Malidoma Some wrote an interesting book about how rituals tie us to the community and give us an anchor to tie our selves too, called Ritual: Power, Healing, & Community. Ruth Barrett discusses it in Women's Rites, Women's Mysteries, as well. That book discusses at length the importance of celebrating and ritualizing aspects of women's lives that we might not otherwise consider. In fact one thing I love about it is that although it talks about celebrating biological milestones such as menstruation and menopause, it also provides a wide range of things to celebrate and recognize within ourselves and our community.
I think society overlooks ritualizing womanhood because most are either Christian, where such things are not celebrated, or are rebelling against the church and organized religion and therefore try to avoid anything that seems ritualized or spiritually significant. Actually I'm not even sure it's an active rebelliousness as much as for many, a disinterest in organized religion and "superstitious" spirituality, and therefore a lack of recognition of their importance in our lives. We've collectively leaned so far over to science that we dismiss any kind of magic or sacred connection. Even if we're not Christian, so many of us think "that's just silly superstition". And then you have the ones who don't want to celebrate womanhood for fear of being labelled with that big "f" word - feminism. *sigh*
Reading some of Joseph Campbell's books or even Jung's will suggest how myth and ritual touch us and unite us. Some describes how each person's rituals tied them into the family, and each family's rituals tied them into the community as well, until all made a coherent whole through the simplest of tasks assigned as part of the rituals. I honestly think one of society's ills is the fact that so many ignore spirituality and ritualization. I think it's a big problem that we don't have the ways to tie together and act as unique citizens *and* as parts of the whole.
Anyway, I digress.
When I began menstruating my mother told me she wanted to take me out for dinner to celebrate my womanhood but we couldn't afford it and she made me a special dinner at home instead. Birth control and reproduction weren't big topics to discuss because my cousin had become pregnant when she was 14 and I was 8. So there was never "the talk" but it was a subject we had discussed at some point or other.
One thing that Barrett introduced to me was the idea of celebrating motherhood at a child's birthday - aside from celebrating one's birth, also celebrating the labour of love and change in life that motherhood brings. I like this idea and will be considering it on my son's birthday. Maintaining pregnancy and becoming a mother where very difficult for me and having done it successfully is something for me to celebrate.
Om Namah Shivaya.
"Im finding seeking the sacred, well, that its rather like falling in love, the harder you seek it, the less likely it is to happen." - Brightshores
"When your consciousness is directed outward, mind and world arise. When it is directed inward, it realizes its own Source and returns home into the Unmanifested." ~ Eckhart Tolle
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Originally Posted by Philosophia
I got a hug and that was basically it. I grew up in the Orthodox Christian church where menstruation and all things womanly are frowned upon. Once a girl gets her period, she is not allowed up at the altar, she's "tainted", and some even believe she shouldn't get receive communion while menstruating. 
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