The Blessingway Ceremony: Ritual, Nostalgic Imagination and Feminist Spirituality

Abstract

There is an increasing interest in the role of spirituality on the experience of health, wellness and illness, as well as the role of spiritual practice in health care provision. For pregnancy and childbirth, this focus has tended to concentrate on hospital birth settings and care, and religious forms of spirituality. The blessingway ceremony can be described as an alternative baby shower, popular with home-birthing women. Its focus is woman-centred and draws on the power of ritual to evoke a spiritual experience for the pregnant host and her guests. This spirituality is experienced as a strong connection between women, their relationship with 'nature', and forged via the nostalgic imagination of women through time and space. This article will draw on data obtained in 2010 during doctoral fieldwork with 52 home-birthing women across eastern Australia and will examine the blessingway ceremony and its significance as a site of potential spiritual empowerment for pregnant and birthing women.

Exploring Ritual Fields Today

“…Other authors have followed Davis-Floyd and further discussed the ritual dimension of pregnancy and childbirth (McCallum and dos Reis 2005;3 The photograph taken by famous photographer Annie Leibowitz has been chosen as one of the 100 most influential images of all times by Times magazine: http://100photos.time.com/photos/annie-leibovitz-demi-moore/. Cheyney 2011;Burns 2014Burns , 2015Jacinto and Buckey 2013;Freedman 2011;van Gysgem 2017). There are, however, different modes or densities of ritual (Grimes 2010.…”

“…In the following section, two examples of emerging ceremonies will be described in order to explore the earlier notions of spirituality within more concrete examples. The first example is called the "blessingway ceremony" or "mother's blessing", referring to a blessing of the mother-to-be during her pregnancy (Burns 2015). The second example are secular, humanist naming ceremonies where the baby is welcomed into community.…”

“…Recently, research has increasingly been focusing on spirituality at the start of life (Crowther and Hall 2018;Crowther et al 2014aCrowther et al , 2020Wojtkowiak and Crowther 2018;Prinds et al 2016). In line with Davis-Floyd (1992), many authors have been contributing to the understanding that pregnancy and birth are highly ritualized in Western, secular contexts (e.g., giving a name to the baby, keeping the sonogram as a memorial object, sending a birth card) (Burns 2014(Burns , 2015Cheyney 2011;van Gysgem 2017;Freedman 2011;Prates et al 2018;Reed et al 2016). Interestingly, there is, however, not one collectively shared ritual or ceremony that acknowledges the transition into new life in Western secular societies.…”

“…At birth, we do not see the same ritual significance in Western society. We do observe, however, the emergence of new, alternative ceremonies at the start of life, such as a "blessingway ceremony" or "mother's blessing" 1 (Burns 2015) and humanist or secular naming ceremonies for babies (Gordon-Lennox 2017;Wojtkowiak et al 2018). In this article, I will study meaning making and spiritualty at the start of life from a ritual perspective.…”

“…Two examples of new ceremonies will be described in order to illustrate how rituals reveal strategies of meaning at the start of life. The first example, the mother's blessing (Burns 2015), is a re-invented social ritual for pregnancy. The second example, humanist naming ceremonies for newborns, ritualizes the birth of a baby.…”