Category Archives: Blog

The Sacred Union: A Recipe of the Elements

Posted on by

I just celebrated being with my partner for 26 years, 20 of these years officially married. It has not always been a smooth ride, and it was the bumps along the way that deepened our commitment. We are lucky in that way, and we worked on building a strong foundation together. So, while our path together has been a meandering one, with shifts and turns over the years, it has always led us together. Even when I’m a few steps ahead, he catches up.

What does give us a bit of an advantage is how our work has offered us more access to tools, resources, and strategies. Oftentimes, it is said that our parents are who model relationships and conflict for us – that how they treat each other sets the stage for how we expect to be treated. If we only had our parents as models, I know that I would not have made it. Not because our parents divorced (because neither pair did) but rather what was modeled for me was to stay together even when unhappily married, to not do the work to become stronger, to not be each other’s rock, and to not take the vows seriously.

I never saw my parents go on dates or boost each other up. So, you could say that my parents were an inspiration for me – about what not to do.

Studies show that happiness in an intimate relationship truly has a positive impact on our health and life expectancy. I heard someone share that they were at a wedding and a game was played to see who was with their partner the longest. The point was to celebrate longevity, not depth of happiness. Our society has a warped view of seeing commitment and loyalty as the core values to aspire to.

Let me exclaim this from the rooftops, or from my 90’s boombox: It is not enough to grow old together. We deserve to be seen, supported, valued and loved along the way. We are also meant to evolve, to deepen into ourselves as human, to find our true north star within.

Mutual growth happens when in a healthy and mature relationship. We are meant to grow in the world separately and come back together stronger, not be threatened by what each other does when we’re in the world. We are meant to rest in each other‘s presence, not need breaks from each other. That doesn’t mean we only find ourselves in each other, but a partnership is home base. We are not meant to make our partner happy. That is their work. We are meant to experience mutual delight in our shared experiences of life. That is what fosters aliveness together.

In some partnerships and relationships, one partner grows and matures into a new version of themselves. While the other partner remains the same. As the butterfly so wisely schools the caterpillar, we are meant to change. In her article, Growing, Apart, Jessie Harrold speaks more about this experience. We are not meant to only bounce back and stay the same. More importantly, going on a spiritual quest to find our soul self is not a mere hobby, it is a step towards levelling up and evolving into a more full human.

When I started to go to women’s festivals and weekends away, my partner was at first threatened by it. Not that he thought I’d meet someone else, but that I would find myself and not want to come back to him. And so that initial worry turned into a catalyst for him to start doing his own work in finding himself alongside my journey. That is what a healthy relationship is meant to do. We’re meant to inspire each other, to become better and stronger separately so that we are even more solid together.

Individuation is the process of coming home to ourselves. Differentiation is the experience of being respected, seen, and held with dignity when our views, dreams or needs are different from our partner’s. That doesn’t mean we can be on completely different paths but rather my love for women’s festivals is not a threat, and his love of basketball is received with understanding by me.

We do need to find a balance in this trifecta of needs – my needs by myself, our shared needs for mutual delight, and the need to have our life witnessed by the other. For instance, i go to dance classes by myself, we go on trips together, and at times we witness each other in our goodness.

“I pray for a world where we live in partnership rather than domination… where power is no longer equated with the blade, but with the holy chalice: the ancient symbol of the power to give, nurture, enhance life.” ~ Riane Eisler

In honour of our 20 years together, we celebrated with an intimate ceremony where we marked ourselves permanently. Getting tattoos was a way for us to be bonded together as well as declare this commitment formally, in writing if you will.

When i was dreaming up my own sigil, i wanted something that honoured the elements (namely fire and water) as well as a nod to a compass or directional energy. (I am just noticing as i write this that the root of compassion is compass, and not just com-passion.) My commitment fuses the elements as a compass back to love: Air offers us a chance to listen so that we can connect together; Fire gives us alchemy and transformation through passion; Water teaches us how to be more intimate by offering space for our feelings; and Earth reminds us to root together. At the centre is Spirit, a reminder to trust our inner knowing. My partner had just read The Chalice and the Blade by Riane Eisler and so we noticed the synchronicity to these symbols too.

I have learned that a sacred and true union is one where:
*Physical proximity does not match the closeness that is fostered by emotional intimacy
*You make each other laugh
*You inspire each other
*You are each others biggest fan and supporter
*You can feel you lost self around the other
*Individuation happens as we hold trust and respect and my opinions and views are heard
*Time apart doing things we love is healthy
*You still find the other delicious, grey hairs and all
*Maturity and growing together creates the long road
*They takes your needs and feelings seriously
*True partnership embodies maturity
*Celebrate life, not love alone

We are not the same humans that met in our mid-twenties. Our lives have shaped and carved out new versions of us, together. We became parents together and these shared roles have also catalyzed us. It is through our commitment to learn how to communicate our needs and make requests that we have been able to trust that we have each other’s back. It is also my partner’s understanding that the work that needs to be done at home is not my work as the wife, woman and mother. It is the responsibility that comes with being an adult – it’s not called ‘adulting’ for no reason.

There are many theories about love, many resources for healthy relationships, and attachment theory “experts.” I have previously shared Susan Campbell’s 5 Stages of Relationship Building myself. Another theory i love that displays various types of love is Sternberg’s Triangular Theory. And yes, since it’s based on a triangle, i loved the way it connects to my tattoo and the elements.

“Matrimony is the workings of alchemy upon the solitary, sufficient human heart. It isn’t the affirmation of human affection. It is the redemption of that affection, recasting it as spirit citizenship. It is the mothering of a culture.” ~ Stephen Jenkinson

In his book, Matrimony, Culture, and the Heart’s Work, Stephen Jenkinson urges us to remember that matrimony is the inner domain of creating a family culture. One thing that my partner and i have come to agree on is that anything that is built on ceremony, commitment, and connection is worth working on. It is also a long game, so we can’t always know where we are going, only that we want to move along this life path together and alongside each other.

Ultimately, love is an ever-emerging vessel that moves with us. It expands when we let our heart out of its safety cage. It also needs care and attention, treated with dignity and respect, and always, always seen with reverence. When we close ourselves to love, and the work it demands of us, we close ourselves to the reward of true belonging.

