Rituals in the Time of Covid
“I was expected to continue the ceremonies that grounded and lifted and connected my people to each other and to the earth.” Sandra Guzmán looks back on her mother’s ancestral wisdom. Original illustration for Art Papi by Guanina Cotto.
When I was in my mother’s womb, she knew I was going to be a girl; but not because she got a sonogram, we lived in Ponce and there was no access to technology anyway. She practiced a Native rite that accurately predicted the gender of her babies —a ceremony that was passed down from expectant mom to expectant mother for generations. It connected her to all the grandmothers in her bloodline and to the women in the small tropical village of her birth. It went like this: at the start of the second trimester, she’d gather with her sister-friends and would squirt some of her breast liquid on the trunk of a tree or a piece of wood and make a small ‘X’ or cross. If the marking faded, she was carrying a girl, if it lasted, a boy.
My mother did this with her five pregnancies and only two markings, those of my younger brothers, remained. When I was a little girl, she showed me the smudges on the wall for each of my brothers in our living room. The ceremonies did not end when the babies came out of the womb —–in fact, that was just the beginning. In our lifetimes, there would be many rituals to practice. Following the birth of the baby, another sacred rite took place: the placenta of the newborn was buried in quiet prayer and song near the home. This, she told me, tied the infant to the land, ensuring that the baby would never forget the earth that they were now part of. Momma shared oral stories of these practices so that one day, I too, would follow in Native tradition.
Being born into an Igneri mom, a people who practiced rituals by the river, the sea, and under the light of a full moon and the dazzling stars when they planted or fished — rites that dated thousands of years—this was part of my birthright. I was expected to continue the ceremonies that grounded and lifted and connected my people to each other and to the earth.
Sandra’s mother, Lydia González Santos, age 19 in El Tuque, Ponce. All photos in this essay courtesy of the author.
Immigration to the great metropolis ended rituals for me for many years. When I did get pregnant and wanted to know the gender of the two babies that I carried in my womb, I didn’t squeeze breast milk on a tree in Central Park, I went to the hospital to get sonograms. And, certainly, I didn’t bury their placentas near the tiny patch of earth by the apartment building in Chelsea where I lived. I would have been arrested — or had called the cops on me —if any of my white neighbors saw me burying placentas in the middle of the megalopolis or pulling out my milk-full pregnant breasts to smudge a tree. Furthermore, it felt like those rites had no business in the modern urbanscape that hosted Sex and the City. Like the fading smudges of baby girls, they disappeared into oblivion.
Today I realize that something profound was lost, a severing of an ancient conversation with the women in my lineage: an exchange that I am recovering and also reentering. Yet knowing about these rituals that tied my mother to her mother and her mother to all the grandmothers feels like a balm to a weary heart, especially during a pandemic.
Even if I wanted to practice all the ceremonies that have been passed down to me, many are too cumbersome, and seen through the modern gaze, are judged wild and spooky. Some have even been prohibited. In 2007, the New York City Council nearly banned drumming circles in Marcus Garvey Park in Harlem because the white gentrifiers felt the joyful drumming was "noise." To drummers from the continent (Africa), Cuba, Puerto Rico, Trinidad, and Haiti who gather weekly, playing the drums is not entertainment, it is a holy act. These sounds are not noise, they are messages carried to the heavens allowing the portals to open up something inside of us. If you don’t believe me, try standing still and not shaking your hips when you hear drums. You have to be dead not to move.
In the modern day, most traditional ceremonies are private and more intimate. I have found that in the middle of a pandemic these rituals are grounding and healing.
For instance, every morning before I pour myself a cup of coffee, I pour the first sip into the sink, and praise my ancestors. I began doing this quietly on my own one day as part of my morning prayer. My mother saw me and reminded me that my late father’s mother did this ritual every morning. I don’t recall ever witnessing my abuelita do this, but it made me think about the memories we carry in our DNA.
When I pour the libation, it is a form of meditation, of remembering, of knowing that I come from a long line of strong men and women who are joyful, loving, and heroic because they survived some of the most grotesque cruelty. These acts remind me that they, the ancestors, are with and within me.
Some rituals are private, others are to be shared. No matter how small or elaborate, rituals are part of the human experience. Every culture and religion has them, and some are ancient. The Mayans, Aztecs, Incas, and Egyptians had them; Cleopatra was famous for hers: she bathed in milk under the light of the full moon. Many modern day rites are secular — graduations, proms, anniversaries, and birthdays. Some are hella fun too, hello quienceañeras!
One of the sacred burial sites for placentas.
During the last full moon, two sister-friends and I gathered in one of their backyards, we drank warm cinnamon tea, caught up while socially-distanced, and sang songs to la luna for Black Lives in front of a fire. We prayed for ourselves and the world. The experience fortified for me for the next month.
Rituals always strengthen and ground. Before the pandemic I was too busy to live by the stages of the moon like my grandmothers did. In fact, I hardly looked at the night sky! But if this pandemic has taught me anything — and there are lessons still coming — it is that bringing back rituals has been therapeutic for my mental health. According to psychologists, rituals transcend the purpose of one’s actions. They calm anxiety, deepen our resolve, and remind us of our courage. They can ease our grieving, and also increase our joy. When focusing — heart, body and spirit — on something that has been done for generations, it connects us to something bigger, even greater.
In the time of Covid and in the face of so much uncertainty —rituals have been a game changer. Rituals keep me sane and that means —grounded. In my modern life, I have learned that rituals don't have to be ornate or even difficult, but they do need to be consistent.
Whether it's oiling my hair with coconut oil and braiding it in two long braids at night as my grandma taught me; saving the hair that falls on the comb and then taking it to a river once a month, on the new moon, and releasing it to the water so it can grow strong and long; to drinking a cup of chamomile blossom tea before bed; meditating every morning before my kids and hubby get up; or celebrating the new and full moons with sister-friends ——these daily, nightly, weekly and monthly rituals keep me prayerful and connected.
Sandra Guzmán is an Emmy award-winning Boricua filmmaker, editor and writer. Her most recent project is Daughters of Latin America: An International Anthology of Writing by Latine Women, published by HarperCollins.
Click here for the original Spanish version.