A Mid Life Ceremony For Women in Transition

In the modern world, many of our life-changing transitions pass without any acknowledgment. Honoring the passage from years of physical power into the years of spiritual power for women who have survived the Empty Nest Syndrome, Menopause and other hurdles is the reason for this ceremony.

Personal life passages generally have three parts–separating from the past while moving into the future, and the period of adjustment into your new life.

Too often, women who no longer have children at home bury themselves in career and other demands without stepping back and taking a moment to embrace the void created by the loss of their children.

Weddings are a good example of these three parts, however, in our culture these parts are incomplete. In a typical American wedding, brides have two rituals… Walk down the aisle, which symbolizes the passage from their old life into their new one.

And the wedding shower, in which the bride receives gifts for the new home, honoring her transition into the new life. But brides have no ritual for saying goodbye to their old selves, their single hood, and their independence (the bride was not supposed to have a past, other than ownership by her parents, which is symbolized by her father giving her away.)

The groom however, had a big ritual for that..the bachelor party. But he has no transition ritual like a wedding shower. So each partner enters into the marriage lacking an important piece of the process.

The same is true for other transitions, like separations, births, deaths, and adoptions. While we have ceremonies for some of these things, such as baby showers and funerals, today we will address passages that are not traditionally recognized. The only ceremony for a divorce is the signing of the papers-recently, I received a request for a divorce ceremony planned for Valentines day. Choosing that particular day seemed odd to me, but this gentle soul explained her reasons are wanting to “move on and find love” which makes sense.

What about when your children up and leave home? I’ve written a blog called the Empty Nest Syndrome. These painful passages desperately need rituals, yet we go through them with nothing but maybe some therapy and support from other female friends who understand the sense of loss we are feeling. When my son Robert was married, after spending months making all the floral arrangements, I was suddenly stricken with the reality when called to the dance floor for the mother and son dance that I was losing my only child to marriage and could not stop crying as we sung together “Walking in Memphis” by Marc Cohen. As a child, my son often had sing alongs with me to my favorite CDs en route to school and around our home. I cannot explain why, in that particular moment how hard it was for me to let go at the end of this dance. Raw emotion at the realization that I would never be making sure he was eating properly or caring for him when he was sick left an empty and gaping hole in my heart. You see, after this loss, I lacked the opportunity to “kill off my old energy” and ignite something new. Although, after creating 17 bouquets, 26 centerpieces and boutonnière for this event- an idea occurred to me that if I could accomplish this feat on my own, that I should start a new business- Texas Twins Events. When my niece Leigh Andrea married nearly one year later, I decided to continue my Religion courses and become ordained to conduct the ceremony and handle all the floral arrangements. My twin sister Cindy Ann Daniel and myself had raised her two daughters Leigh Ann and Stephaney Rene along with my son together, these three children always considered both of us as their mothers- yes, we are that close. Cindy struggled with emotion just as I had with my son Roberts wedding.

An example of a very functional ritual is something that happens in Native American puberty rites. In our modern American culture, we have bar mitzvahs and Catholic confirmations, rituals that are steeped in histories and traditions that many simply cannot identify with or understand.

We don’t really have anything to honor the simple natural truths and cycles that affect all of life, without some judgment by others hovering around us “oh get over you’re loss and move on, or, that’s just life-why are you crying?”

You know what the Native Americans do? When a girl first gets her period, they isolate her with the elder women of the tribe for four days. During this time, the women teach her ways of life, cooking, making baskets, caring for children, all the things she will need to know as a woman in their society.

Most of this teaching is done by the girls grandmother, this new bond will cement a relationship between the two women. Years later, the girl will be thankful to the grandmother and care for her when she becomes too old to care for herself. So the puberty ceremony has a dual purpose that benefits both the girl and the grandmother.

The Midlife Ceremony is to honor our transition into the wise state of grand motherhood. We will also gather energy for peace in the world, and work to support each other in any personal transitions that we may be going through.

Here are the objects you’ve brought to symbolize what you’ve created in your life: your children, your art, things from your home that have been given to you by your mothers and brand mothers.

There are also symbols of the things you will be leaving behind… tampons, birth control pills, acne medication, PMS pills, etc. A few women have also brought old photos of lovers, these symbols of pain and patterns that we’d like to leave behind when moving forward.

We are going to say goodbye to these things, and embrace a new, healthier and stronger part of ourselves.

We begin this ceremony by creating a circle and lighting four directional candles. We want to look at the closing of our first 40-50 years as a passage to be celebrated, and to look at the years ahead as a time that is filled with possibility and promise. This is a good time to take stock of our worldly possessions, and to realize that we have accumulated all that we need, and most of what we’ve ever wished for.

It is a time to look at how much you’ve accomplished in your life, your work, the families you’ve created, and the relationships and communities you’ve built with your contribution to society.

Think of this as your birthday party. Like many other modern rituals, which are based on ancient ones, birthday parties possess an interesting symbolism. There is an old birthday ritual in which all of the guests line up like a train with their legs spread, and the birthday celebrant crawls through their legs like a tunnel. It is a symbol of giving birth. Making a wish and blowing out the candles on a cake is the way we blow life energy into our wishes.

This ceremony is taken from two traditions–Native American, and the Christian nature based ceremonies in which energy, or God create a balance of male and female energies.

When groups of women gather like this, we invoke the Goddess of energy, which lives inside our psyches and affects various aspects of our personalities.

When saying goodbye to your childbearing years, you will be celebrating being free of pregnancy, menstruation, and cramps, along with the pain of natural childbirth while honoring these experiences as well. Visualizing a future in which your happiness comes from within and is based on the confidence and knowledge that our years have given to us.

To be continued…