Childbirth is a Time Travel Machine

Posted on by

My eldest child just turned 17. Born during Pride weekend, and via emergency C-section, this kiddo who made me a mother also initiated me into a new life and path as a woman, therapist, and mystic in general.

I had other plans with how they would come into the world. I had really wanted a home birth and thought i did everything i could to manifest it. It was this birth that taught me how little i was in control of this process, even if it was via my body. My body became the vessel and portal for my child to emerge. I spoke about it in a very early journal article here, if you want more of a summary of the birth story.

Little did i know then that my newborn babe, whose birth was supported by medical intervention and surgery, would also rely on modern medicine to become more of themselves years later. If being born on Pride Sunday (while the medical team shared their Pride festivities’ plans no less) was an oracular hint at all, it comes to no surprise that my kiddo is once again relying on medicine to become fully herself. They also like to be on time and have a singular focus, coming home to themselves as the Cancer Sun they are.

It all makes so much more sense now.

In my studies about menstrual rites of passage called Blood Rites, i have learned from Jane Hardwicke Collings that how we are born sets the stage for how we move through the world and how we make decisions. When we are initiated by menarche, it creates a blueprint for how we care for ourselves and listen to our body’s wisdom. Our first sexual experiences pave the way for how we view sex and our own pleasure. Each blood rite is a stage of the spiral called life and sets the stage for the next iteration.

Our Blood Rites:
1) Birth is the model of who we become
Be it a home birth, free birth, supported by midwives or a c-section, they all are an initiatory portal that paves the way
2) Menarche
We know that our menstrual cycle is a vital sign for our overall health. But did you know that how it is received and honoured is also a key part of the iniation?
3) Sexual awakening and Eventual Union
Initiation of sexual experience is our sex code. For instance, even in a consensual experience, did we learn to centre his pleasure. This can have a hold on our embodiment of love moving forward.
4) Conception and Birth
The conception and birth of our own children also play a role in our story, namely how we experience postpartum connects to our own birth story as we as sets the course for our child’s journey through life.
5)Menopause
The way in which we navigate menopause is a testament to our earlier blood rites. It is also a reflection of the trauma we may have endured earlier in our life and did not heal.

No pressure. And also, thank-you for this map that was unfolding all along. The linear path of life we were taught never made sense to me. I’m so grateful for the reframe of a spiral instead. It was hidden in plain site but needed me to unseen the lies that were repeated until they felt like truth. In her informative article called From Womb to Tomb, Jasmine Alicia Carter unpacks these stages more.

I like this reframe from a popular book – “the body keeps the lore.” It’s not just that the body holds memories or keeps the score of what happened, but also our body is the site of our own mytho-poetic saga.

I shared recently the story of Vasalisa and Baba Yaga. In that folktale, we see how Vasalisa has to learn to trust herself in order to be fully initiated by the rite of passage of becoming her Self. Maybe Baba Yaga was a real human. Maybe she was the dark psyche of Vasalisa. Maybe her doll truly was magical. Maybe it was her own self-sufficientness that she didn’t know she had.

In the birth portal, we can look at the story of Inanna, and the gates she goes through in order to strip down and become whole unto herself. In Pam England’s body of work, Birthing from Within, we pull from Inanna’s lore to understand the process of becoming a mother. Those of us that birthed our child via Cesarean can also relate to this story.

The C-Section that birthed your child into being is no different than the seven gates Inanna had to cross in order to become her full self. Receiving a Cesarean is major abdominal surgery that cuts through seven layers of skin. The initiation our body experiences mirrors the descent into the cave.

The process takes us through a journey that requires a descent through the darkness, and then emerging on the other side of it a mother. I can’t help but notice the similarity to Inanna’s journey through the seven gates of descent as she went to meet her sister in the underworld. She had to sacrifice herself, her body, and die in order to be reborn even stronger. Maybe I’m reaching, but a C-section is a major abdominal surgery that cuts through seven layers of skin.

Maybe I’m reaching but the stages of healing include the states of mourning – denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance; as the body heals in stages, so does this practice of acceptance. It can take time to heal from each stage and level of scarring. Being in relationship with the scar is part of the growth and healing and takes time.

Maybe I’m reaching, but I can’t help but notice that this is a very similar experience to our own rite of passage journey. Not in the surgery itself, but in the reclamation that we too give birth to new life – ourselves and our child – even if we have a C-section. Most importantly, we also need to entrust our care to others as we just had major surgery. We need the support of others to feed and nourish us, tend to our wounds, warm our bodies, and do the work that is needed so that we can rest and heal. The wound that is the site of our child’s birth needs to become a scar that heals, in order for us to become whole.

Becoming a mother is an initiation. Pregnancy is the separation from our old self and so is a threshold. Birth is the transition threshold that offers a portal that we push our baby into the world, and therefore our new identity. Postpartum is the becoming of what has emerged, and so our adjustment time becomes the integration. It is the initiation that comes with the invitation to expand.

Similar to the chrysalis that hosts the goo that becomes a butterfly, we are the vessel of our child’s emergence. It is one thing to emerge, and another thing all together to become. That is a process that takes time. This is why having a ceremony on the other side can be really empowering, like Closing the Bones or a women’s circle.

Marion Woodman shares in her pivotal book The Pregnant Virgin that how you are born predicts your way of making decisions. I was born via c-section and so was my eldest daughter. According to this theory, that means we actively avoid conflict. I had to admit it, but there is some truth to this for me. The original conflict is the push to come into the world. Not that surgically assisted birth is simple, but the coming into the world at that exact moment can be more easeful.

“In the womb, we marinate in the energy that becomes the foundation of our beginnings, our sense of self.” ~ Iyanla Vanzant

Raising our own children now has a way of playing a game with time. It brings back our own childhood in the present as parts of us become activated. Is my melancholy or loneliness related to my mother? Is our PMS a trait or an example of luteal rage? Am I repeating an inherited intergenerational trauma trait?

