Yesterday I had the tremendous privilege of having a blessingway. A good friend (who I don't see as often as I would like) organized one for me at her peaceful home in the country, and I must say that this alternative to baby showers is amazing. Showers are a practical and fun, but this really helped me to feel emotionally, mentally and spiritually prepared for the baby.

Here is a great website with some tips for having your own blessingway, but just to let you know what they did for me, I will give you a run down. There were pillows set up in a circle on the floor, and as ladies came in they washed their hands and thought about letting go of their worries before sitting down. At first I thought they meant worries about birth or me, but it was about letting go of their worries in general so that they could bring a positive energy to the group.

One of the first things they started with was to read a beautiful poem about birth from a local poet... I will have to get the name of the poem, because it had wonderful phrases for babies like 'land fish' in it. :)

Another thing everyone did was make a grandmother jar. Everyone took scraps of paper and wrote down their worries about life, put them in the jar and let them go. In the end all the paper ended up in the fire and our worries were gone. It was interesting... I had thought about doing something similar to this before but how much can writing something down and burning it really help you release a worry, right? But this ended up being a very powerful thing to do - and I suppose shows that when you write something down it becomes more potent.... that's probably why I like to write. :) It felt very freeing.

Then we talked about births and things that we have done during labour to manage pain. All of the ladies had had my same midwife and a natural birth, and I think most had 2 children - it struck me suddenly in the middle of this that I was probably the younger woman there and was about to have a 3rd and it made me a bit nervous that I was creating a group of children in my home rather than just a couple, lol. But all the wonderful wisdom they shared about their unique births was invaluable.

At that point they all started working on a poster with positive imagery about birth and babies and pregnancy and life in general that I can hang on the wall and when I am in labour I can look at it and focus on it. They also took turns massaging my hands and feet and I had a foot bath with peppermint (this may have been my favorite part, but I'm not sure, lol).

I came away with a book of thoughts they made for me, some personal notes written by my lovely friends, poems and quotes, and they also beaded two beautiful bracelets to give to my girls as something special to remind them that they are big sisters. I gave them the bracelets this morning and they threw themselves wholeheartedly into the idea and began big-sistering each other at every opportunity, lol.

Thank you so much wonderful friends!

One of the topics that came up when we were all talking was that our culture doesn't really do as many rites of passage rituals. Unless you are part of a church that does baptism or communion, or get to have a Bar Mitzvah, the rest of us really don't have any special occasion to help transition a young person into a new part of their life. It was interesting to me to learn that in native cultures they don't just celebrate the child's transition into adulthood, but rather have a celebration every 7 years, or around the time that they have a milestone in their life. While many churches are celebrating an age of accountability at 7 years old, native cultures do something similar, which I found fascinating. This is something that I'll have to research more about. :)