The Birth Labyrinth is a powerful map or metaphor to help women to find the pearl of wisdom of their unique journey of pregnancy and birth.
“The soul doesn’t evolve or grow, it cycles and twists, repeat and surprises, echoing ancient themes common to all human beings. It is always circling home. Thomas Moore, Original Self.
The concept of the birth labyrinth comes from Pam England with her book “Labyrinth of birth”.
The labyrinth has one entry, many twists and turns leading to the centre and a return path to exit. You can’t get lost in there.
The Labyrinth of Birth teaches us that the journey of birth is about a lot more than just an outcome. It’s a step by step moving through and feeling through a birthing experience (every pregnancy ends with a birth), and an integration of that experience to a new norm.
Birth Story: your pearl
“The twists and turns can bring a psychic and physical journey from innocence to wisdom during pregnancy, labor, and postpartum …”
As mentioned before, the journey through birth is like a labyrinth—it has unexpected twists and turns, but it takes you where you need to go and you’ll get to the center—to the birth of your baby—in your own time and in your own way. The postpartum return is part of that journey where you take some time to integrate the practical, physical, emotional, spiritual into your life, being, and “new normal.”
Each of us walks our own path. In the center, a birth waits. And, so too, wait deep truths about yourselves. Your own courage, your own fears, your own strength, your own power.
You set out for the threshhold, unknowing. You are with the deep mystery. Maybe a little fearful. Maybe intrigued. Maybe anticipatory. Maybe sad. Maybe excited. And you start to walk. One step at a time. Sometimes the journey can drop you to your knees. You are so close to your soul.
When you get to the center, you will discover what it is that you know that no one else does. Breath by breath, you reach the center; your baby (and you) are being born.
After giving birth your journey is not yet over. Just as you were called to begin your initiation, when it is time, you are called to return “home” again.
The postpartum return is the journey of integration on how the birth transformed your life, being, and how you set for your “new normal.”
A new role and mix emotions are part of the journey: sometimes you feel so alone, sometimes you feel so blessed. And, yet, you keep going, and you emerge, adjusting and blinking at the newness of it all. Day by day you eventually make it back to the threshold and step out of your laborinth.
Sometimes mothers can get stuck in the return phase and don’t know what to do about it. The Birth story labyrinth process is designed to help mothers gain fresh insights which will allow them to move forward, and to escalate the healing and integrating process.
When birth is solely focus on the medical outcome, a huge piece of this Rite of Passage is overlooked. Often people feel there is something missing, but cannot put their finger on it. In the Labyrinth of Birth, the journey (with its twists and turns) reflects the emotional, spiritual, and social experience of giving birth.
The Labyrinth provides this missing piece: the soul of birth…that which goes far beyond any preparation, choices, and “getting it right.”
In birth, this means that even if your birth is not what you expected or wanted or wished for, the one thing that can’t be “taken” from you is your pearl of wisdom. A natural pearl begins its life inside an oyster’s shell when an intruder, such as a grain of sand or bit of floating food, slips in between one of the two shells of the oyster, a type of mollusk, and the protective layer that covers the mollusk’s organs, called the mantle. In order to protect itself from irritation, the oyster will quickly begin covering the uninvited visitor with layers of nacre — the mineral substance that fashions the mollusk’s shells. Layer upon layer of nacre, also known as mother-of-pearl, coat the grain of sand until the iridescent gem is formed.
The pearl is created as result of protection and frictions of elements.
Your soul journey is guiding you to see and hold on to your precious and unique pearl you made. Your pearl is what makes you a wiser and stronger women forever. Perhaps you will also see in this pearl a reflection of self love and forgiveness.
