Episode Summary
How can we honor our youth as they come of age in ways that are strengthened by tradition and also allow their unique spark to shine? What would happen if we let them tell us what they need and co-created ceremony with them? Join us as we hear the story of the Emergence Ceremony that bridged into a powerful transformation for the entire family.
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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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Cantor: …for sure like every once in a while, like they’ll say, “Oh God! I would love something like that too.” In fact, right afterwards my mom, you know my Catholic mom, she was like, “I want an emergence too!” And she’s like turning 75 this year so we’re going to give it to her!
How can we honor our youth as they come of age in ways that are strengthened by tradition and also allow their unique spark to shine? What would happen if we let them tell us what they need and co-created ceremony with them? Join us as we hear the story of the Emergence Ceremony that bridged into a powerful transformation for the entire family.
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 are lucky enough to be joined by April Cantor. April is a gifted ritual leader and a gifted mom. She is here to share a story with us, a story of growth, a story of change, a story of emergence. It centers around one weekend in which a planned ceremony unfolded into an unplanned ceremony, both of which turned out to be part of a larger whole. So join me in taking a breath and centering in your heart as we travel back in time to that weekend.
Cantor: Imagine a beautiful clearing with grass that's just been fed by a misty morning light fall of rain. And these tall trees that were like, you know, these beautiful sisters and brothers of the forest that we were in. It's just the backyard, but it's just this gorgeous clearing. And they were… they created this beautiful cathedral space, this natural cathedral. And within this clearing was a circle of family and friends. And in the center of that circle of celebration was my son who was turning 13 at the time. And we were celebrating what we were calling his emergence so we called it an Emergence Ceremony. And he had actually chosen this particular town because it was a town that is known for its inclusivity. He identifies as gay but also gender… I'm probably gonna get this wrong, but… not just gender fluid but all-inclusive, right? Like he’s like a he and a she, and it doesn’t matter which one, it’s like whatever you see him as. And this particular place in Pennsylvania... so it's like New Hope, Pennsylvania… we found this, this house that we can invite everyone to. And in this ceremony,we just celebrated his crossing over the threshold from adolescence up from childhood into adolescence, in his own beautiful, special way. So that… that was that was… the that's the setting for that weekend.
Thomas: Can I ask, was the ceremony his idea? Was it your idea? Did you come up with it together?
Cantor: We created it together. It was definitely a collaborative process. And that was important to all of us, that it was a group effort.
Ezra had been following his older brother through Hebrew school with the goal of reaching his bar mitzvah. While the process had gone smoothly for his brother, for Ezra it has been a continual struggle. He had tried to tell his parents many times that he didn’t want to go to Hebrew school, because he just didn’t feel like he belonged there. But continuing the Jewish tradition and lineage was very important to his father. Finally, he was at the finish line with only one last year to go.
Cantor: This was when he approached me and said, “Mom, I'm not… I'm not going through it, I do not want to do this bar mitzvah. It's not who I am. And it's not an expression of me.” And I just sort of like, I heard him. You know, my heart really heard him and I knew that he would have to tell his dad who would be really disappointed. And he also knew that too. But you know, when I prepared my husband, I said, like, “Just… when he tells you what he's going to tell you just really listen, like, Listen with your heart as what he's saying.” And so once he got the message from our son, it was a bit of a relief. You know, I think that's what my husband would say. It's like, there was a relief to it of like, all right, right? We're not struggling anymore. And we heard them and we're like, “Okay.” So we all took a deep breath. And thanked him, and then of course, informed the family because we also knew it was important to his grandparents, right. And I think to most Jewish people, it's important, right, that we have some sort of lineage that keeps this tradition up. But because we're such a tight family, too, we also want to honor just the growth of family and the growth of the individual on their own personal journey. And that being said, my husband and I both agreed, you still need some sort of rite of passage, like that's important that… you know, this is your time. Let's… let's figure out something we don't know what that looks like yet, but this still calls for some sort of rite of passage. And that's how it started.
Thomas: Wow, that phrase really, really caught me when you said my heart heard him. Because there's so many conversations we can have with people where the communication does not actually get down that far and drop into our hearts because there's so much… so many other levels at which we operate.
Cantor: Yeah, and think about all the times that we had not really heard him for all those years.
And the struggle, yeah.
