The Therapy Map + Childbirth as An Initiating Ordeal
Two Part Podcast Interview with Sacred Window Host.
This past month I had a delightful conversation with Christine Eek, founder of The Sacred Window. She is an Ayurvedic Practitioner, Educator, Group Facilitator and Birth and Postpartum Doula. We dove into the deep waters and discussed The Therapy Map - a therapeutic blueprint I designed to support both the client and the therapist throughout their therapeutic journey.
Near the end of our conversation I spoke about childbirth being an initiatory journey and noted how the dominant western culture has failed the mother. As well, how modern obstetrics and birthing practices have disconnected us from our instinctive nature and separated us from the sacred ritual of bringing forth life. All of this has resulted in a postpartum mental, emotional, and social health crisis, with the burden landing on the mother.
This burden is showing up as postpartum mood disorders, postpartum distress, postpartum grief, and fear of the postpartum. In other words, mothers are bearing the heavy load of a toxic culture that has severed them from one of the most primal and meaningful experiences of their lives-childbirth. To ‘dar la luz’-to bring forth the light-is indeed a struggle with or without the cultural context. In other words, childbirth in and of itself is hard work and therefore, is an ordeal.
From a ritual or initiatory perspective, ordeals are life challenges that are intended to push someone to the edge of their comfort zone and kill the ego. In psychology this is known as an ego death. In ancient and intact Indigenous cultures (cultures that live in relationship with their landbase and one another) initiation rituals are embedded into the fabric of their existence. These events help with maturation and spiritual development, and cultivate a cohesive community. Childbirth is understood to be a developmental process in which the ‘maiden’ metaphorically dies to embody the ‘mother’. Of course this is a metaphorical death, however, literal death is indeed a possibility in childbirth (as with many initiating experiences); I say this with all due respect.
An initiating ordeal brushes us up against the realization that we are indeed a mortal species. As a result of our death phobic culture (modern civilization), we have forgotten (or left out on purpose) to include rituals and practices that remind us of the cycle of life, thus, keeping us humble to our fragility. In this dominant culture many have forgotten that we are animal beings that thrive socially and in relationship to our landbase. We have forgotten that money and things are meaningless to the natural world, including animals. We have forgotten that although technology has advanced this dominant culture, it has not prevented humans and non-humans from dying.
What does all of this have to do with postpartum mental health and childbirth you might be asking? Why are you taking us down a strange rabbit hole about death and our (toxic) culture? How is this going to help me feel better in the postpartum, or as a mother in general? And what does that have to do with a perinatal Therapy Map?
I attempt to unpack these questions and hopefully, illuminate why so many mothers are suffering in the postpartum (and beyond) and how it is not your (the mothers) fault. Furthermore, why removing the burdens from your heart is part of the process of healing. And, how The Therapy Map was designed with all of this in mind.
Below is part one, of a two part interview with Christine Eek, I hope you enjoy it.
Click HERE to listen
Or watch below.