Article by Marlee Bruinsma

Heart2Heart Ceremonies - Marlee Bruinsma Profile | Email | Website Civil Marriage Celebrant Committed to creating a ceremony to reflect your beliefs, values and conscious intentions - ceremonies that respect the earth and nature. 58 Cedar Creek Road Cedar Creek, Tamborine QLD Australia 4207 0438 144 269

One mother's celebration of her daughter's 18th Birthday

Recently my daughter turned 18 and I decided to create a ceremony to mark her rite of passage into the legal adulthood. We had a sit down dinner with friends and family and a funny slideshow of childhood moments as well as the ceremony that I created for her (and me). I was surprised to find that the ceremony had a profound effect on me as her mother. I thought I was performing a ceremony for my daughter and had forgotten that I wasn't just the officiating celebrant on this occasion but also intimately connected with the person being celebrated! After the ceremony, two of the guests told me that they would like a ceremony just like this for their 21st birthdays, so that was a real thrill. I am sharing the ceremony below and hope that you may find some parts of it inspiring for creating your own ceremonies for teenagers.

I set up a path for my daughter to walk along as we progressed through the ceremony, with cloth and flowers and branches and crystals.

Here's the ceremony. I welcome any comments on rituals you use to celebrate birthdays or other rituals that would be good to use for celebrating teenage milestones and any comments on this ceremony.

Pandora’s 18th birthday ceremony

Welcome, everyone…thank you for coming along tonight to help us celebrate Pandora’s 18th birthday and her passage from childhood to adulthood, something that continues from this point on. We are, all of us, continuing to grow into adulthood. It doesn’t happen instantly, once your biological clock reaches 18.

Although Pandora will continue to live here for some time, from now on she will live as an adult contributing to the running of the household and adding her own style and character to the house. Phyllis Diller said that "Most children threaten at times to run away from home. This is the only thing that keeps some parents going." And we hope that one day Pandora will run away and create her own household.

Turning 18 does signify the start of new rights – legal and societal – and also new responsibilities. Parents and other significant people can be a great support at this time. Someone said: "Listening to parents' advice is sort of like watching commercials. You know what's coming, you've heard it all before, it's a big bore, but you listen anyway." As I don’t wish to be boring, I won’t start handing out advice here and now. I’ll save that until later. Instead I’ll quote Eleanor Roosevelt, with the hope that my daughter and other young women not forget the long struggle women have had for equality and freedom. There are many wonderful women writers you could read from Starhawk to Marilyn French, Betty Friedan to Merlin Stone, Naomi Wolf and Gloria Steinham and Clarissa Pinkola Estes.

Eleanor Roosevelt said:

Many people will walk in and out of your life,
But only true friends will leave footprints in your heart...
(I selected about 5 quotes from Eleanor Roosevelt that I felt were appropriate – you can see quotes for her at this page: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/e/eleanor_roosevelt.html)

Pandora, marking important occasions such as your 18th birthday is often done through symbolic actions. I have asked you to bring something with you tonight that represents your childhood – something that you are leaving behind. I’d like you to now bring that forward and hold it.
As you hold it, I’d like you to think about the childhood you have had – good and bad, happy and sad. No two people have the same childhood, even two children in the same household will have two different experiences of childhood. Each of us is unique and will react to the same circumstance differently. It is your journey of childhood that has brought you to this moment, here on this deck. Here, in this moment, you are 18, you are alive and celebrating with friends and family, and because of where we live, in a country of opportunity and peace, you have endless possibilities.

In order to explore these endless possibilities, it is sometimes necessary to step off the beaten trail, the well explored paths of childhood and forge new trails. The things that served in childhood may provide a good foundation but they may not give you all you need to create an adult life. So I’m going to ask you to place that object from childhood behind you, representing all that has gone into the foundation of who you are, always part of your past but not necessarily evident in your everyday life in the future.

And I’m going to ask you to hold out your hands palms up and look at them. A Buddhist teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, said: "If you look deeply into the palm of your hand, you will see your parents and all generations of your ancestors. All of them are alive in this moment. Each is present in your body. You are the continuation of each of these people."

Yet you are more than that – you add your own particular identity, qualities, quirks and habits to the sum of all of those people. In your hands, you hold your future – what you do with it from this moment on is solely up to you. To help you along the way, I would like to present you with some symbolic tools to assist you.

First of all – a broom. Behold the broom! Ordinary household tool though it might be, it has a long and fascinating history. It has represented luck, fortune, and fertility of family and lands. I’m going to ask you to jump over it, symbolising your willingness to jump over all obstacles, be they wild and unanticipated or mundane and expected. Since the broom is also an ordinary household tool, it also symbolises your willingness to take on the ordinary tasks of a household. (unknown author)

To take responsibility for cleaning up your own messes and, occasionally, the messes of other people, where this is of genuine help and not something that will enable them to stay in a situation where they keep creating messes and expecting someone else to clean up after them. You will learn about this in psychology. Interdependence, independence and co-dependence. Learn to tell the difference between these and when they are called for and when to be avoided. Jumping the broom also represents jumping into your future as an adult. So now, jump!

Now you have taken your first step as an adult, assuming responsibility for your own actions. I place within your hands my next symbolic gift. This is a book written by a woman for women. Women who run with the Wolves. You may not read it straight away – although you might. And you might read it again in your twenties and thirties and forties – at each time, it will carry a different message for you. It carries profound healing and wisdom for women and I hope you will receive the messages it holds for you.

I’d like to share a quote by Deb Soule of Avena Botanicals: The wise woman within us remembers our goodness…(rest of quote can be found here: http://www.snowboardmommy.com/content/mother-blessing/mother-blessingway-quotes.php)

And finally, I ask you to step forward and light a candle – this candle represents your ability to kindle your own flame and keep it burning. It reminds you to look for your light within even in moments when life seems full of darkness and despair. It says that you have the power to create light in all that you do, to shine forth, to illuminate and reveal the truth, to see further by using your talents than you could if you kept them hidden. This light also gives forth warmth, reminding you to cultivate a warm nature and a healing presence for both yourself and for others. It symbolises the light that you carry within, always present. You may feed this light with things that restore you, by feeding your soul and doing things that bring joy to your heart. As you do this, your light grows bigger and you are able to share this light with the world, joining your light with others to create a place of safety, peace, beauty, harmony – the kind of place you would like to live in. This too is now your responsibility. This candle and this lantern are now yours.

And finally, I ask you to take up a glass with champagne and I ask everyone to join us in a toast to Pandora. The toast I make is from Edward Abbey in his Benedicto:

Pandora,
May your trails be crooked, winding, …(rest of passage may be found here: http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/show/869)

And always remember hope, the gift of that first Pandora, who was the most beautiful of all mortal women, who inspired Prometheus, the giver of fire to mankind, and who made her own choices, who was gifted and talented and preserved the greatest gift for mankind – that of hope. And so I’d like each of us here now to express a hope or wish for Pandora on this, her 18th birthday.

Everyone expresses their hopes.

And on to our celebration – thank you for your attention.

24 May 2011

Article/Information supplied by Marlee Bruinsma

Disclaimer - Any general advice given in any article should not be relied upon and should not be taken as a substitute for visiting a qualified medical Doctor.

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