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Rituals of the Return

“In the West, other than the six-week postpartum exam, few rituals mark  the postpartum Return.”

- Ancient Maps for Modern Birth

Research rituals of the return from around the world. (Pay specific attention to seeing what you can find within your own cultural lineage.)

These are rituals that honor the soul journey that parents have been on and recognize the thresholds at which they are standing NOW -- rituals that celebrate the integration of new self-knowing. Some examples include Closing the Bones (Mexico and Morocco), Groaning Table (Great Britain and U.S.), and postpartum lying-in periods.  

• What else?

• What makes a good ritual of the Return?  

- Acknowledges the threshold being crossed.  

- Focuses on the parent(s), not the baby.  

- Awakens adult archetypes (self compassion, doing what needs to  be done, or mindfully letting go of something) instead of reinforcing child archetypes (redoing a birth experience, trying to make things pretty, upholding the idea that things should be as they were before birth).

What ritual(s) could you bring to the parents you work with? Be mindful, here, of cultural competency, cultural appropriation, and crediting of sources -- see the BfW guide to storytelling for more on that topic.