Resurrection Sunday: Mi Cerrada

I am not a religious person but am deeply spiritual. I am also someone who falls into blessings. Like the time my friend Thea* came to town and invited me to hang out with her and her BFF, Marta*. I’m a person who connects with people based on their energy and from the moment I met Marta, I felt her fun loving and compassionate energy. I also had a chance to bear witness to her power as a healer that night. In between drinks, snacks, and vibing as fellow Pisces, Marta performed Thea’s Cerrada/bone closing. Thea had recently had her 3rd baby, and Marta was a doula who was trained in this beautiful Mexican post partum ritual that invited the spirit to return to the body after the trauma and stress of birth. It also involved massaging the womb and then tying the womb with rebozos to “close”/realign the pelvic bones. I sat on the couch in amazement that a healing practice like this even existed. I love that it was both sacred but also ordinary in the way Marta and Thea interacted with each other as sister friends. I had not had a child since 2003 but I asked Marta if she could perform one on me. She obliged and did a mini version. I felt cared for and recall feeling the weight of my births, abortions, and sexual abuse trauma lifted. I went home and devoured everything I could read about bone closings and learned that women from all over the world have similar post partum healing rituals. I also learned that the ceremony and practice can be done not just for birth but also for the full spectrum of reproduction and for other aspects of life transition. I felt a sense of betrayal as I realized this is yet another form of women’s power that has gotten erased for so many, particularly those of us who live in the US under capitalism and the medicalization of birth and reproduction.

Last year when I visited Mexico City for my belated 50th birthday, I participated in a Temazcal, a pre-Hispanic ritual of Mexico. I wrote about how I felt spiritually reborn after and it has deeply contributed to my healing from being the person the world told me I should be. This year as I began preparing for my return to Mexico, I became curious about participating in a full Cerrada. I wasn’t quite sure where to begin and decided to reach out to Marta to see if she knew where I could go. But then it hit me that Marta knew my story—my sexual trauma story, my abortion story, my birthing story, my relationship story, my career story and my story of my journey towards myself. So I called her with a sisterly ask and she sweetly said yes to my request. We decided that Easter Sunday, a day associated with the season of fertility and rebirth would be the perfect day for her to perform my Cerrada.

Our time together began in a very ordinary way. She came to my place with all her supplies and calming spirit. We chatted like sister friends do as she cut the tops off of several bouquets of flowers and boiled a pot of herbs for my baño. I made us some Jamaica/hibiscus tea. As we sipped our tea, I learned how she came to become a doula and was reminded that beccoming a doula had also been a goal of mine that I had put on the back burner with other hopes and dreams. I also learned that she was becoming a midwife and I recalled the pleasure of having midwives for my 2nd and 3rd birthing processes. We talked about being mamas and about being committed to work that felt affirming and energizing, not depleting. She was tender and caring. I wish I had snapped a picture of her standing in her power in my kitchen.

After a while she called me back to my room. There were candles lit everywhere and my room and bathroom smelled heavenly. I walked into my bathroom and the bath was full of the rose and calendula blooms she had pruned while we were chatting earlier. The herb infused water was the color of tea and there were sprigs of rosemary around the borders of my bath tub. She told me that she prepared different  baños for each person and that mine had herbs and flowers that invited healing and protection. She invited me to undress and step into the warm, flower filled tub. 

After I was settled in she began talking to me about my journey towards myself. My personal and professional life transitions, my traumas, my victories, my areas of struggle and my oppurtunities for growth and healing. She encouraged me to feel what I needed to feel as she “whipped” my body with a bundle of rosemary branches. She said that during the reproductive process, particularly birthing or other forms of womb trauma, our spirits leave the body. The  baño and skin stimulation was inviting the spirit to return. I have been briefly naked in front on my friends and lovers but I rarely have been this naked and vulnerable before.  I have gained over 20 pounds in the past 2 years and have not been feeling comfortable in my body lately. Not because I am fatphobic but more because I am disappointed that I have let the world and life stress “win” again. But, I have begun being more self compassionate and have been revisiting the way I frame my tendency to numb myself and cocoon under my covers to protect myself when I don’t feel safe or feel overwhelmed. I have tried not to feel shame when I use these survival skills but instead am learning to become aware when I don’t feel safe and explore what I need to get and be safe. I felt safe with Marta. Not once did I feel over exposed under her care. In fact I felt quite free. I felt like an innocent and trusting child being given a bath by a caring adult—a reality that I can’t say I’ve had when I actually was a child.

