Rites of Passage Ceremony for Middle Childhood

A special event in the woods to mark a transition from small child to big child

In the cool of winter 2015 I found out I was pregnant. I awoke having had a dream of being in a river, water flowing all around me, and holding a positive pregnancy test. We had been trying on and off for 4 years so I was well used to doing tests, and I expected not much but something inside me was screaming to do one. Trying not to wake my husband I delved through the bathroom cupboard, it was positive. I was shocked and held the test in front of my husband’s face as I shook him awake so he could be just as surprised.

In August 2016, my eldest was born. He came after a long and exhausting 72 hour labour. Right at the end, I felt there was nothing left within me to get this baby out. As they wheeled me up to the delivery unit, I felt as though roots were growing up into my body from the Earth, giving me energy. I wasn’t getting the baby out, the Earth was. He came and his eyes were the bluest eyes I have ever seen. They are like the sky. And that is the story of how I became a mother to a very unique little boy who has led me to places I had no idea I would be led to back in 2015.

2016, what a year to be having a child! I had my second in 2021, so it feels like potent timing for both of them. The children that are arriving now are growing up in a very different world, and navigating things children have never been exposed to before. They have come here with gifts and lessons as well as the weight of being born now. This is a very different generation to those that have gone before, they are pushing us to create something different for them. In 2020s England there is no real sense of indigeneity in our culture and no ceremony or initiation. In response to my son, and the state of the world and the future we are facing, I have felt called to raise him in a different culture to the mainstream overculture. This has often meant that I walk a different path so I need to create it myself.

Our culture wants us to be good worker bees who sacrifice our sense of self at the altar of capitalism. He can’t sit still in a chair, is a naked wild child, and has no interest in being told what to do. So I home educate him.

Our culture wants us inside all the time, because houses are places for all the stuff you can buy. He doesn’t care for things, and is only truly relaxed outside with the wildlife around him. So we spend many days in the woods and outdoors and we rewilded our garden to be full of grasshopper playmates for him.

Our culture wants us to raise our children to be separate from the Earth and ignorant of our symbiosis with her. Our culture wants us to perpetuate business as usual and ignore the destruction being caused. Our culture wants us to forget that children are really important to shaping culture. He hugs trees because they are sad, he talks to the sky and craves birds flying down to touch his skin. So I started this blog to think deeply about how to raise him into an Earth Centred Family Culture.

Our culture wants us to prioritise information over wisdom. So I have sought guidance from Earth connected Elders throughout his life. One in particular is one of the most treasured friendships I have developed, and it has existed only online, with Gail Burkett, the writer of several books on Rites of Passage. We talk all the time, she has imparted so much incredible wisdom to me beyond just rites of passage, but I knew from talking to her and reading her writing that this was something I must give to my son. She says in her book “Nine Passages”…

“Rites of Passage or Passage Rituals, what does this mean? A natural intersection where an internal biological clock meets a spiritual longing, this is often the case. After one round of seasons, everything feels different. With a language that is slowly returning to the culture, welcome each biological change and make a ceremony that marks your maturity; release old patterns of behavior so that new ones may find room to grow….By marking the expansion of your body, mind, and spirit, personal evolution of your inner Genius is sparked to seek more of life—experiences, curiosities, and spiritual answers.”

Our culture wants us to stay young forever, because young people buy things, we must fear change as it brings us closer to death and the anxiety of that will make us buy more things. My son is often fearful and anxious and needs to be sensitively held through changes. So I created a rites of passage ceremony to initiate him through the thresholds of this major life change.

Gail and I knew he was coming to the point where he was ready, he’s been showing signs of taking more responsibility and independence and moving out of the mother space. So I asked him if he felt he was ready and I started talking to his community around him about what I was planning. Parents of his friends started coming forward wanting to join in. We talked for a few months in advance of the ceremony and I designed a plan based on what we discussed. I made a few changes to accommodate people’s thoughts and we talked about how to prepare our kids. In that time, my son went from not that bothered to extremely excited. The night before you would have thought it was Christmas. He was bouncing off the walls. I was also full of anxious energy and ideas and found it really hard to sleep.

The next morning as I entered Abington Woods to prepare for the ceremony, the sky fell down. I carried my ceremonial belongings through the trees and while the rain pattered among the leaves, I felt apprehensive and also a little concerned. Maybe this won’t work out, I’ve never run a ceremony in a real space with other people. Only at home on my own, with my family or in online Zoom calls. As I heard thunder, I knew I’d have to change plans at least.

I bumped into my friend, who is the guardian of the woods, and we chatted. She sorted it out so we had a gazebo and use of the geodome there. What a beautiful offering and space for the ceremony. My heart was lifted.

The others gradually trooped through the rain to join us in the woodland under the gazebo. The children were beyond excited to be able to go inside a geodome. We had laid out ivy and flowers, plus some face paints so that they could adorn themselves for the ceremony.

Once all of the children who were undergoing the rites of passage had arrived I began with a welcome circle. I introduced and acknowledged each child. We talked about the transition from being a small child to a big child and how we were here to acknowledge that change and create sacred space to honour it. I joked about how strange it must be to have all your teeth fall out. My son laughed and said “NO mum it’s NORMAL, it happens all the TIME”. And everyone chuckled.

I asked everyone to hold hands, to move their bodies how they wished as I sang and to join in if they wanted, and I sang this song to help people arrive to the space, for the first round I changed Loosen to “Welcome” ….