Thomas: And that he persevered. So… I wish that for all… all youth to persevere and so till others can… can really hear.
Cantor: Yeah.
Ezra spent the summer preparing for the ceremony. He engaged in spiritual study, put energy toward a service project, and created and made it through a significant personal challenge. The entire family was looking forward to being there to celebrate him on the day of his official emergence. But out of the blue, the family learned that Ezra’s grandpa on his father’s side wouldn’t be able to come because of health issues. His not being there was a huge deal for the family. Everyone was devastated. April knew that she had to hold space for this additional piece, this loss for the entire family. So she began to gather resources to help her honor both things at once - the joy and the grief. And in her search, she came upon a Shame Piñata and heard our episode called “Inviting Grief to the Wedding”.
Cantor: I just was blown away, I was like, “Oh, this is exactly what I was looking for!” And just hearing your voice was so encouraging… And then, I mean… in one in particular, this one episode you did, I'm forgetting the person that was a wedding planner and they had talked about including grief as part of the celebration ceremony and it was such a powerful episode.That was super helpful, just hearing that particular episode.
Thomas: How did you weave those together on the day?
Cantor: The morning of the whole ceremony, right? We're talking like it happened on a Saturday. Early that morning, we got a call. And it was a call from my mother-in-law and through tears, she had mentioned that they had to move him into hospice. And we all knew what that meant. And it was hard, you know? It was just a really profound moment. There was crying. There was also doubt about: Should we continue with this? Should we just cancel this? Do we need to fly out today? You know, there's all these questions about what do, we have all these people here. And it was so clear from the discussion with my mother-in-law and father-in-law, who was coherent at the time, they were like, “You must continue this journey for your son. It is imperative that you continue this ceremony. We want you to continue it.” And then… “Please have it. And then whenever you can, like as soon as possible, make it down.” Right? So we went through it. We did it. We just kind of, like, gathered everything we could as far as like just our composure, just adrenaline kicked in. And then we just sort of, like, went through as if, you know, we had to just sort of compartmentalize that for a little bit and then just say, “This is what's happening. Thank you for everyone just holding space for us. We're going to continue with this. But we're also going to hold space for this other thing that's happening.” So when I greeted everyone in the… into circle, and by the way, those who were present were just intimate, close family members. My son made it clear that he did not want a huge Bar Mitzvah the way that his older brother had had, that he really just wanted, like his grandparents there, his aunts and uncles, some close family, friends, and then his, his crew… his crew. And so there was, you know, us in a circle in this beautiful place. And once we had that little procession in, with our drums and our shakers, we greeted each other. And then I proceeded to ask everyone to just hold their hearts for a moment and take a deep breath in. And to breathe in all the joy that we're feeling. And then to also acknowledge the fact that there are some important people that weren't able to join us here in circle. But we know that just by connecting our hearts out to them and sending our deep breaths that we might encourage deeper breaths wherever they are, and to welcome in… them into our space as if they were here. Because we know in spirit that they are. And any of the grief, any of the pain that we are feeling at this moment, we could just honor it, feel it, just give us ourselves a chance to cry about it if we want at this moment. And whatever's coming ahead of time, we don't know. But we can also just be present with what is. And let's put this grief in a little boat on a river that's just gently, you know, if we use our imaginations just flowing beautifully behind us to hold this space for us, we can let it drift on this little boat, and we can pick it up down the shore a little bit but let it take its own journey while we hold the space for celebration. For as much as we can feel this pain, we can also hold the same amount of joy. And that's that was the wish we know… from directly from Jack and Mimi, this is what they wanted. So that's how we said it and I would not have had that language had I not listened to Shame Piñata.
Thomas: Oh my goodness. I was just thinking how incredibly beautiful it is the way that you put that and was brought tears to my eyes just just to… just such a deep honoring of, of, of life, that is grief and joy and our capacity to be able to drop into both. Thank you so much for sharing those words with us today.
Cantor: My pleasure.
[MUSIC]
It's wonderful to have you here! If you’re inspired by the topics we cover, consider sharing your story about how you marked an important life transition. You can do that by sending us a message through our website Shame Piñata dot com. And thanks.
