the structure of initiated motherhood

“Pregnancy is the spiritual initiation and mentorship. This is where the transformation must begin. Birth is the wilderness. This is where we are to meet ourself alone, so that the mother in us can surface, and the old self can die. And postpartum is where women are witnessed. This is where we are fully received into motherhood. Until we restore this full journey, women will continue to be lost in the transition.”

In circle recently, a dear friend shared a podcast with us that gave a fresh breath of wind on the fire of my desire to hold and love women well in their mothering.

And gahhh, it’s had me reflecting.

Again.

Her words are so completely what I feel and have felt in my own journeying of motherhood. In this particular episode, Anita gives language to what my dream has been for the role of the sacred sister that I choose to embody for the women in my life, and the importance of why this must be available to us as we shed our maidenhood to move fully into motherhood. It’s not about doing things for these mommas, it is about walking beside them and reminding them of the power they have.

It’s not about saving them, or having the answers, or fixing the challenges.

It’s about helping her do her work, as she unlocks the parts of herself that she will need as she brings forth this new life, and then continues on to foster this new life into fruition in their own rite.

She shares of the rite of passage that it is to transform from maiden to mother. That birth itself is not where our transformation lays, but that it is a three-fold process. Pregnancy is the transformation, birth is the descent, and postpartum is the witnessing and the welcoming into our new self, the recognition that is necessary to receive from our community in order for us to completely move from what was to what now is. Pregnancy and birth alone do not transform us.

“If birth was the transition, why do so many women keep searching for something more? The truth is, birth is not where the transformation begins. Birth is the moment that a woman faces herself. It is the wilderness, it is the unknown, it is the underworld, it is the opportunity to explore all of these places.”

The freshly-born-first-time-mother version of myself felt this so heavily, but did not have the verbiage to know it well. This insatiable searching, this longing to be the mother I outwardly was and had to be in the daily mundane motions, but did not feel. Physically in pregnancy I transformed, I traversed birth and all that it called me to, and yet on the other side of holding my baby, it took me years to embody what it is to be the mother. To have my seat at the table of women who hold the responsibility of raising up the next generation, making confident decisions for these lives in our care, and feeling unshakeable in who we are and the value we hold. Even when what we must do goes against the grain of what society currently endorses. To face the unknown, which is the one thing we are sure to meet in motherhood, from a place of familiarity and knowing that we will rise to meet the need.

That we can. That permission doesn’t come externally.

It took nearly a decade to find myself looking inward to my own knowing to guide my mothering, instead of looking outwardly to the world around me to gather my truth.

In this modern American world we live in, here in my little local sphere, we are not witnessed. We are not initiated in the ways that women once were. And in my lived experience, the impact of this doesn’t just melt away on its own. Time does not remedy this missing piece.

“A woman does not suddenly become a mother through the act of birth itself. She must be prepared before she enters it, and she must be seen after it. This is why so many mothers emerge from birth and still do not feel initiated into motherhood — they are still feeling separated and disconnected from their power… This needs to go beyond blessingways. This is not the spiritual mentorship or preparation for the wilderness of birth. And family visiting after to hold our beautiful babe is also not the witnessing of the mother when she has stepped into this new version of self…Women are entering birth without the spiritual mentorship and initiation beforehand, and then being left completely alone afterward to make sense of it.”

What I’ve witnessed is that women are longing so fiercely for this mentorship, but standard OB care and even midwifery care as it’s come to be do not come close to filling this hungering. There’s the babyshower and the awkward games that generally leave a pregnant momma feeling more stressed out and overwhelmed with things, or a lack of things they “need.” There are facebook groups aplenty, which I realize are useful for the reasons that they are. There is chat gpt for the quick answers that feel like a fulfilling, but lack the meat and the breadth that it is to sit with another woman, to see in her eyes the love she has for you, to hear in her voice for yourself the underlying tone of love that whispers to your spirit, “I believe in you.” While we have social structures that take place for us before and after birth, very few of these land in our physical body and in our spirit as a welcoming to our new self. Truly, fully, with the reverence they deserve.

As we expand the ways that we access “care” and knowledge in our experiences of pregnancy, birth, and our entrance into motherhood, we find ourselves further and further away from this truth that it must come from within us, and that we do need community to sing us the victory song and wave our name banner when we’ve come through the other side of our descent.

Because when we aren’t able to fulfill the full rite of passage and are lost in the in-between, when we are no longer who we used to be, but not fully who we are supposed to be now, there is this continuous wondering and wavering happening that prevents us from trusting our ability to do and be. A real discombobulation of reality.

I see this in everything.

How we allow ourselves to release the old parts of our identity that can no longer be with the new parts of ourselves. Our old lifestyle not jiving with our new lifestyle. The disassociation of self and what and who we even are anymore. How this enwraps our child in every way. This is the mother-daughter wound in formation. How our children’s health is cared for (or not), what we choose to feed and nourish them (or not), the way in which we help them find their place in the community (or not), how they’re schooled, what they are to believe, how they are to behave, how they themselves are witnessed. And then when they reflect back to us who we are and we have to face those truths, how we respond to that. So much more.

And it all has roots with us, our transformation, descent, and arrival.

This is the sacred witnessing in postpartum.

“The mother is welcomed back, recognized as the new version of self, and received into their new role. We have lost the first and third steps, and this is why mothers today are still in transition. They are never fully received as mothers, and we know this. We see mothers still outsourcing, still not connected to their power, even after birth, still not trusting their inner voice, still looking to others to make decisions for them, and still embodying the maiden.”