I’ve come to believe that we are born at a time when what we have to offer the world is what is needed. Or maybe it’s the healing that my line needed and wasn’t able to do before me. I believe that we are here now for a reason. What I’m learning and unlearning for myself and others is part of the alchemy that needs to happen for change to be manifested. This is especially true for those of us who have children in our lives (in whatever way) because they are the change that we need to keep this momentum going.

“The perinatal portal establishes a spiritual, psychological, and energetic connection from Mom’s present to her implicit, embodied past.” Jessica Tomich Sorci and Rebecca Geshuri, When Good Moms Feel Bad. Our early attachments add to our blueprint and this blueprint maps out the details of our attachment wounds and sense of belong. We know that anything that doesn’t get processed or healed in our childhood can materialize again when our children are the same age we were when we were hurt.

Maybe our children are not our legacy, but our initiation to live more fully and mindfully so that we can step into our purpose. That may be motherhood and it may not. Having discernment is what allows us to trust what is our calling. Otherwise we martyr ourselves and call motherhood our service.

“All the eggs a woman will ever carry form in her ovaries when she is a four-month old fetus in the womb of her mother. This means our cellular life as an egg begins in the womb of our grandmother. Each of us spent 5 months in our grandmother’s womb, and she in turn formed within the womb of her grandmother. We vibrate to the rhythms of our mother’s blood before she herself is born.“ ~ Layne Redmound, When the Women Were Drummers

We also now know that egg that formed us was first created in our grandmother’s womb. It might sound witchy, and while it is just that, it is also scientific. Think of your own maternal grandmother. Do you know her story? When was she born, where was she born? It might play a role in your own story as it is all connected.

So it’s not just how we were born and lived our life, but also how our mothers experience it is a model for us. If your mother didn’t know to embrace postpartum (or menopause) or resented it or didn’t understand it, this is something to intentionally unpack and of course correct now in your own timeline.

Take a moment and think back to your own birth. Do you know the story? How did your mother experience it and the early postpartum period?

The care a woman receives in the first 40 days after birth shapes the next 40 years of her and her child’s life. It’s no wonder that there has been a re-awakening towards the care we receive after becoming parents. It is not in fact enough to focus on the newborn’s needs. Newborn parents also need care and support as they too are being born into this new identity.

Birth is the catalyst of transformation. It is not just how we give birth. It is a rebirth of ourselves in this new identity.

All births are a Rite of Passage. We become something new, birthing a new reality into being. How it happens does not matter as much as the fact that it happened. The initiation that is becoming a mother and parent needs the transition stage of birthing a new being into life.

“Becoming a mother leaves no woman as it found her. It unravels and rebuilds her. It cracks her open, takes her to her edges. It’s both beautiful and brutal, often at the same time.” ~ Nikki McCahon

This means we need to be intentional about stepping into being who you have never been before. A mother is becoming something new so we need community, and being seen, as well as resources, rituals and ceremony.

Birthing your baby is the part we focus on, and yet birthing yourself into this new identity of motherhood is an initiation of a lifetime. To be a mother is not just a role but a sacred spiritual transformation and responsibility. To be entrusted with creating new life for this world is no small task and deserves more reverence and respect. The physical, emotional, spiritual and mental healing process that comes after the surgery are a part of our ascent. We need to be held and deserved to be witnessed in this process.

Birth is not just a moment. It’s the ongoing initiation that leads to transformation. Becoming a mother is a sacrifice of who we were and becomes a portal to something new that’s being born, and it not just our child.

Menomorphosis and The Lost Art of Ceremony

Posted on by

As part of my initiation of turning 50 last year, i gifted myself a last step of integration that came with this pivotal birthday. As i have been immersing myself in womb healing training and offerings thanks to my perimenopause awakening, i felt called to receive a womb massage called Sobada from a traditional Mayan healer. Mexico has a special place in my heart and connects me to my mother. So, i took my family to Mexico. I spoke about the trip a bit in another post.

This part of my passage was transformative. The massage and womb ceremony were just what i needed to tend to my changing body. What happened at the end is what will stay with me for years to come. During the session i received Closing the Bones medicine. My body was encased in fabrics that are indigenous to Mayan culture. They are sacred, woven scarves called rebozos that create a womb-like holding of the body, very much like a chrysalis or Egyptian mummy.

“After decades spent waiting, she took her place as an Elder when those elder than her had not, because those elder to them had not. She initiated herself so that one day she could initiate someone else.” ~ Rebecca Campbell

My eyes were covered the whole time, and this offered me more internal visioning. It brought me down and through. It was during this descent that I felt the presence of my grandmothers. As my bones and body were put back in place, my red thread line joined me. My mother and grandmothers came to be with me from beyond the veil. They sat at my feet and offered me company, presence, and the missing community i have been searching for. What they also shared with me was gratitude for my decision to provide myself this loving touch because in doing so, i was also healing them. My healing was their healing. And i received the closure i needed, as well as the confirmation that i am on the right track.

What a true honour to be held this way. This session offered me the clarity and confidence i needed to step more calmly onto my next stage of life. In more ways than one, i am evolving.

Our ancestors knew something about gathering and marking times of change. No matter where your people are from or what they celebrated, it was with reverence and ritual. Births and deaths were honoured, sacred unions were celebrated, and all were seen as sacred passages of initiation and transformation.

We have lost this art of being in sacred gatherings. Our mothers and grandmothers maybe didn’t get to have this honouring as ageism and misogyny stole this from them. I never got to see the goddess rise in my own mother. Moreover, I wasn’t able to realize that my mom was a goddess. I am healing this mother wound and gate of grief in real time now, even after my mom’s death.

In a few days time, i will be offering a ceremony for women who are standing at the menopause threshold, or have already crossed it and didn’t get to experience an initiation for menopause. It is never too late to experience the ceremonial medicine that marks the blood rites of passage. I am doing it as a way to honour my mother and what she didn’t get to receive. I feel like i have her blessing now that she has been present during this stage of my becoming.

