Red Tent's and Rites of Passage Ceremonies:
Pre-wedding Blessing ceremony in the Yurt, at Xenia Centre Bowen Island
Throughout a woman’s lifetime there are many different rites of passages that we go through, unfortunately in our society most of them go unmarked, or even recognized for what they are. Beginning with our first menstrual cycle, we experience a profound inner knowing that something has changed, that a threshold has been crossed, but often have no way to express it. From getting married, becoming pregnant, adopting or naming your baby, experiencing menopause, divorce or loss of a loved one, our rites of passages are profound and deserve to be marked in a sacred way.
This where my passion lies, in working with women and their families to mark the most profound and sacred times in their lives.
As a wife and mother who has celebrated many of my important life’s events I can attest to the importance of marking them. I was blessed to have an amazing group of woman friends create a special Blessing day both before I got married, and before I gave birth to both of my children for me. It was after these events that I realized how significant these ceremonies had been to me and I started doing to intensive research into the importance of ceremony and rites of passage, realizing more and more just how significant they are to our emotional health and well being.
As a writer, priestess, life cycle celebrant, and ordained shamanic/animist minister I specialize in bringing ceremonies to life and marking the crossing of important life thresholds.Together we will work in a process of discovery to see what you hold most important, what your deepest values are and how to bring these to life.
Each ceremony I create is different and as unique as the person or group they are intended for, no two ceremonies are ever alike!
Some examples are:
This where my passion lies, in working with women and their families to mark the most profound and sacred times in their lives.
As a wife and mother who has celebrated many of my important life’s events I can attest to the importance of marking them. I was blessed to have an amazing group of woman friends create a special Blessing day both before I got married, and before I gave birth to both of my children for me. It was after these events that I realized how significant these ceremonies had been to me and I started doing to intensive research into the importance of ceremony and rites of passage, realizing more and more just how significant they are to our emotional health and well being.
As a writer, priestess, life cycle celebrant, and ordained shamanic/animist minister I specialize in bringing ceremonies to life and marking the crossing of important life thresholds.Together we will work in a process of discovery to see what you hold most important, what your deepest values are and how to bring these to life.
Each ceremony I create is different and as unique as the person or group they are intended for, no two ceremonies are ever alike!
Some examples are:
- Red Tent Gathering and Ceremomy
- Celebrating a girls first moon time/coming of age-Article from the Washington Post on my work in this area.
- Pre-wedding Blessings. Bringing the sacred back into marriage as this is an important threshold that we as women cross, more often then not quite unprepared!
- Pregnancy, Blessingway ceremony. Marking the transition from a women into a mother.
- Birth of a baby/baby naming
- Adoption of a baby and baby naming
- Menopause, marking the transition from a women into a wise woman/crone
- Divorce, marking the transition as a wife back into a strong and independent women.
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? Mary Oliver
Over the years I have gathered boxes and boxes full of red sari's and lush red fabric that I use to transform whatever space we are using into a beautiful and inviting room for the ceremonies such as Pregnancy Blessingways and Pre-wedding blessings and Rites of passages for girls. I also bring several portable wooden altars and other beautiful forms of the goddess, essentially transforming the mundane into the sacred.
For Pregnancy Blessingways I work with my dear friend and Henna artist Nicole Pilich and the cost of her time can be worked into the fee for the day.
For Red Tent Ceremonies if we are in the summer-time I also have a large tent that I set up and transform that will fit as many as 20 women. Red Tent ceremonies can also include womb ceremony, medicine bundles, and at least one other sacred crafting such as working with candles and intention setting for the day.
They sky is the limit, there are no transitions in life that are not worth celebrating.
Fees for a rites of passage ceremony are $350. Ret Tent ceremonies are $450 and depending on the weather the tent may stay up overnight for your guests to sleep in--ask for more details about this.
For more information on how a Rites of passage/Red Tent for young girls can look, read this article by Cori Howard on my work in this area.
How might have your life been different if there had been a place for you, a place for you to go to be with your mother, with your sisters and the aunts, with your grandmothers, and the great- and great-great-grandmothers, a place of women to go, to be, to return to, as woman? How might your life be different? Duerk, Judith. Circle of Stones