Maiden to Mother: Rites + Rituals to Honor the Passage into Motherhood

Introduction of the book I am writing 🎉

Chapter 1: Introduction

If you’re just arriving here, you’re invited to read the opening announcement of this series for context.

Loss of the Maiden

The ground shakes beneath me,
I’m trying to hold on,
To any last thread,
Any memory of who I once was,
But it’s all already dissolved.

I have been lost.
Everything I once knew, gone.

There’s no going back,
As much as I’ve tried.

I searched dark caverns with lanterns for her,
But she is no longer there.

I am new now.
Just as my daughter is.

I longed for this change.
I prayed for this change.
It is here.
Now I must surrender to the depths,
The release,
Of who I once was.

Who am I now?
With her, without her,
She was my destruction and my becoming.

~ Poem written by me in June 2023, my daughter was 15 months old

There’s something that happens when a woman has a child.

There is a death of her past self, and a period in between (the messy middle), when the caterpillar becomes mush inside the chrysalis before emerging as a butterfly.

It’s a time where a woman does not know who she is yet, but can no longer recognize who she was.

Some say that matrescence—the transformation a woman’s body and psyche undergo in becoming a mother—changes us as profoundly as adolescence. Both are thresholds marked by dramatic physical, emotional, and psychological shifts. It’s a time that some cultures honor with ritual and ceremony, rites of passage.

But sadly, in our culture, these rites of passage often go unmarked, and unwitnessed. We travel through them alone, within our homes, not quite sure who we will be on the other side, or how we will get there. We miss the stories of those who have gone through the passage before us. We miss the rites, the honoring, and the wisdom we could have gained from our elders along the way.

Maybe that’s part of the reason why so many women experience postpartum depression. The loss of the circle, the village, the community, the support, and the witnessing.

Ruth Barrett describes five blood mysteries women may undergo in life: our birth, the first menstrual cycle, giving birth to a child (becoming a mother), menopause, and death.

Our culture has lost the art of marking these powerful transitions as ritual, a rite of passage when someone is completely changed.

So much happens when a woman becomes a mother. Her body is different. Her relationship is different. How she views time is completely different.

New parents are often left to find their way—figuring out how to meet each other again, how to bond with this tiny new soul, and how to carry so many responsibilities that arrived overnight. In that overwhelm, the deeper spiritual transformation happening inside is rarely acknowledged. There’s just not enough time for it.

I probably experienced the hardest phase in my motherhood journey when my daughter was 12 to 18 months old.

I was weaning from breastfeeding, my hormones were rapidly changing, and I was experiencing a delayed postpartum depression. My tension headaches were at their worse. Then I experienced an unplanned pregnancy, followed by a miscarriage 8 weeks later. The loss ignited me to begin therapy, which revealed some uncovered wounds ready to heal, but not without facing a lot of unfelt pain and existential questions first.

There was a transformation happening, and I was still very much in the middle of it.

I couldn’t relate to who I was, and I didn’t quite know who I was becoming.

I was moving through an initiation that was going to take time to complete in order to emerge anew.

What is an initiation?

Kim Krans describes, “Initiations represent the big moments, junctures and situations in life that carry major significance along our journey. These are events that change us on a fundamental level. They are the big whammies of life. In the model of the Hero’s Journey they may be called “the ordeal.”

Think of falling in love, heartbreak, beyond heartbreak, death of a loved one, marriage, divorce, moving, having a child, facing a trial or experiencing a spiritual awakening that shakes your foundation. We know we have gone through an initiatory experience when the very fiber of life as we know it has changed.

We can’t go back to the person we were before, but we are not yet quite sure who the new self is… Eventually we come to understand that the initiations are markers of a deeply personal experience that connects us with the timeless story of humanity.”

Becoming a mother is an initiation, and I believe it is a time that deserves to be honored and witnessed in ritual.

What is Ritual?

Ritual brings a sense of magic, intention, and sacred presence into the rhythm of everyday life. It has the power to lift even the simplest action out of habit and turn it into something meaningful. A moment of blessing before a meal shifts how we receive nourishment. A candle lit at dawn, a song offered to the heart, a few quiet breaths—these small practices create pockets of peace in the midst of a full day.