My mother’s death was a catalyzing experience for me. It created a shift in my timeline, and i think ultimately brought me back to my original blueprint. For the last 4 years, i have been learning the sacred art of anointment, both as a way to fully embrace my priestess path and spiritual devotion as well as honour my lineage. My mom was a chemist, and studied aromatherapy and essential oils. I inherited her many books and supplies about aromatherapy, herbal medicine, and plant allies. I will never know the whole story about her inspiration, but i do know she wanted more for her life and turned to creating art like this, so this is part of my motherline. I am finding my own way with it, by incorporating the oils i make with love and intention as part of my rituals and ceremonies, and regular devotional practice.

The stages in between times of transition, of blood rites and rites of passage like adolescence and perimenopause are thresholds. They are the liminal space between two landings. This is like the chrysalis stage in the story of becoming a caterpillar. Known as clay time as things make more of an impression of who were becoming in these rites of passage, we need to be held during this messy and tumultuous time.

In the book, The Menopause Brain, the author shared coming across the word “menostart” as an alternative to menoPAUSE. I appreciate this reframe because it is not true that things are only ending at this stage of life. So much also begins. Or at least there is the potential for it. That’s why we need to honour it with ceremony in order to reclaim this stage of life with the reverence it deserves.

I came up with a word that truly encapsulates this change for me – menomorphosis. It creates a helpful frame for the transformation that comes with menopause. There truly is alchemy in the goo that is perimenopuase. It is not just a fertile void or hot sweats – it is the fire that is coming back alive to help create something new from something old.

Thresholds like perimenopause offer us a chance to slow down and find intention in the initiation. Similar to pregnancy and birth, they offer us an invitation to step into our full experience in this rite of passage. Rites of passage are initiatory acts of crossing from one chapter in our life to another; from maiden to mother, to sage and crone.

“Initiations are a sacred offering of what needs to die so that we can live what is ours to live.” ~ Blaire Lindsay

Perimenopause offers us a reset. It is a time to step into our power as a woman and it offers an initiation of a spiritual transformation. The act of being witnessed through the change offer us the chance to step more confidently into the next chapter of our life story. Otherwise, we persist in a spiritual purgatory of sorts, a liminal space between two worlds. When we are not held in community, our soul and psyche struggle to find a place to land; it is our soul that is in crisis.

Pause before the Change
Developmental stages are physiological changes we all go through. Rites of passage fuse the science and biology of developmental stages with the spiritual initiation that is meant to support it. When we bring ceremony into the change, it facilitates a deeper initiation and ultimate ascent. We have lost the language and relevance of ritual and ceremony. This may be because we wanted to separate church from state, but i think it’s also because men in power didn’t want the strength and expertise of women to shine. It is in medicine, shamanism, ceremony and gathering that women are strong after all.

We need to endure the hardships in order to embrace the gifts that come with menopause.

While we surely need to embrace this inevitable change, we need to grieve our former self and what is now over. I’m not even talking about our bodies here. Don’t get me started on that, or maybe that is another journal yet to be written. This transition does come with a change in our energy and capacity as we clean house so that we can shed what is no longer needed. Luckily, with this loss comes an awakening – the birth of our “I Don’t Care” part – that had to grow out of the burn-out of the Good Girl and What About Me parts of us. What may be a consequence of that is the added loss of relationships as some folks who preferred us nice and polite will struggle with our new-found liberation.

A Way with Words – The Etymology of Words
The word sacrifice offers a hint to what is at its core – The root word of sacrifice is ‘sacer’ – to make sacred. So, when we sit with this reframe, we can see initiations as a sacred offering of what needs to die so that we can live more intentionally with what is still alive in us now. Sacrifice requires courage, devotion, and trust. It helps to think of our body as a story book character experiencing a fairy tale arc of surprise, surrender, and transformation.

Rituals bring us back in rhythm with life, and offer more harmony with nature, life, each other, and spirit itself. The word ‘rite’ bleeds right into its home in ritual. The Sanskrit word for ritual is rta and means ‘cosmic order’ or a natural flow of the universe. If we want to reclaim this ancient and universal understanding, this primordial truth, we need to remember that rituals are designed to honour significant moments and transitions in our lives. Be it starting school, graduating, our first job, or break-up, our home, all are thresholds we are meant to be walked through, not step across alone.

There is a song i love that keeps reminding me that life is a ceremony. We don’t need to host extravagant galas or go on expensive retreats to live a ceremonial life. The root of the word ceremony is ‘caerimonia’, the Latin word means sacred rites, religious worship, and a felt sense of awe and reverence. It is no wonder then, that being in ceremony changes us. It is meant to as it offers a deeper connection to our wombic home. Ceremony weaves us back into the original fabric that is our full aliveness, and it offers us a reminder of our shared existence on this living earth.

I have spoken before that ritual and ceremony are the first practices of therapy, of mind and soul medicine. In their beautiful book, The Seven Circles: Indigenous Teachings for Living Well, Chelsey Luger and Thosh Collings share a detailed list of benefits that ceremony offers folks. Participating in ceremony as a witness as well as the main guest of honour offer similar balms for ourselves. It can strengthen our community and re-villaging hopes as it restores our relationships and strengthens morale; it fosters both spiritual health as well as reminds us of our place within nature and the land, by also expanding and deepening our worldview, and it regulates our bodies to prepare for other life transitions.

It is through the practices of ritual and ceremony that we can mark a clear arc and story – through a beginning until the end. There is a clear container and they are meant to change us.

“A woman’s initiation includes many moments of crossing a threshold. This threshold is the bridge to our feminine soul, and crossing over is the beginning of becoming.” ~ Sue Monk Kidd

We are meant to be seen in our new skin upon stepping through the threshold. Group ceremonies that gathered folks together offered the witness element that is so missing now. Where are our elders, the village aunties who can pass down their wisdom? It is no wonder that social media is having a hay day with perimenopausal folks sharing their experiences – gone is the sacred ceremony and instead we have Instagram and Tiktok. This loss of feminine rites of passage has made way for a fabricated and soul-deprived world, and this loss highlights the even bigger theft that is the degradation of the Sacred Feminine.

