Why celebrate rites of passage

More information on rites of passage — including bereavement and liminal spaces — and why we need to make time to celebrate and intentionally invite others to join us. Get your subscription today! Use the Bridges or a custom program for your senior center. You can also join our membership, attend an event and more! Infibulation is partially closing off the opening to the vagina by sewing, pinning, or clamping part of the vulva. Many Native American societies publicly celebrated a girl's first menses.

The girls were partly buried in heated sand at this time. They were not permitted to scratch themselves or eat salt, and they were given instructions by older women about the physiological changes that were occurring and how to behave as a woman and wife. For most North American girls today, public announcements that they had begun menstruating would be considered humiliating. However, it was a matter of personal and family pride in many Native American cultures.

While boys do not experience such clear physiological markers of transition to adulthood as menstruation, their rites of passage to this new status in some cultures are more severe than for girls.

Among the cattle herding Barabaig culture of East Africa, the boys' heads are shaved and their foreheads are cut with three deep horizontal incisions that go down to the bone and extend from ear to ear. This scarification leaves permanent scars that identify a male as having received " gar.

They were also given toloache , a powerful hallucinogenic drug that made them ill and apparently sometimes caused their death. Among some Australian Aborigine societies, a boy being initiated was expected to repeatedly hit his penis with a heavy rock until it was bruised and bloody. He also had several of his incisor teeth knocked out with a sharp rock by the adult men who were instructing him in the duties and obligations of manhood and the secrets of their religion.

All of these rite of passage rituals were intended to be painful in order to increase the importance of the transition to adulthood. NOTE : Over the last several decades, major women's rights organizations in the Western World have focused attention on eliminating clitoridectomy and infibulation in Africa, the Near East, and among immigrants from those areas.

In order to demonize these cultural practices, they refer to them as "genital mutilation" and usually insist that it is violence against women done as part of the male repression and control of women. The latter assertion fits Moslem dominated countries more than the non-Moslem sub-Saharan African societies that follow these practices. The reality in many non-Moslem African societies is that the surgery is performed by older women and is an integral part of the initiation of girls into the world of women.

A rite of passage can help your children gain a deeper awareness of the transitions going on in their lives, while providing a sense of continuity with their personal story and of connection with their community.

Akoma Unity Center AUC is a c 3 non-profit, grassroots organization committed to the progress of African American youth, families, and communities.

Our physical location is strategically situated within the community we serve at the Anne Shirrells Park next door to Rio Vista Elementary.

Hit enter to search or ESC to close. They Provide a Sense of Renewal and Belonging Rites of passage foster a sense of renewal, since they mark the beginning of a new phase in our lives. They Place us in a Sacred Space When we take part in a rite of passage we find ourselves in a sacred space. They Help us Make Sense of Change One of the main purposes of a rite of passage is to help us make sense of change as individuals but also as a community.