We all love to celebrate the baby: baby showers, with their accompanying bundles of baby-related gifts are the norm. And as much fun as those showers can be, they don’t really address the amazing rite of passage that is also occuring: a mother is about to be born (and she is going to work her butt off to get there.) Blessingways celebrate, honor and bolster the mom-to-be, as she prepares for the intense and amazing journey of birth. In a blessingway, we share our blessings with the mom-to-be, we love her up and nurture her, we gather in a sacred circle of women, we call upon our lineage and all the women that have crossed this threshold before us.
While there are many, many lovely rituals to include in a blessingway, for this one, we created a beautiful rosary or mala of sorts. Before sharing our blessings with the mama, we were led on a shamanic journey to deeply connect with the blessings that this particular mom was needing. (It was amazing how many of us had similar visions…) We then each strung a bead on a cord (or two,) shared our blessing, and left the mom with a lovely reminder of all the good juju, to help her as she was in labor. We created some birth art, with more encouragement for labor… We tied red silk threads on our wrists to remind us all to keep our good thoughts flowing towards the mama until labor and birth. We shared really good food, and of course, got in lots of belly rubs.