Body and Soul
Since we are a body and also a mind and soul, it merits understanding that our identity also adapts, grows, and ultimately evolves with each threshold we step through. In order to become whole onto ourselves, we need to find our centre, that soul self within so that we can come into balance. This is where we can focus so that our self energy will be strong against the tides of change and external dis-ease. This is where ritual comes in, as a way to deepen into our devotion to our life.

For women and womb carriers, we have our own unique reproductive codes that mirror seasons. Starting from our mother’s conception and birth, flowing through to our own conception and birth, all the way past our birth, menarche, sexual initiation, and possible birth of our own children, we weave a tapestry of our lives right within our body. Each month offers a rite of passage with the phases of the moon, as well as our menstrual cycle – rites of separation, transition, and integration. Surely these are physical transitions and they are also emotional and spiritual. They are also relational simply because we are relational beings who thrive in connection, and become more fully actualized and initiated when we are witnessed and held.

“Without rituals to make a firm demarcation between the profane and sacred, between what is us and what is not us, we tend to identify with archetypal patterns of being – hero, Father, Mother, etc. We forget that we are individual human beings; we allow ourselves to be inflated by the power of the unconscious and usurp it for our own. And we do this not knowing what we do and that we do it.” ~ Marion Woodman

It is the birth of our soul self and nurturing it that we come back in right relationship with ritual and the sacredness of each day, moving it from mundane and ordinary to divine and universal.

It is our soul seed that waits for us to find her, to nourish her, as it is this deeper connection with ourselves that allows us to move through descent and ultimate initiation. When we take time to listen to our inner knowing and wisdom that resides there, we can be met with our fullest self and move through life with more intention, presence and joy. It is a reclamation of coming home to self. When we drop the ego away and remember that our soft strength is in that seed, the soul guides us. We need to only listen.

Our body experiences this rite of passage so it’s more of a descent than an evolution. Like postpartum, we are not meant to bounce back. If we can reframe developmental stages as initiations, we are not as surprised by the sacrifice that is left on the altar. In this case, it is our former body.

If our body is a map, it is also a temple. I liken my womb to being my oracle so i treat her like an altar. I have learned to bow at her wisdom, and hold reverence for her story, as it is not mine alone. It is also my mother’s and all the mothers who came before me. It is also my children, and those that have yet to come.
Midlife is a threshold to get back on track.

“There is a time in our lives, usually in mid-life, when a woman has to make a decision – possibly the most important psychic decision of her future life – and that is, whether to be bitter or not. Women often come to this in their late thirties or early forties. They are at the point where they are full up to their ears with everything and they’ve “had it” and “the last straw has broken the camel’s back” and they’re “pissed off and pooped out.” Their dreams of their twenties may be lying in a crumple. There may be broken hearts, broken marriages, broken promises.” ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estés

We have forgotten that it is in mid-life that we are meant to retrieve our soul. Human developmental theorists like Carl Jung, Marion Woodman, Rudulf Steiner and Bill Plotkin show us this clearly. They also suggest rites to honour these bookends, or chapters of our life. It can be pilgrimage, quests, or sacred fire and moon dances. It can also look like a fresh hair cut or boudoir photo shoot for your eyes only.

I don’t need more information and content creation from 20 and 30 year olds who know things, surely. I love them for their passion and commitment to living their best life. What i need are elders who have walked a similar path to me already, who know something about life. Who laugh at the ego that gets in the way and instead embody eros without a second thought.

“Sagescence brings with it many gifts. We become more self-focused and motivated to take care of ourselves. We are gifted with the opportunity to heal all the unhealed parts of ourselves.” ~ Jane Hardwicke Collings

Healing is indeed a part of this process. We need to heal what is not repaired so that it stops being the force that moves us through life. That means we have to remove the internalized patriarchal lens about how we have been living our life till now.

It also means needing to heal from our own past experiences and trauma, as well as ones we inherited.

I don’t want to grow bitter or resentful, and fade away quietly, unseen and ignored. We need to shed the roles that keep us nice, polite, oppressed & repressed. (Thanks Sarah Durham Wilson for this phrase).

We need to remember it is our own life we are here to live. We aren’t here to take care of others and not rest or attune to our own pleasure, only to exhaust ourselves and die after a life of stress.

It is never too late to offer yourself a ceremony. Any time we do something with intention and ritual, our soul seed blossoms. This also allows for more healing and completion to happen, especially for the blood rites from our past that were not honoured. Maybe your menarche was not celebrated, or your baby shower was more a party than a women’s circle. It is never too late to complete the initiation that is woven in your womb – they are all connected as one red thread after all.

If we can walk our human journey called life with our eyes wide open, with a consciousness of knowing about where we’re meant to be going, we don’t just find ourselves in mid life stunned about how we got here. We can instead arrive at it with more surefootedness and clarity.

Being in ceremony offers you this commitment. You can’t go wrong when you commit to yourself.

A Rite to Rage: Sacred Rage Rites

Posted on by

I grew up being told that it wasn’t okay for me to be angry. This is something that my parents told me directly.

Good girls don’t get angry.

Nice daughters don’t react.

Hold your tongue.

I grew up with anger being a bad word, and not an expression I was allowed to feel or embody, especially at and about my parents. My parents’ anger and rage were not always proportional to what I did and so I grew to fear anger. I know now it’s because my parents didn’t have the capacity to hold it. They were not allowed to feel angry as children either. Their unprocessed feelings continued to live inside them, only to be misplaced onto me when they became adults.

“In an effort to be perceived as good, we have denied ourselves the potency of what rage can empower.” So says Meggan Watterson in her book, The Girl Who Baptized Herself. And yet, the good we are is inherent as to what it means to be human. Our goodness is not meant to be performative. Her book Mary Magdalene Revealed came into my life in a very timely way. One key take-away was the original 7 Powers of Mary Magdalene that later became the 7 sins; one if them was Rage that ultimately warped into a shadow interpretation of Wrathful Vengeance.

Now I know that it wasn’t that I wasn’t allowed to be angry, but that these feelings were too hard for my parents to navigate. They didn’t know how to temper their own anger or allow it to be present when they were children. This is especially true for my mother. So I internalized this inherited limiting belief that anger is wrong.