“Loosen, loosen baby,
You don’t have to carry,
The weight of the world in your muscles and bones,
Let go, let go, let go.” (by Aly Halpert)

I explained that we would be going to do a blindfolded rope walk to show that they were ready to cross the threshold into big childhood. We moved over to the part of the woods where the rope walk had been set up. I had silk scarves that I had handpainted to be rainbows, woodlands, galaxies and sunsets. We wrapped them round their eyes and I put my hand on their shoulder as they crossed the threshold and said “As you cross this threshold you show us that you are ready for the next phase of life, pay close attention to what you feel and hear and come back ready to tell us your story”

Some of them were so keen they took off before I finished saying it. One girl decided she wanted to do it again. As they finished I grabbed the jug I had set up on a tree stump and asked them to go on a quest to get water from the river. Off they went and returned with water.

We went into the geodome, and we sat in a circle.

I had asked the children to bring drums, and we got them out. I asked them to play their heartbeats. I walked around the circle and touched them on the head to indicate that they should play their heartbeat and the others should follow. Each child played a very different heartbeat, it brought a sort of synergy and cohesion to the group.

I asked the children to share their experiences of their rope walk. Some were a little shy, it was all consent based so no one had to say anything. There was a consensus from them all that it felt really adventurous.

I poured the river water into a ceremonial bowl and gave each child a candle to float in the water, to represent their light. Some of the kids dropped the candles in and the lights went out, we just laughed a little and lit them up again. The kids were already preparing to float leaves and petals in the water, before I had even told them to. They know how to do ceremony. I do believe it is inherent.

I gave them each a shell and asked them to think of a memory that they want to hold on to from their early childhood. One by one they put their shell into the bowl.

I gave them each a flower and asked them to think of something they are looking forward to from the next phase of their childhood.

Then I asked the parents to share with their children what their memories and hopes were.

They then floated more petals as they wished. I asked them to scatter their flowers around the bowl in a mandala and to put items that represented their early childhood around it as an altar.

Then I asked the adults to share their memories with their child of how they came into the world. We whispered their stories into their ears, there was something very beautiful and loving about it.

Finally the adults stood up and formed an arch and sang this song as the children left the womblike darkness of the geodome.

“Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it, just begin it.
Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it, just begin it.
Boldness has bravery, power and magic in it.
Boldness has bravery, power and magic in it.” (Composed by Venice Manley, based on quote from Goethe)

Then we laid out food for a feast, played some music and chatted while the children explored and played in the woods. At one point the kids asked for flowers to float down the river together and off they went on another adventure to add another symbolic gesture of their own to the ceremonial day.

Alongside our ceremony at the other side of the woodland there was a large and very lively fun birthday party. It was just so fascinating to see the contrast of our event in the woodland space. One of the mums messaged me after and described it as “Intimate, Intentional and Sacred”, and I thought, how often in this fast, consumption led society do we get to experience those things with others in a community. How often do our children?

It was a beautiful day that I am still processing and integrating. This rites of passage is not only for the children, it’s for the parents too. We were never offered this pause, this recognition and acknowledgement at this age, so there is an element of retrospectively giving ourselves the rites and also preparing ourselves for a new stage of parenting. This processing of our traumas and attachments, the healing process involved in preparing for this ceremony, I don’t think it can be underestimated. And I am sure the ceremony will not only spark the need for ceremony within the children, my hope is that the parents will see the role that ceremony can play as well. I think in some ways we all long for ceremony and ritual, when we realise what we’ve been missing.

The ceremony has brought me into reciprocity with the Woods as well, which are now very familiar to me as we go there weekly for the home education group we run. I have always felt embraced and held by them. When I walk into them I feel I belong there, I get the same feeling you get when you walk in the front door after coming home from a long holiday. I miss them in my bones when we don’t go. So to do a ceremony for my eldest son there, it was so special and sacred and it felt like the woods responded to it. At one point a beautiful shield bug visited and was passed around to be admired.

Gail holds so much wisdom about holding these sacred spaces for rites of passage. She believes that if we do not create ceremonial space for rites that we will be initiated through our lives in other ways, through illness, grief, struggle. Francis Weller also talks about trauma culture vs. initiation culture. He compares trauma and initiation in this interview… “First, there’s a severance from the world that you once knew. Then there’s a radical alteration in your sense of identity. And then there’s a profound realization that you can never go back to the world that was. In true initiation, you don’t want to go back to the world that was. Initiation is meant to escort you into a wider, more inclusive, participatory, sacred cosmos.”

I asked my son how he felt about it the next morning and he said he thought it would be a special memory that he would remember forever and that he feels bigger now. That maybe his voice might be deeper. He has also started strapping himself into his seat in the car everytime and going to sleep on his own. I am sure over the next few weeks I will notice even more how he is stepping into this transition and assuming the responsibilities of a big child. I am looking forward to hearing about the gifts that start emerging in all of the children.

Our culture rushes us through life. So we never get to appreciate these stages and thresholds. This is the bittersweet paradox of mothering, pride in watching your child grow up and feeling truly honoured to experience that, combined with the perpetual grief of knowing that you say goodnight to a child and tomorrow they will not be the same, they’ll be bigger and more experienced. You won’t hold those same tiny hands, their tiny feet will be bigger, maybe tomorrow you won’t even have the strength to carry them anymore or their teeth might fall out.

Kids are kids for a short time, and having such beautiful photos of this day, that we have of captured him with his friends at this time makes my heart swell. I know I will look back at them when we do his next rites of passage and marvel and weep at how much he’s grown up.