水子供養 feeding the astral umbilical postpartum spirit care for water babies and their parents
Feeding the Astral Umbilical is a practice dedicated to the cultivation of relationship with water baby ancestors - the spirits of children who have been aborted or miscarried.
This offering lives within the lineage of mizuko kuyo (水子供養), a japanese Buddhist ceremony intended to support the transitioning spirits of babies and the unborn who have been aborted or miscarried. Mizuko 水子 means water child and refers to the spirits of babies who never made it to earth. In our cosmology, water is the element that carries the spirit of a baby from the river of heaven to the lagoon of the womb. It is the element that carries life in and out of this world. Kuyo 供養 means memorial service. The full translation of the phrase mizuko kuyo is “water child memorial service”. In mizuko kuyo ceremony, the child-bearing person as well as the spirit of the baby that never made it to earth, are held together in ritual as they process grief, alchemize shame, and integrate the gifts and opportunities of the experience of pregnancy loss.
I offer this work in both 1:1 and group containers, both in person and virtually. I uplift the highly unique and specific nature of this work for each individual. While the tradition of mizuko kuyo comes from the cultures of the japanese archipelago, Feeding the Astral Umbilical is about supporting each person to cultivate an intimate relationship with their water child as well, as the wisdom traditions of their own ancestral lineages. This practice is deeply intuitive and trusting in the emergent, mysterious, and spontaneous nature of ritual work. I believe that abortion and miscarriage can sometimes (not always) be a form of spiritual intervention, a sacred pause in the process of generational reproduction and continuation. I see this sacred pause as an opportunity to tend to unprocessed material, memory, and history held within the womb space and within the lineage, so that it is not unconsciously passed on to future generations.
Feeding the Astral Umbilical is also about cultivating relationships with bright and well ancestors. In the tradition of mizuko kuyo, aborted and miscarried babies are seen as bodhisattvas, beings who have transcended the experience of human suffering. They are connected to our lineages but also not of this earthly plane. As such, they are powerful ancestor spirits with whom to collaborate to invite healing, consciousness, and liberation into our bloodlines and into the earth plane. Through feeding the astral umbilical, we pass medicine back and forth from earth to cosmos, anchoring ourselves into universal kinship and support.
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