I no longer resent my mom for her anger because I know what to do now to let my anger be felt and processed, and move through me. I trust when i sit with a feeling, that feeling is telling me something: Resentment tells us that something needs to be expressed or grieved because someone else has something that you also want and don’t have. Now I sit with so much more wisdom, empathy, and understanding about my mom‘s anger as it was unexpressed pain, trauma, and grief that she also had to hold in only for it to explode.

She also inherited this anger.

Our foremothers were forced to internalize anger and become small, mainly because women’s anger was threatening. Not to ourselves, but to men and folks who wanted to re-shift power to benefit them.

“There’s a rage that love inspires that serves as information and there’s a rage that seeks to destroy. understanding the distinction between the two is the difference between healing and remaining in the grip of suffering.” Meggan Watterson.

Is it perimenopause or rightful rage?

Or is that the scream that has been living in your body the people pleaser or nice girl who is burnt out. Are you tired of being ignored or teased?

PMS as we know it has become pathologized and negative. So has perimenopause and the fact that so many women are wanting a divorce in mid-life.

Maybe that hot flash is your body screaming for your attention. Maybe it is your Inner Fire telling you have power. I have noticed that I often feel a surge of heat when I sit with a client who is telling me about an injustice, pain, or lack of support in their life.

Let’s take a moment to remember what our menstrual cycle teaches us. We go through inner seasons and moods with each menstrual phase. For instance, our Luteal Stage that appears right before our bleed is the Truth-Teller. It reveals what has not been able to happen for us – that can come with sorrow or rage. It is meant to be processed or metabolized. Our menstrual cycle is also connected to our motherline, the red thread that has continued down from our foremothers. It is also that cycles back each month in our own body. So often, the rage we feel now is due to a lifetime (or several) of not getting our needs met. That anger may feel disproportional to the specific moment, but it is a call for our attention for something to change.

It’s been a reclamation for me to listen to my anger as a messenger and having a rightful place in my emotional ecosystem.

I needed to heal my Inner Angry Teenage Girl

One key thing I’ve done to reclaim this is to repair what my body needs to express anger. That means moving it through, baring my teeth and making noise. It means embodying the sacredness of the feeling, and not the aggression that used to take over.

Speak your truth. Anger is a superpower.

It’s a reckoning.
It’s a re-wilding.

We have a lot to be angry about.

Anger is a valid response to something that happened. It is an oracle. It is a truth teller. It shows us a need or boundary has been violated. My anger is valid as it tells me something powerful. The difference is not taking this power and misusing it, but to let the power be an energy field within.

We know now it’s never too late to rewire and repair the needs that we had that weren’t met. So now, as I sit with the parts of me who have metabolized old stories, one thing that has been so helpful for me is to let the anger move through me and out. Doing it in a way that feels more like a channel versus a reactive explosion is the key.

My Parts Fight with Yours
It is when our Parts jump onboard the bus and refuse to leave the driver’s seat that conflict erupts. It is our parts that are in conflict with each other, both within us and between us. Maybe that thing we call mom rage is just a young part who’s screaming WHAT ABOUT ME? “Sometimes i wonder if the raging mother – me who fantasizes about throwing the pasta against the wall, is simply the acting out of my inner child who is angered and hurt at the injustice of being so chronically overlooked.” Anna Mathur

If we can slow down and sit with curiosity about a feeling we’re having, it is a messenger. It is trying to tell us something first somatically, and then we bring consciousness to it with our mind.

Those of us socialized as girls and conditioned to be good girls were taught to internalize our anger because being angry isn’t nice. And yet the world we live in is the opposite of nice. And so now our unprocessed rage and generational pattern of being quiet are starting to erupt. And maybe that’s exactly what those in power were afraid of so many centuries ago.

I believe that we are here now for a reason. What I’m learning and unlearning for myself and others is part of the alchemy that needs to happen for change to be manifested. This is especially true for those of us who have children in our lives (in whatever way) because they are the change that we need to keep this momentum going. I first had to unlearn that limiting belief that anger is scary or destabilizing so that my children can embody it more fully.

“We cannot contain our soft heart without a spine.” Adriana Rizzolo

Anger is a mobilizing feeling and expression. It needs to move to go somewhere. So, we need to listen to the soft animal of our body. We need to feel that anger rise as heat in our body, that fight that is trying to get out. It is not wanting to fight others but rather, fight for us, on our behalf. And yes, we need to thank it for its message, and turn towards it with love and understanding.

Our feelings have a somatic experience in our body. It is a sign of strength to have a wellspring of emotions. The fire inside me is my Inner Oracle telling me when something is wrong. Learning how to titrate it and still vocalize and let it be present is where the alchemical change happens. I’m reclaiming my anger as an Oracle messenger telling me that an injustice has been experienced. My anger isn’t just for me, but for all of us. And maybe that’s exactly what those in power were afraid of so many centuries ago. If we can slow down and sit with curiosity about a feeling we’re having, it is a messenger. It is trying to tell us something first somatically, and then we bring consciousness to it with our mind.

Midlife rage is unprocessed anger from our life and before our life. Our wombs and lives have inherited how our mothers expressed anger and conflict. Rage is present because it wants something to be different and it’s mobilized in our body and our nervous system as a fight energy. Sometimes it’s righteous or sacred rage because our needs or boundaries aren’t being met.

Often what happens is we couple anger with its shadow side of aggression and uncontrolled action. Anger shows us when our needs have not been met, namely, our boundaries and also what we find to not be aligned with our values. The more we keep our anger at bay it can become a volcano that explodes out of context or out of proportion. We can use anger as an Oracle, a Messenger telling us what our needs are. Anger is a mobilizing feeling and expression. It needs to move to go somewhere. Anger itself is only information. What we DO with it is what matters.

“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.” Arundhati Roy

There is so much to be angry about and I think our right and rite to anger were the missing ingredient that is needed to create this change for a better world. Patriarchal forces don’t like us to be angry. So they made us internalize the anger as a bad feeling.

We need to move through this together to reclaim the rightful place anger has in our body and experience so that we can express it.

