A Ritual to Make Peace with the Changes in Your Body
If you’re just arriving here, you’re invited to read the series in sequence: Introduction, Preconception, Conception, When Conception Doesn’t Happen, Pregnancy, The Story of Inanna, My Journey of Descent, A Simple Ritual for Grief, and Through Adversity We Find Our Strength
As we shift from maiden to mother, our bodies change.
Our hips grow wider, our breasts grow larger, our body becomes soft and open to welcome this being into our lives.
In pregnancy, I began to notice changes happening in my body: dark patches of melanin on my nose and forehead, little red dots or moles on my back and belly, cellulite and stretch marks on my thighs amidst a growing belly and breasts.
Beyond the changes brought on by new hormones, I also began noticing my first wrinkles and grey hairs. There was a lot of change in a short period of time, and I felt a need to formally acknowledge the changes in order to make peace with them.
This is a ritual to use, whether you are desiring to simply make peace with aging, or becoming accustomed to a body that is preparing to or has birthed children.
Ritual for Making Peace with the Changes in Your Body
The key element of this ritual is about stepping out of emotional isolation around these changes.
So think about who in your life could hold a nonjudgmental space around the changes you notice in your body.
So often we witness these changes in isolation, letting them run on repeat every time we look in the mirror, without ever sharing them with another soul.
Maybe the person to witness you is your partner, maybe it is a friend. Maybe it is someone who holds the wisdom of being on the other side of these types of changes.
Whoever it is, acknowledge yourself for taking a brave step in claiming a new role and identity.
This is a ritual that could be done 1:1 or shared in an intimate group of women, with an intention of healing our relationship to our bodies.
Leading up to the ritual take some time to journal:
How do I feel in my body now?
What changes do I notice?
How do I talk to myself about these changes?
What thoughts are on repeat?
How do these changes make me feel?
To open the ritual, Call upon your angels, guides and protectors, all the benevolent ones here to witness and support you.
Invite a partner to say, “I’m here to witness you”
When you’re ready, share from your heart (or your journal).
What is changing in your body?
What do you feel, see and notice?
What has been lost?
What has been gained?
What wisdom may you hold as you walk in the world, no longer as a maiden but now as a mother?
Let yourself be lovingly witnessed in what you share.
Invite your partner to offer any reflections (reflections are what they see, feel and notice from hearing your share, not advice)
Notice how you feel being witnessed, baring it all.
Can you begin to integrate these changes into your being? Can you allow yourself to be celebrated in these changes?
Can you begin to see that the stretch marks on your belly or thighs created space for new life? That the wrinkles forming at the corners of your eyes are a testament of how much you have seen, how much you have smiled, laughed and loved?
If the mother-to-be is open to it, she could receive gentle touch, caress, anointing from her partner as a way to honor and love this body as it is now, and as it changes.
You can close the ritual with a prayer, “May we remember to love and honor our bodies as sacred vessels for new life.”
Our bodies are literal vessels. Vessels for the mission we came here to make, but also vessels for new life to emerge.
There may be pieces we need to leave behind at the threshold of the seven gates, a sacred exchange, marking the ways we have been guided on an initiatory path. Whether it’s our youth, our complexion, our weight…
Can we see these changes as sacred offerings?
With love,
Meredith
