Episode Summary
The transitions in our lives can bring up difficult feelings. It’s easy to see the lay of the land when we’re walking a straight path, but when the sidewalk ends, all kinds of confusion can come up. We may lose track of where we’re going and even start to question our values. How can ceremony help us through the transformations in our lives? Join me for a conversation with Betty Ray.
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→ We Must Initiate the Young People: https://youtu.be/9y0FC6HW3I0
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About the Show
Shame Piñata is hosted by Ritual Artist Colleen Thomas, a Certified Meditation and Mindfulness teacher who helps people make sense of life through ceremony. Music by Terry Hughes.
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Full Transcript
Ray: And then there’s the whole midlife crisis and a porche and a girlfriend and whatever and all that, but we don’t really talk about what’s going on psychologically or spiritually.
The transitions in our lives can bring up difficult feelings. It’s easy to see the lay of the land when we’re walking a straight path, but when the sidewalk ends, all kinds of confusion can come up. We may lose track of where we’re going and even start to question our values. How can ceremony help us through the transformations in our lives? Join me for a conversation with Betty Ray. This is Shame Piñata. I’m Colleen Thomas.
Welcome to Shame Piñata, where we talk about creating rites of passage for real-life transitions. Today we’re going to slow it down and really look at rites of passage. Where did that term come from? What’s the anatomy of a rite of passage? And what can these ceremonies be used for?
Our returning guest Betty Ray helps parents design customized ceremonies to help their youth go through a coming of age process, something that is deeply needed in American culture today. But she understands that all big transitions are worthy of the same process, whether it’s coming of age, approaching midlife, or even experiencing a significant loss. Betty and I had a conversation recently about using the rites of passage structure to design a healing ceremony. This could be any kind of healing ceremony, but I asked her how the rites of passage structure could be useful to design a ceremony for someone who had lost a child.
Ray: I think the language rites of passage to me is more structural because rites of passage articulates a structure. There’s a three-part structure to rites of passage which is immutable and across all these different cultures. And that is really a benefit because that gives us a way in which we can design meaningful personalized rites of passage or healing rituals or however you want to describe it, there’s lots of ways. But I think the language around rites of passage for me has been to articulate this tripartate model which is so powerful. The first one, the first phase of totes of passage is called separation and this is from the work up in Arnold van Gennep and this was from 1909. So this guy a long time ago studied all these different cultures and found across cultures and across time and space that people were using the same three phases. And in fact, Joseph Campbell was really inspired by Van Gennep’s work and used his rites of passage work for the hero’s journey work which is amazing. Like I didn’t know that. Did you know that? My God, I was so excited about that, I was like “Oh, you’re kidding me!” That's so brilliant because it makes sense that rites of passage would make a good story. So the three steps are separation, where the initiate leaves the comforts of home. And whether that’s a young person going off to figure out who they are and discover their identity or a middle-age person who has to leave the sort of the structure that their life has become. So then the second phase is called liminality or I’ve also heard it referred to as metamorphosis and that’s the phase where once they’ve left there kind of betwixt and between as Victor Turner said. It’s this time when you don’t know what’s going to happen to you and that’s when this beautiful phase of ego death comes in. You don’t know. You die. Who you are, who you were, is no longer who you are or who you want to be. And then there’s design elements I can make liminality more or less... that’s a design challenge for those of us who want to do these. And then the reincorporation phase where the young person for the young middle/elder whoever comes back to wherever they were, to the original, you know, container and then takes what they’ve learned and bring it back to... so that they may be in their community once again. So there’s kind of a, you go off into the netherland, you go off to the wyrd world, the forest, you know, in our mythologies... all kinds of heroes journeys there. Yeah, so those three phases I feel like are really valuable as design elements. So that’s why I was talking about that. And we can talk about how to put this into someone who’s lost a child. How do we manage that, those feelings and the grief and the identity and all of the elements, the psychological elements, that go into holding that and how does one release that and reinvent themselves to be able to move forward and to not just be completely paralyzed by that loss? I think what I love about rites of passage, however you talk about them, is that they do offer tools for composting our grief, or our fear, or whatever - getting it out and turning it into something else. The transformative nature is really powerful.
Thomas: What's the benefit in designing our own ceremonies?
Ray: I think that our 21st century culture has become so individualized that certain kinds of rites of passage, the generic thing, just don't resonate. And so the benefit of a personalized sort of self designed DIY rite of passage or ceremony, transition ceremony, is that it can be something that is deeply meaningful to you. And I don't think these work if they're not deeply meaningful to you. So I would argue that there is no reason to do this if it isn't personalized. It's really important that it be meaningful, and that it come from a place that has such heart and meaning that it can that it does the sort of psychological lifting. When it is individualized, it's a creative process. It's really fun. It's really fun to think about what is the thing that nurtures me. It's really fun to think about what is the thing that I'm trying to heal. It's not fun - that's not fun. But it's healing. It's healthy to look at what is the thing that I want to let go of and how do I design something so that I can take back my power over this thing that has really hurt me or has humiliated me or that I want to leave behind. And that can be anything from a relationship to a mindset. You know? It's a lot different than talking about in therapy and I love therapy, I go to therapy. It's valuable. But again, getting into this psychic space of ego death, right? You’re kind of more open and vulnerable and you kind of like you, you're working with the programming language of the soul. And it's a lot deeper than just the cognitive stuff. We don't... cognitive is important. But this when you're working at the soul level, it's more potent.