At the beginning of this year, I didn’t foresee that there would be a cascade of more violence, misogyny, and hatred. And yet I’m also not surprised. Maybe the momentum that we need to shapeshift into the fire horse energy of this year is embodying anger as fuel.

A Mom’s Mental Load: Carrying your own Vasilisa Doll

Posted on by

I just got back from a vacation. My first beach holiday in years. It was to honour my 50th birthday, not as a break from life. Yes, i wanted to slow down and relax, just not to escape my life. Vacations are not meant to to get a break from our everyday life, but to enhance it with a dose of pleasure and adventure. As a global citizen, this is also a privilege to experience other cultures and learn from their wisdom and experiences. The way I do them is to infuse intention, ritual, and soul tending in my time away. If we assume a vacation is going to cure burn-out, we will be grossly disappointed. This is especially true for a week away. If we view a holiday like a personal retreat, that may help. We do also need to integrate the time away into our life. Otherwise, the trip becomes redundant. It becomes a stand-alone event, forgotten quickly.

As a mother, a holiday is especially not a vacation from life. In many ways, it is more work, just different. Mental load, decision fatigue, and overwhelm with less resources play into what gets packed in our suitcase when we travel. Sure, we get a pause from work and that undivided attention to our family gets the front seat. It takes a lot of self-love and will power to also remember we are also on this vacation. Otherwise, we as moms continue to not be seen or heard.
Speaking of which, mental load is not a task itself, but the ongoing running to-do list that never ends. So it’s not so simple just to give part of it to someone else. They also need to start to take on the load that is unseen. We need to move away from the internalized Super Mom part that weaponizes our competence at the same time as challenging our partner’s incompetence. It’s not that they can’t do the work; it’s that it is benefitting them to not have to do it, yet.

Do you know the story of Vasalisa and her doll? It’s part of the much larger tale of Vasilisa and Baba Yaga. One of the most powerful take-aways for me was that Vasalisa had what she needed all along. If you haven’t read the story yet, you might get some spoilers here so run to get your own copy of Women Who Run with the Wolves and then continue reading.

If you already know of the tale-as-old-as-time story, or don’t have time to read – because truly who does anymore, and that is part of my point with this exact article – continue reading and i’ll play the role of Vasalisa’s doll for you…

Vasilisa was a young girl whose mother died after a long illness. In the final days of her life, she made a small doll that was infused with magical qualities. Mainly they were acts of service that helped Vasalisa during times of struggle and initiation. These acts were what a mother does when her daughter needs support and guidance. It was the doll who helped her separate the poppy seeds from the dirt, who made a delicious stew and meticulously darned clothing, and who cleaned the messy home of Baba Yaga.

Some folks (including me) have interpreted this story as an archetypal mirror to having an Inner Mother or Self-Care Part who can step in when things are hard. The story is about trusting our intuition, our body’s wisdom, and the initiation of becoming an adult, AND ALSO a reminder that we are not meant to do it alone.

So, how does that relate to mom load?

Maybe you also heard Chappell Roan make a bold statement last year in an interview where she talks about her friends who are parents, and referenced them being in hell.

Guess what?

She’s right and what I also think she’s speaking about is that parenting is fucking hard. It’s especially hard these days, in ways that never existed before.

What makes it hard is not that something changed in our children.

It’s that we have lost our way to have a village of support. Who cares for the caregiver?

We get burnt out or overwhelmed and assume the mental load because so many of us want to show up differently (a.k.a. better than we received as children). This can lead to martyrdom. Our to-do list is so long it becomes a badge of honour in our toxic productivity oriented world, and yet it creates havoc on our nervous system. We experience an activated fight response to keep up with all the work, which ultimately impacts our capacity to be present, attuned, and connected to our children.

Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith created a great model of 7 different types of Rest. I appreciate her perspective, as it helps us see what may be draining us, and what is the antidote. For instance, are you feeling over-stimulated? Maybe you need a sensory rest or social rest. Are you physically drained? A nap or early bedtime and NOT doing the dishes can be the perfect remedy. For me, it’s when i feel emotionally spent or mental tapped out that tells me what i need – a sacred bath ritual and time to myself.

I’m reading a hot new release called When Good Moms Feel Bad. It is a book that incorporates Internal Family Systems as a reference point for mothers. “The Inner Mother is your capacity for presence, wisdom, and care – qualities that emerge naturally when your parts relax and trust that you can handle what’s in front of you. This is the beautiful paradox of motherhood: in learning to care for someone else’s vulnerability, we develop exactly what we need to be with our own.” Jessica Tomich Sorci and Rebecca Gershan.

Having an Inner Mother is a visual reference of caring for ourselves as we care for others. It is not just practicing self-compassion, but the first preliminary step of tending to our basic human needs. Practising this attunement in our own internal landscape is a way of checking in with our Inner Baby (or child). All those things you’re already doing for your kids? They’re also just what you need. Whatever our children need, so do we. This is where our Mom Parts need to have a dialogue with our Inner Mother – The Parts have competing agendas. “The parts of you who work so hard to make you a good mom are the ones that are the meanest to you. Good Mom parts can tip you out of balance and into burnout.” (When Good Moms Feel Bad) Our Mom Parts want to care for our actual child AND our Inner Mother is the one tending to the child you were once upon a time. This can create an internal conflict when the Parts are polarized.

In Internal Family Systems, the model’s aim is to help us access ‘Self’ energy – the most evolved and integrated version of you. And yet, self-care continues to have a bad connotation. Unlike other self words like love, compassion, worth, and esteem, care assumes we are selfish. We are in fact, self-preserving (a hat tip to Audre Lorde). We need to reframe the concept of self-care as the care we give ourselves is aligned with our fullest expression. It needs to reflect who we truly are and not just the parts of us who give ourselves care like a checklist or a to-do list. The rest we give ourselves needs to be rejuvenating and replenishing our energy. It includes pausing by doing nothing AND also creates nourishment in doing so. Otherwise, what we claim to be rest is performative unless it also is nourishing.

The word “self” in this term does not apply alone or only to ourselves. We are not meant to do the work alone. Otherwise, we are left always cleaning up the dominos that fall, being a martyr who people pleases our children, to avoid conflict and also because our own Inner Child is leading the decision. Instead, let us model what asking for our needs look like. We all benefit when we take care of ourselves and it has a ripple effect.

