floor and get our hands dirty. It is immensely satisfying to gaze upon a product of our own hands. Making something gives form to our wishes, our blessings, and our love. When we do it together, it becomes bigger than all of us—it becomes a synergistic symbol of all the qualities we share with each other.
The stories I’ve included have been gathered over the years. I’ve changed names, rearranged events, and melded different occasions in order to be clear and in honor of the truth. So though not every story is true, all are very real.
I’ve “officiated” at Blessingways, attended as a guest, and been honored with three of my own. Next to my bed, on the wall above where my daughter slept for years, hangs a piece of driftwood from a beach in California with a rainbow of ribbons streaming down it. Tied to the ribbons are boughs of lavender, lace, a small stuffed Indian elephant and other handmade ornaments. My favorite one is not the most beautiful—it’s a piece of cardboard with pink ribbons glued on. But it is the most meaningful. My mother made it, the first thing she had ever made me and sent to me in Colorado when I was pregnant with my third child. Every time I dust the ribbon of blessings, my heart swells inside me and I say a silent blessing of gratitude for the circle of friends and family that still surround my family.
I wore the necklace my friends made for my second child at his birth. He came only a few days after the Blessingway, in a rush to be born before Christmas. When I finally took off the necklace, weeks after his birth, I tied it to a redwood stick my husband and I had made for our wedding. A life-stick, it marks all our big life events.
And the crystal imbued with love from my first Blessingway, before I even knew what they were called, sits on my desk while I write this to you, reminding me of how we are all walking a path between worlds, between what is and what could be, between what we want and what we have, between what we love and what loves us.
May your pregnancies and gestations of hope, be filled with satisfying love, deep connection and delightful laughter.
My focus is first to come together with intention; secondly, to listen to and respond to what the guest-of-honor needs as she goes through this rite-of-passage. And third, it is to make something beautiful as a community.
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Mother Blessings:
Honoring Women Becoming Mothers
Anna Stewart
200 pgs. $19.00 paperback 0976667800