I love that way of describing it: that what we’re doing in ritual is working with the programming language of the soul. Does that make sense? We’re getting into an area where words don’t work, so it’s a little bit difficult for me to use words to describe it, but think of the rituals you’ve participated in in your life and remember what they felt like in your body. There’s a reason we do devotional ritualized practices in religious settings. Taking the bread, stepping into the Mikvah, casting a circle with the athame. These are physical things we do to connect, ritualistic soul-level actions we take. They are separate from our thoughts. When we hear the phrase “rites of passage” we may think of life stages such as coming of age, getting married, or having children. But life transitions are not always predictable or planned. A sudden illness or loss can knock us off our game and create a need to withdraw and heal. That’s where rites of passage or ritual can become invaluable. Ritual can provide a space of deep healing where our pain can be witnessed and honored.
Ray: When I was about 25, I was involved in a bike accident. And I was not wearing a helmet and I was unconscious for a day or two. And I woke up in the hospital and I was all like, double vision, concussion - a real mess. And I got out of the hospital and I was like in bed, you know, I couldn't work, I was out. And I was just really just discombobulated. And I had this major double vision, and I was so like, I couldn't even, you know, literally couldn't see straight. And my mom called me, you know, and she said, "I would like to offer you a rite of passage at my house." And I was like, I don't know what that is but it has to be better than this wherever I am right now, this sucks. And I'm in bed and I would love to... sure whatever that is, do it up! And so she said, "Okay, I want you to invite somewhere between 6 and 10 women that are older that you look up to and that your respect," and I was like okay. And so I know she knows some cool people and I know a few cool people and I put together this list and they all came to her house at the winter solstice. And one of her friends had made me a paper machine a mask to wear for the ceremony. And it was like this beautiful thing that had a butterfly at the mouth and like flower up at the head and like these beautiful beads... and it was really... it was like, okay, so I put that on, we came to her house and there was a fire in the fireplace and all these women were sitting in a circle and I wore the mask. And they proceeded to each tell me a story, or read a poem, or kind of reflect me, or reflect the world so that I could kind of titrate it and understand it, some things about the world things that were, you know, through poetry and beautiful writings and pieces of art. And I just sat there and just absorbed this giant mirror of all these older women that were so wise and so loving and so interested in helping me heal. And I could just feel that energy and I'm wearing this mask. And then at the end of it, I had to, I had to write, based on everything I had heard, I had to write a series of commitments to myself, and like things I wanted to keep, things I wanted to nurture, things I wanted to deepen and explore. And then I had to write a series of things that I was ready to release. And she had a fire in the fireplace and at the time, I took the things I wanted to release and I put them in the fire. And we said a prayer. And then it was over and it was probably about 20 minutes. It was a short thing, maybe more - I don't remember maybe it must have been more - but anyway, it was really powerful to me. It was a really, to have all these older women hold me in that way taught me the power... and to and to experience the intentionality of that moment, the gravitas, the beauty, you know, she... the home was beautiful, it smelled nice, it was people you know, it was just a sensory experience of being in this kind of like other world. And the kind of the grace that I felt afterwards was just like, wow, I knew this was powerful! And I was really interested in doing more of it. I was in my mid 20s. And I remember kind of putting it out there and sort of doing a little bit of research after it was over, like kind of getting out of my depression hole and going down to the bookstore and researching a little bit. And I got this clear picture that this is too woo woo for the world. I can't do this now. It's not ready. It's too weird. And so I took a hard turn and I went into writing about popular culture, and, you know, teaching myself technology and HTML and like, I kind of went there. But it always stuck with me, it was always part of my soul. You know, it was like I was awakened. Wow, that's a cool thing! You can do this stuff and it really helps your soul! It helps you get out of, you know, self pity and suicidal ideation and you know, kind of loneliness and all this crap that I... and my physical thing didn't change. I still have the crazy double vision. But I was just, it was something that changed in my being. So, you know, but over the years, I sort of dabbled in it, you know, I kind of come back to it and I found it on the dance floor. And I really found like, dancing really helped me with the soul work and, you know, I would take an astrology thing here and they're like, kind of like closet woo woo, you know. And then I found this program at, you know, at Columbia, right, like, fancy-pants ivy league school has this weird little thing called the Spirituality Mind Body Institute. And it's actually not woo woo. It's a bunch of researchers who have found evidence for the benefits of spiritual exploration and spiritual experience. And I was like, okay, it's coming out. Now it's time. You're going in! So I took that program, I quit my job and I am now working on the rites of passage stuff. Lisa Miller, the woman who founded the SMBI, the Spirituality Mind Body Institute, has done all kinds of really interesting research on the power of intergenerational spirituality. So she's she says that when a young person has a container, a community, you know, who are holding them in a place where they can explore "lowercase s" spiritual practices they're so much healthier, they have a much, much higher rate of... a much lower rate of depression, anxiety, self harm suicide, and it's like 60-ish percent; it's ridiculously powerful. Yeah, yeah, it's a big deal and it's sort of free. So it's kind of, you know, it's not like you have to like build a new school or have a mountain that you know... going off to the mountaintop or anything, you can just change your practices. So it's important for families and communities to know about that.