One great way to start to offset the overwhelm and exhaustion is to reclaim micro-moments of rest for yourself. Think of them as “reparenting” opportunities. These are mindful, intentional pauses that help you come back to the present moment. This is especially true when we go on vacation, and is a requirement of everyday life.

This means when we feed our kiddo, are we also checking in to see if we’re hungry? When you’re making your kids a snack, what if you made enough of it so you too could nourish yourself? And, when you ask your kids to come and sit down to eat it, you took your own advice and put your feet up? Or, the next time you wash your kid’s hands after school, take a moment to wash your face and slow down to apply some lotion on your hands and face. Breathe in the delicious smell of this lotion.

So often, women tell me that they make just enough smoothie or kale chips, breakfast or snacks for their kids to eat, but don’t consider their own basic needs. I am not exempt from this – i put out my kids’ vitamins while they eat their breakfast and totally forget my own supplements. They are RIGHT THERE besides my kids’, for goodness sake! Burnout manifests when we set impossible goals AND have internalized the belief that we are meant to tackle the load on our own. Being busy is not the same as being productive. Busy is a reaction to the tasks you have to accomplish whereas productivity is PRO-active and has a larger goal and purpose.

My kids are teens now and travelling with them looks different than it did when the were young. I may not be as touched out as i once was. Mainly because my kids are taller than me now – i have not held their hand in years. I still make sure they are close by when in crowds and ensuring the necessities are packed – like toothpaste, swim goggles, and phone cords. That mental load is a checklist i start writing down weeks before the trip. And while it falls on me now, it is a task i take to heart and is part of my mothering job description. My partner balances it with his own list and load – car rentals, mapping our journey, and learning about the history of the places we go to.

We might be touched out by all the work of motherhood. Maybe the burn-out we are feeling is in fact overwhelm due to our flawed society that still wants us to believe we are naturally meant to be caregivers first and foremost. The mental load we are carrying is not meant to be ours alone to hold. What we call our fault or guilt is our overculture’s false narrative pushing down on us to keep us too tired to make change. To keep us too busy to notice the system is flawed. We are not a failure – the patriarchal, white supremist system is flawed and failing US.

“May this shed a light on the crooked path of motherhood. Momma Zen by Karen Maezen Miller.

One of my favourite podcasts, Moonbeaming, had Amelia Nagoski on it to discuss burn-out from a feminist lens. It was great, and also used a magnifying glass to look at the burnout mothers experience. It’s worth a listen but here is a great quote that really landed for me: “Nothing is going to happen until more help is given.” Here, Amelia is referring to the need to ask for and receive said help, to not continue identifying with the primary lead parent / default parent tension.

We need to remember that postpartum resilience isn’t something that just happens magically in our DNA. We need to build the structures in place so we feel more supported. It’s not just babies that need to be cared for when they become, it’s also new parents.

Rest is whatever refuels us. Taking time to rest is what helps us attune back to ourselves and rebuild our connection to our own Self. When this gets to happen, we can re-orient back to our Inner Mother and the intentions we have as a parent. This is why it helps to carry our own Vasalisa in a pouch wherever we go, as a guide for the initiation that is motherhood. You can think of this as a reparenting reparative experience: We need to do the work to heal. Some things to pack that can help this messy transition into parenthood are:
🌀Having even one or two folks who are further along in their parenting journey as mentors or guides
🌀Reading the plethora of books that exist now more than ever before (but this also adds to mental load)
🌀Getting to visit with the other parts of us that are not connected to our mother role – this includes time to rest, play and be our fullest self when on vacation.
🌀Joining a group and being part of a village of supporting each other and being witnessed in this transition
🌀Ask for help – seriously do it, just call Vasalisa’s name
🌀This “hell” has a name – uninitiated parenthood – so learning about matrescence can lessen this feeling when reclaim it as a sacrifice and rite of passage

The hell is what you make it and it doesn’t have to be this hard.

Asking for help is a key part of meeting our needs as well as modelling that doing so is a sign of strength and part of being a human. We may not get our needs met or the request may not be fulfilled, and yet it’s worth speaking up for ourselves. Why? Well, because a take-away we experience is the truth that we matter enough to ask for help or support even if it can’t be given. This heals the wounded parts of us that remain present in our inner system. They get the gift of an unburdening and evolve into a more helpful agenda. It also helps us not hold resentment towards our own children for the freedom they have that we didn’t receive. We oscillate between anger towards our children and people-pleasing them, as ways to not repeat what was hard for us as children. Neither of these tensions heal our parts. Mainly because they have agendas that are polarized – one is advocating for our own needs alone and the other prioritizes our children because we are afraid they will also feel unloved otherwise.

Remember what i mentioned above, about our “parts?” Our real-life children are not here to heal our unmet needs from our childhood, so cannot heal attachment wounds. It is our responsibility to ensure that the children are taken care of and that’s what we also need to learn how to care for our Self – to soothe her so that we don’t repeat what we inherited.

A tremendous amount of healing comes from loving ourselves through motherhood, and then witnessing the gift of our healing as it is shared with our children.

And, in case you don’t believe that we model what we need with our children, here’s a funny story that may help. My daughter had a dance recital and when the teacher asked the students what something they need to do this weekend, after the answer is, I’ll take a bath or have a nap my daughter said “ask your parents if they need help.” Not only was I beaming with pride and excited that she knew that and said that answer, I was also proud that my kid was the one that reminded everyone that we all need help, and our kids are members of our home environment. For the record, we are not asking them to take over the adult jobs, but to contribute and to learn how to care for things so that they will know how to do it one day. They also need to know that we are also not superhuman.

Witnessing my daughter say this helps me trust that my kids know me and what I need, at least in theory. So when i heard her say it, i exclaimed with joy “that’s my kid!” She came up to me after and told me how much her friends loved my excitement and called me an icon. That is a win!

So, the next time you travel, feel overwhelmed, and need to rest, make sure you remember to ask Vasilisa for help! You are never alone.