Endings

I first heard about the ‘Closing The Bones’ ceremony when I was pregnant seven years ago, and I knew then that I wanted to experience this ceremonial ritual from South America. It felt as though it honoured the sacredness of the transition to motherhood that we have lost touch with. But the arrival of a new baby and then severe PND and PNA pushed that thought out of my list of priorities.

Around a month ago, I was deep in a guided meditation that was about endings when I clearly heard the words ‘closing the bones’. My eyes flew open. I hadn’t thought about it in years, but now was clearly the time.

In early December, a experienced South American doula and birthkeeper, Alexa, came to my home and we completed a 3 hour physical and spiritual ritual. This ceremony acknowledges the immense changes a woman undergoes when she experiences pregnancy and childbirth and it provides a safe space to feel held and nurtured, and to release some emotions associated with the birth and motherhood.

It was an incredibly powerful experience for me. As I was given cacao to drink, rocked, massaged and bathed, as I was bound with scarves and music and chanting surrounded me, I realised how ‘un-held’ I had felt as a new mother. I had been craving what I didn’t even know, the ‘village’ of support that we once would have had. My nearest and dearest were doing all that they could, (all that I allowed them to do too perhaps), but the complete 40 day rest that was once prescribed? Well, how many people do we need to hold that?

This ritual also brought insights and visions. My deceased dad came to me in a vision that brought comfort, and also a bold call to heal his ancestral line. And as the traditional shamanic instruments were used, I saw a huge bonfire in front of me with skeletons standing around it, clanking their bones and calling me to the fire. At all times though, I felt safe, that this was exactly right, it was the healing I needed.

At the end of the ceremony, I could hear Alexa tidying up around me, but I wasn’t ready to move. I felt so still, not unable to move, but deeply unwilling to. And then a huge breath rose up within me and I was ready. Something had completed.

As Alexa and I tidied and chatted together I told her about my vision of the skeletons. She smiled.

‘Ah’ she said ‘I don’t normally say this, but this is actually a burial ritual. The death of something within you - and of course, the re-birth’

Tears came to my eyes spontaneously as soon as she said the words ‘burial ritual’. There was a deep ‘rightness’ to those words, a knowing that rang so true when I heard them. Something deeper than my conscious mind responded to that. Some part of me (and I am still digesting and contemplating what that is within the busyness of the end of a year) was shed or ‘died’. Something beyond all of my comprehension occurred. But a cycle is complete. And I know that is this, my own deep healing, which allows me to hold the space for others to do theirs, that diving into my shadow means I can safely lead others’ to theirs.