What is a Mother Blessing ceremony?
A Mother Blessing is created to spiritually support and mentally empower a mother-to-be for her upcoming labor and journey into motherhood. Totally different to a baby shower, which is all about the baby, a blessing way ceremony honours and is focused all upon the mother.
Baby-showers are a fairly recent tradition and have only been in existence over the last sixty years or so. The modern baby shower started after World War 2 during the baby boom era and evolved with the consumer ideology of the 50’s and 60’s. The intention behind a baby shower was to lessen the financial burden of raising a child by purchasing things the child would need and gifting them to the mother. Before the 1950’s celebrations for the baby were only honoured AFTER the baby was born, never before.
A Mother Blessing in contrast is in alignment with rituals that have been practiced over thousands of years of human history. A blessing way comes from a traditional Navajo Ritual. Similar ceremonies were practiced in the mystery schools of Egypt, Ancient Greece and many shamanic tribes worldwide. They were created as a way to prepare a woman for one of the hardest things she may possibly do in her life, give birth.
There are a number of ways the blessing can be run. Traditionally in the past only woman were invited, however in more recent times in the revamped ceremonies men have started to be included in some cases. One of the most important considerations is that the mother only invites people who she feels close, safe and supported by. It is not a space to invite people based on pressure or expectation or to include people who won’t respect the sacredness of the day. Each person invited brings their own unique essence into the ceremony, so their energy needs to be in alignment with the Mother.
The ceremony is held around 4 – 6 weeks before the expected delivery and typically it goes for around two hours. The intention for the ceremony is to support, nourish and celebrate the Mother as she goes through the initiation to birth her child. A number of different rituals are done with the group and for the mother to create a supportive and powerful creative container.
x Sara