Ritual also helps us acknowledge what is beginning and what is coming to a close.

At its core, ritual is about transformation.

We gather in ritual to honor something that matters—to welcome a new season, to grieve or release, to celebrate growth, to align with the lunar cycle, or to witness a turning point in our lives. Ritual gives shape to these moments, allowing us to move through them with intention, clarity, and grace.

Ritual is one of the most potent ways we can honor a major transition in our lives. It creates a sacred container where we are witnessed, affirmed, and held with intention. A well-crafted ritual can open the doorway to a new chapter, support a change already unfolding, or help us name and embody a transformation that has already taken root within us.

Ritual invites us to trust our intuition. It asks us to listen deeply, to improvise, and to show up fully to the present moment. We often work with symbols—objects or gestures that help us touch the deeper layers of meaning and bring the inner shift into conscious awareness.

Through ritual, we access what lives beneath the surface of our everyday mind—the shared field of wisdom, memory, and archetype that connects us all.

And when a ritual is truly alive, it engages all of us. The intuitive, imaginal parts of the right brain, and the verbal, meaning-making parts of the left. Through symbol, word, movement, rhythm, and presence, ritual becomes a whole-being experience—one that can guide us through change with clarity and grace.

For ritual to truly transform us, we have to meet it with our full presence. Transformation happens when we’re willing to participate with our whole hearts.

In group ritual, both witnessing and being witnessed become part of the medicine. We create a field of support for one another, allowing each person to be seen as they cross a threshold or honor a transition.

Ritual can also be deeply powerful when done alone.

In solo practice, we call upon the presence of spirit, our guides, and the unseen realms to serve as our witnesses. Even in solitude, we are held.

I’ve been reflecting on the initiation I moved through from the birth of my daughter in 2022 to now. The emotions I moved through, and the rituals that held me through such huge life transition.

So I’m writing: Maiden to Mother: Rites & Rituals to Honor the Passageway into Motherhood

In the book I’ll share rituals to honor the threshold of becoming a mother. Many of these I participated in myself, during a time of ripe undoing.

Because I’m still in the season of mothering a young child, I’m not sure when—or even if—this will become a physical book. But I want to honor the muse, so I’ll be sharing each chapter here on Substack as it’s written.

We’ll journey over three years: from preconception to about age 2.5. I’ll share vignettes of my own journey along the way. We’ll witness all the ways a woman is changed through this often overlooked rite of passage.

We’ll honor the myth and metaphor of motherhood.

May these rituals offer you simple, grounded ways to navigate change—inviting clarity, healing, and meaning into the often chaotic, beautiful unfolding of becoming a mother. My hope is you’ll become more familiar with the art of ritual and will listen to your intuition to create your own.

May it connect you to a sense of belonging to something timeless.

May it invite you to remember ancestral knowing, the lineage you have come from, and inspire you in all the ways you are weaving love, trust and beauty on the path of a priestess and/or mother.

Here’s a preview of what is to come:

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1. Introduction (what you’re receiving today)

2. Preconception

Ritual for Preconception ~ welcoming your baby home

3. Pregnancy

Inanna and the descent

Ritual for Making Peace with the Changes in Your Body

Creating a Birth Altar

Ritual for a Mother Blessing Ceremony

Ritual for Welcoming Baby

Rituals for Loss

4. Birth

The Labyrinth

A Process to Be with Pain

5. Postpartum

Ritual for the First 40 Days

Ritual for Placenta Honoring and Burial

Ritual for Birth Story Witnessing

6. The New Mother

Milestones: The first crawl, The first birthday, The first steps

Ritual for The End of Breastfeeding

Exiting the Labyrinth

Ritual for A Funeral for your Maiden Self

7. The Seasoned Mother

The Prenatal Village Circle

Creating a Community of Seen and Supported Mothers

I’m not yet sure how long each chapter will want to be, and some of this may change as I’m writing in real time. Some may arrive in several parts if that’s what the material calls for.

Thank you for being here. Chapter 2 will arrive in your inbox in the New Year. Until we open to our next chapter…

With love,

Meredith