“A woman who has fully transitioned into her new identity is not lost in the search for external validation. She does not doubt her decisions. She does not feel like she needs to keep proving that she is a good mother. And this is rife within our society. This is exactly what we see in mothers today, no matter their birth experience. They still feel unprepared for the journey of motherhood. They feel like they are waiting for something to click. They feel unseen, unworthy, and they keep looking outside themselves for answers. They ask for permission, they follow experts, they outsource. These are signs of an incomplete passage.”

My mind immediately goes to birth trauma and how this trickles into how we bond and care for the infant in our hands. How do we respond when medical intervention is being recommended for our child, but our gut tells us it is not necessary? A routine procedure doesn’t feel in alignment with our inner voice, and how do we move forward? Do we feel free and able to voice this truth, or do we slink into ourselves and allow for things to happen to our child that inside we know is not needed, not right? What about when they’re out in the world and are faced with even bigger issues? What messaging does this give our child in the long term? How will they associate to their own inner power in relation to “authorities”?

“A woman who has fully transitioned does not question whether she is a mother or whether she has the power within her. She just is. She makes decisions from within. She is fully embodied. She knows.”

“Women today are walking into birth hoping it will be fine, hoping it will change them, hoping it will go the way they want. But transformation does not come from hoping. It comes from preparation. It comes from being familiar with stepping into the void. It comes with being familiar with the unseen. She has faced it through and through during her pregnancy, and she is no longer afraid, she welcomes it. If we do not prepare women in pregnancy, they will not be ready to descend. And if we do not witness them in postpartum, they will never fully emerge as mother.”

“A woman who has been spiritually mentored in pregnancy does not resist the unknown because she has already walked into it in pregnancy and has come into relationship with it. A woman who has been spiritually mentored during pregnancy does not enter birth hoping it will transform her because she has already been transformed. This is what women are missing. “

“What does this create? It creates a culture of victimhood in motherhood. A woman who has not fully walked into birth alone will still be looking for someone to hold her afterward. In birth, she needs a midwife or a doula. In postpartum, she needs the experts to tell her how to mother. And in motherhood, she is still outsourcing every decision to her partner, her family, whoever is around her.”

“We are not building sovereign mothers. We are building mothers who still believe that they are not strong enough. And it started the moment we told them they could not enter birth alone. This is not about rejecting support, this is about rejecting dependency. This is not about birth work being wrong. It is about making sure women do not use it as a crutch.”

“The world can feel, momma, that we are not holding our full power yet. And if a mother does not own her power, no one can reflect it back to her. This is why we must walk the full rite. She emerges fully knowing who she is. When she fully knows, the world recognizes it too. And this is how we restore the value of mother. Because the value was never lost, women just forgot to claim it.”

“When a girl goes through her coming of age ceremony, she is adorned and presented before the tribe as a woman, in front of the community. Warriors who complete their initiation trials are welcomed back as men after the wilderness solo. A boy who completes his journey alone in the wild returns to a ceremonial honoring where his status as a man is affirmed. The transformation is sealed through the act of witnessing and celebration. If this final stage is skipped, the person remains in limbo. Not a boy, not a man. Not a girl, not a woman. Not fully a maiden, not fully a mother.”

This gives language to exactly how I felt the first time I shed myself in birth and stumbled into motherhood. To no one’s blame, I was absolutely not witnessed into my new role and this reflected in the early years of my mothering in every way. The truth of it is, none of my people have known how to do this in the ways that we need. They too weren’t given this type of welcoming, they too forged their own way. And so, I tell my daughter all the time how thankful I am, she’s been so patient and gentle with me as I’ve found my way here and continue to lean in. Only now, 11 and half years later, am I feeling like I finally can wear my shoes well. I don’t feel as though I need to outsource. I collaborate with the world and the people that offer me insights, instructions, ideas, and I give myself time to return home to my center and decide what is true and what is not. What to integrate, what to let go.

This has not always been true for me, the wishy washiness of “not maiden, not mother” was a very real messaging in my body for many years. The impact of influence, incredible. The decisions made based on unreliable emotional imbalance and confusion, I knew then had roots with this not feeling I’d taken my seat at the mother table, and still didn’t know how to earn my spot there. And the truth is, our daughter’s birth and my experience of it was not traumatic. It was not stolen from me. I was not forced into things that didn’t feel right to me. There was no cascade of interventions. Yet, to fully embody my mother self would take years of stumbling through what felt like failed, forced, faked mothering.

The transformation has taken me coming face to face with my feminine and allowing myself to be witnessed in my raw form by the important women in my life. The witnessing I couldn’t receive once upon a time, even if it had been offered, I didn’t know how to absorb it. To be helped and supported at that time to me felt like weakness, like agreeing to my insufficiency. And now I know, this is the inverse of the truth.

As I’ve come to know my inner power, it’s given me the ability to see this power in the women around me, even when they cannot see it for themselves. And as I’ve come into relationship with women in their raw form, their true questions and fears, the realness of what this rite of passage calls them to, I’ve felt the parts of myself that once were calloused to relationship with women, soften, accept warmth, and drink in life.

Like scar tissue, melting away.

This is why I am here now. Gathering what I have gained and digested from it all, I am offering to the mommas I sit with an opportunity to be witnessed throughout their journey in the ways that they know from a deep place they need.

So if you are feeling this inside of you, if you resonate with this and it feels true for you too — May this story be medicine for you, dear one.

Take a listen to this podcast episode, drink it in and feel it warm you. All of the quotes from this article are from this one. May you feel connected, to wise women near and far, and to the wise woman stoking the fire deep within your chest.

xo,

Gab

Again, all quotes are words of Anita from her podcast — listen here.