She continued to talk to me and the tears fell. She noted that I was on a healing journey and that I am now dabbling in my “rebellious teen” years. Those exploratory years were cut short for me as the over responsible oldest child and as a sexual abuse survivor who felt like damaged goods. She noted that my “inner child” still needed healing and reminded me that I had survived and that I was safe. It was both a heavy and a light moment. My tears mixed well with the sweet smelling water in my bath tub.

After my baño, she invited me to lay naked on my bed, which now had 4 rebozos laid across it. First she massaged my body with clarysage starting with my feet. Then she externally massaged my uterus and manipulated my pelvic bones to close them physically and spiritually. Then she massaged my upper body and head. After massaging each section she would tie that section with a rebozo. I felt lovingly mummified or cocooned. I felt protected and safe. I felt like soft air. 

 It felt like time had stood still. When she arrived it was daylight but I realized it was dark when she finished. Marta had explained what would happen during my Cerrada in our prep call but I had no idea what spiritual journey I would be going on. I felt so grateful to her as Latina for sharing her healing practices with me as a Black woman. It felt like a gift of Brown-Black solidarity that I will carry with me forever. She labored over me and poured into me. It was magical.

After she finished, she collected the flowers from my baño and said that I could bury them or make and offering at the Lake. Of course, being the mermaid that I am, I chose the lake offering. Her, being a fellow Pisces, said she figured that would be my choice. So the next morning, I got up and walked to the beach. I threw the flowers in the water but not far out enough. Most of them washed right back onto the shore so I began to pick them up one by one and toss them out farther. 

Then all of sudden 4 geese appeared in the water and went directly into the area where all my flowers were. I wasn’t sure if geese liked to eat flowers but they went straight  towards where they were all floating. I have been going to this particular beach for years and have never seen geese there. I was so intrigued by their sudden appearance that I decided to look up the symbolism for geese. One of the most frequent ones I found was that they symbolize PROTECTION, which was aligned with Marta’s message to me the night before. She told me that I was safe and that I was protected! The visit from the geese felt like a serendipitous ending to a beautifully healing experience. 

I believe we all need healing and tender moments like this in our lives. Moments where our spirits are being invited to return to our  bodies. Caring hands massaging and kneading healing deep into our bones. Intentional pauses from life to explore our feelings and thoughts deeply. Instead we are often forced to just push through life and hope time will make it all fade away. That had been my strategy for most of my life. I also spent a considerable amount of time caring for others and ignoring the fact that the child in me had not been cared for and the adult I had become was in need of deep care. I needed to begin this blog in 2014. I need massages regularly and to dance wildly to stay in my body. I needed to begin therapy in 2015 and then again in 2018. I needed to begin taking solo vacations so that I could sit with and discover myself. I needed to be reborn in the Temazcal last year. I needed my spirit to return to my body during my Cerrada this year. And I will continue to pour into my healing for the rest of my time on earth because hard lives need soft spaces.

I don’t mean to romanticize Cerradas but for me, having intentional time to be embodied and having someone hold space for me to come apart and put myself back together spiritually was beautifully healing. Survival is life long. We need pauses. We need time. We need safe, loving, and power filled hands laid on our bodies.  We need words of encouragement and reassurance. We need time for and commitment to restoration. 

Muchas gracias, Marta, for holding my hand and walking me home to my spirit so that I could journey anew. You are a blessing.

More on Bone Closing/Cerrada: https://www.theeducatedbirth.com/articles/bone-closing-ceremony-what-it-is-and-where-it-comes-from

Author’s note: As I said previously, please engage in non-predatory ways when being gifted access to other people’s cultures and spiritual traditions.

*Names have been changed to protect my friends’ badassery