Honoring My Postpartum Body with the Closing of the Bones
This postpartum ceremony, called the Closing of the Bones, honors the postpartum body. It’s practiced worldwide and dates back to Maya culture.
The ceremony aims to bring the mother's soul fully into the body after her soul left temporarily to retrieve her baby from the Spirit world.
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The Closing of the Bones was my way of showing love to my postpartum body. I didn’t love my body when I was younger. I liked my body enough, but I took it for granted. I didn’t care much about it–until the transition to motherhood. My first pregnancy was hard, and I had a traumatic C-section. My second pregnancy was harder than the first, but by then, I had learned to drop in my body to process my emotions and heal.
My inner work helped, but the constant discomfort + health scares during pregnancy often made me desire to get “out of my body.” During that time, I was told by my Spirit guides that my lesson was to decide to stay in the body despite the discomfort. So, I stayed. And I remembered to remain grateful through it all and loved my body as much as I could. I must have done something right cause my body went above and beyond during birth, and I recovered well and quickly after birth.
The power of women gathering in ceremony
The Closing of the Bones was one of the most emotional events of my life. What you don’t see in the video on IG is the intention setting by the cherry tree where my placenta is buried and the yoni steam and herbal bath I had before the rebozo (scarves) part. I was BATHED, something we only experience in childhood!
Then, when Tierra (practitioner) started to gently swing my feet in the rebozo, I burst into tears. I felt the presence of many spirits of women in the room. I was held by all these women and reminded that when one does a ritual like this, it’s not just for her but for all the women before her in her lineage and for all women at large.
The ceremony felt familiar to me, like something I’ve been part of before, probably in past lives, during a time when women lived in community and cared for each other. The transition to motherhood was sacred, and it was celebrated with rituals, and the mother was held and supported.
We’ve all been there, but we forgot. The spiritual work, at its core, is simply a journey of remembering who we truly are. As women, we’re incredibly powerful, but at some point, the patriarchal system took over, and with time, we have internalized the patriarchal way. In this society, Most women don’t feel good enough and compete with each other.
But many women are slowly reclaiming their divine essence. The transition to motherhood offers the opportunity to remember our feminine power. This became clear to me at my home birth and during this postpartum ceremony. By the cherry tree, I desired to bring this incredible power I felt during birth to every single area of my life.
The Closing of the Bones is one of many rituals that can bring women together and help them remember that our strength is in community. Through ceremony, we can bring deep healing to our bodies, minds, and souls (especially during the transition to motherhood), heal our ancestors in the process, and reclaim our feminine power.