Cantor: So the ceremony happened. It was amazing. We had set that space and woven into that some wisdom sharings, right, with everyone. You know, the grandparents, at least my parents, were there. They gave their their part. Aunts and uncles and the friends even were asked to like… what are… what are the things that you want to tell Ezra, you know, that is his, like something that you feel like he needs to know at this time. Right? That's… that was the basic question. And then everyone got to share. Because it was important that it wasn't just led by me right that this ceremony was an expression of how we all have the capacity to hold space. We all have the capacity to let our hearts be listened to. And then we all have the capacity to share wisdom. We also did some sort of like, you know, there's always… It's not a good ritual without some sort of like, sacred drama, right? So we we put him… we wrapped him in this like butcher paper. So he's like literally in a cocoon. And you know, we were like “Okay, so here's Ezra…” Like he had to go through this transformation from this little caterpillar into his now chrysalis, but he's ready to come out. And of course, like the great song, the “I'm Coming Out” song was what I played.
Thomas: Amazing. Wow. [LAUGHS]
Cantor: But before that happened, like he was… We were drumming and we were like, the song is one of those songs that you might hear a lot in circle, which is like “I'm opening up to the sweet surrender to luminous love light of the One.” And just like letting him struggle a little bit in this really wrapped cocoon that he's in and then to eventually like little by little in his own way he starts to like break out of it. [LAUGHS] And then his… we had entrusted some of his aunties to become his fairy godmothers. And they gave him his wings. So he… literally we bought like these Isis wings that light up and so he got to, like, wear that and then like he flew around the circle and was just this like… just this beautiful, expansive butterfly just flying around the circle and giving high fives to everybody. [LAUGHS] And it was just such a celebration that we could still have all of that, you know, in this very encapsulated moment of time. Like we knew it was special when the photographer who was really only supposed to be there for a certain amount of time, like literally just expanded his time there. And he kept saying, Thank you, thank you for inviting me to this space. I know I witnessed something really special.
[MUSIC]
After the ceremony happened, the family raced back to be with Ezra’s grandfather for his last moments. They arrived about two or three hours before his passing. He had waited for them.
Cantor: And that was the night of the big eclipse two years ago. And I know we’ve just finished one big eclipse portal just recently, but like, wow, it’s so… Things happening on such an astrological level really like it was as if this was a huge portal of time, of literally combing through some new part of ourselves. I was so grateful to have had that… It's almost like the ceremony expanded into that space. So from that larger circle, we had the smaller circle, where we were gathered around his bedside in the hospital. And just you know, having breaths with him, we were able to tell him how much we loved him and give him a you know, a recap of what happened at the ceremony. We were even able to get his little thumbprint on this like family tree thing that we did every collected everyone's thumb prints on so his thumb prints on there. And then he shed one last tear, took his last breath. And while we were holding his hand or at some part of his body, we… you know, witnessed his last breath. And that was it, right like that was… there was silence and then crying. And then I just remember the bright moon outside once we had to leave the hospital. But it all felt whole in some way. So glad that he waited for us.
Thomas: And that's, that's so beautiful. Thank you for sharing that with us.
Cantor: Thank you for hearing that. And so right, ceremonies can be big and they can be small.
Thomas: And they can be planned out and they can be instantaneous.
Cantor: Yep. Yeah.
Thomas: Well, I'm so grateful to you for sharing the story with us because I think we all need more examples that could potentially spark, “Oh, wow, that or that little aspect of that… that's exactly what I'm looking for right now!” So thank you.
Cantor: Thank you Colleen, seriously.
Thank you for being with us today to hear this story. It’s so important to make room for all of the layers of life that often overlap in real time. When we honor that richness, we create room for our full selves. And when our full selves are invited, who knows what will happen? So, how are you emerging right now? And how might you like to celebrate that emergence?
April Cantor is a certified yoga & mindfulness teacher and modern-day priestess. Through her company SoulShine Life she holds sacred space for children, women and men to cultivate a curious & kind relationship with Self, Community, Land & Source. For guidance in creating your own Emergence Ceremony you can contact April through her website at www.SoulShineLIfe.com or directly through Instagram @SoulShineLifeYoga
Our music is by Terry Hughes. Find us on YouTube, IG and X at shamepinata. Reach us through our website, shamepinata dot com. And subscribe to the show on your favorite player. Also be sure to check out Everyday Magic for Ukraine, our ongoing series of 10-minute meditations that support you as you support Ukraine. I’m Colleen Thomas. Thanks for listening.
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