Healing Birth both personally and collectively through ritual is a very real and powerful experience. As I pondered my post-natal journey I came across a magnificent resource The Goddess Celebrates: An Anthology of Women’s Rituals, edited by Diane Stein. In this gem is a ritual for healing the C-Section! Exactly what I needed.
As much as I dreamed of a natural, non-interventionist water birth, it wasn’t that. The shock of birthing via C-Section in a true medical emergency situation not knowing if my baby would be coming home with me or not had been trapped in my bones and needed to be released.
On July 10, 2019 I gathered with three generations of my maternal lineage to perform a C-section healing ritual. It was time. I carried the pain long enough.
The beautiful thing about ritual is the flexibility to create it anyway that feels right. Setting a strong and clear intention is the most important starting point. There is a loose protocol or structure/ framework based on where you are in the world and your belief system, but it truly is about tunning in and weaving it intuitively.
It had been over 7months since my stormy birth and it felt like the right time to do this ceremony. I had kept my placenta in the freezer since coming home from hospital not sure when I was going to burry her or how.
My father bought a blood orange tree to commemorate Rohan’s birth back in November 2018 and all this time it had been in a pot. I felt that I needed to bury the placenta under this tree, the first mother that nurished my baby, which also was trauma exposed- cut into by the lab to investigate the pre-natal journey- so that the fruit of this tree completes the birth-death-rebirth cycle.
This little tree already had fruit. Three oranges representing my 3 children. The day of the ceremony was glorious. Both Sun and moon in the sky sitting adjacent to each other, holding us as we healed the birth story. Surrounded by fairy wrens and finches. The power of this day my friends can not be overstated!
I am called to continue this journey of healing and celebration through my women’s circles and workshops. In October I will start my training as a Post-partum Doula. A new and deeply felt direction I am looking forward to sharing.
This Birth Initiation has taken me so deep into the great mystery of life. I stand before you in my vulnerability for it is here that my strength and true power is revealed.
Nazanin Marashian 