One of my favorite things about ritual is that it can transcend space and time. What I mean by that is if there is something that happened in our past - maybe a hard time we went through all alone or a significant personal accomplishment that got overlooked by our friends and family - we can actually do ceremony for it now and bring some healing to both the past and present versions of ourselves. That may sound strange if you are new to the concept of ceremony. But if you do this work regularly, you know what I’m talking about. My first experience with this was when I read a book called “Red Flower: Rethinking Menstruation” by Dena Taylor. It inspired me to create the menarche ceremony that I never had. Because ritual transcends space and time, it didn’t matter that the ceremony took place 15 years after my first period. My inner 12-year-old was fully present and felt fully welcomed into womanhood that day. I asked Betty to reflect on her past and think of any transition she wished she had had a rite of passage for. In answering my question, she spoke about a very personal subject. She spoke about healing from an abortion. I’m pausing to give you a heads up now in case this subject is close to home for you or in case you are listening with children.
Thomas: Are there any experiences in your past that you wish you could have had it rite of passage for?
Ray: There are several. I had an abortion and that was the biggest source of shame ever. And I had no way of... I mean, I had… it was very difficult to like make peace with that or understand, you know... nobody talked about it. So, having some sort of a, you know, there's an Amanda Palmer song about an abortion… it’s a ceremony and it's beautiful and I sobbed the first time I heard it. I think having that would have been a good idea. It would have been a way to heal that in a way that was good for me. Although what I did do is I ended up moving out to California from Minnesota to honor that. It was like, I'm not ready to be a mom here. I'm gonna to go do whatever it takes for me to know that I can be a parent. And that means going out to California and sort of following an instinct that there's work out there for me that will not only be meaningful and enrich me but it will help others. Like I wanted to be able to have to have an authentic sense of myself in the world and I just had no way of doing that where I was. So coming out here was sort of that for me, but it wasn't the same and it was certainly not witnessed. No one knew about it. You know, that was my own sort of thing. Yeah.
Thomas: Wow. Thank you for sharing that. I've heard that in the blood mysteries for women, that that's one of the blood mysteris, you know, that that's got that same depth as, or is considered in some circles by some healers to be, in the same depth of you know, menarche, menstruation, menopause, birth, and abortion, miscarriage even, you know, just that it's that it's that really deep, really, really deep place.
Ray: It is.
Thomas: Yeah.
Ray: Well, yeah very confrontative because it forces you to look at your life in a way of like you're at this giant fork, right? And like, what are the resources over here? What is my capacity? What does that what does that life look like? And what is the life look like on the other direction? And they’re… you can't go through it unchanged because it causes such reflection and it causes such anguish and it's so... it's very complicated. So it definitely, you know, I think it just transforms you and so for me moving out here was like, “Thank you, Little Spirit.” You know, it was all in the attempt to, well, to be able to welcome that little spirit back someday. And I don't know that I did. I don't know if my daughter is the same little spirit, but certainly there is a little spirit now too.
Thomas: Wow, thank you.
I’m so very grateful to Betty for giving us the low down on the anatomy of a rite of passage and for sharing with us so vulnerably. I encourage you to think back and notice if there’s anything in your past it might have been helpful to have a rite of passage for. It’s not too late! Together with a close group of friends and family, people who can take your healing seriously and honor your story, you can go back and have the transition witnessed.
Betty Ray is a speaker, author, and consultant who uses design thinking to co-create meaningful rites of passage to help her clients navigate transitions. Learn more about her work at bettyray dot net. If you’re a parent or work with youth, be sure to catch her talk “We Must Initiate the Young People” on YouTube. Check our show notes for links to that plus more information about Arnold Van Gennep and also Lisa Miller of the Spirituality Mind Body Institute.
Our music is by Terry Hughes. If you like the show, please take a minute to review it on Apple Podcasts. Learn more at shamepinata.com. I’m Colleen Thomas. Thanks for listening.