The Prenatal Shadow: Healing the Traumas Before and at Birth
Read the Introduction and an Excerpt from the New Book - Watch the Interview
Editor’s Note: This post is a part of the forthcoming Special Issue of Kindred Magazine celebrating the Mother of Medicine for Mother’s Day 2025. Kindred welcomes Stephanie Mines, PhD, as guest editor for this issue.
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Introduction to the Excerpt of The Prenatal Shadow by Dr. Cherionna Menzam-Sills
By Stephanie Mines, PhD
I met Cherionna Menzam when we were studying Pre and Perinatal Psychology together in Boulder, Colorado. We became friends and Cherionna invited me to be on her doctoral committee. I had great confidence in her and now I am deeply impressed by her commitment to educate and advocate for the systemic paradigm shift in medicine that is so carefully delivered in The Prenatal Shadow and that she shares with me in The Mother of Medicine Movement.
In this excerpt from The Prenatal Shadow, you are gently guided to comprehend how it is that the very origins of life have ben obscured in the context of Western civilization. A patriarchal worldview has colonized pregnancy and birth and marketed it for profit, putting into shadow innate life-affirming healing wisdom. This has, thus far, been successful in convincing millions of people that their own biographies are truncated.
In my work with people all over the world, from all walks of life, seeking trauma resolution, I have consistently heard from them that it is impossible to remember their prenatal lives and that there could be no correlation between any of their health or relational challenges and their birth. Nonetheless, by the time our first meeting is concluded, they experience, to their benefit, that the opposite is true.
This quote from Cherionna’s book, explains why she and I are partners in The Mother of Medicine:
“Shadow material longs for the light. It yearns to be seen. The hidden parts of us are like long-lost children, terrified of being discovered, but still craving the love they haven’t received. If we were to open a door and discover one of these children, they might kick and scream if we held them close. After some time, they would settle and begin to cuddle into us. This is what they have been waiting for. What is waiting in your shadow?”
Read the excerpt that follows here and reflect on Cherionna’s query at the end of this quotation. It is through personal awakening and the reclamation of the full scope of who we are that we can make a difference in a world that yearns for our individuality and free speech.
Then enjoy our video podcast discussion below!
Shadow, Consciousness, and Accurate Reflection
Following is an excerpt from The Prenatal Shadow: Healing the Traumas Before and at Birth
(Inner Traditions) by Cherionna Menzam-Sills, PhD (pp.37 – 41)
We retain as conscious memory what is reinforced. If you haven’t thought about an event for years, you may not remember its details as well as if you have spoken about it frequently with others. This is also true for young children as their conscious mind is developing. Left hemisphere verbal and conscious memory begin functioning in the second year, altering brain organization. When toddlers have an experience that their parents or caregivers reflect to them, the experience can be stored in conscious memory. For example, a child visits the zoo with their parents. The next day, they draw a picture of the elephant with its big ears and eagerly show the drawing to their mother. The mother might respond with words that help the child to record this memory more verbally. “Oh, you drew the elephant we saw at the zoo! It has big ears. We also saw giraffes there. They had long necks.” In this way, the child’s experience is put into words. It’s like creating a file in conscious, verbal memory for this experience. A child’s drawing of being in the womb or of being born is unlikely to be received the same way. It may not even be recognized.
Similarly, a child may try to draw or tell a parent about a sexually abusive experience. If this occurred in the 50s or 60s, or in too many families even today, the most likely response would be something like, “That never happened! What a filthy mind you have that imagined that! Don’t ever mention that again!” This experience is clearly not acceptable. The child learns quickly to never talk about this kind of event again. They also may have been warned by the abuser that it is their secret and to never tell anyone. It becomes safer to not think about it at all. This tendency can be augmented by the trauma response of dissociation that serves to protect the individual from intense pain of a traumatic experience.
Designating memories of such abuse as fantasy feeds and protects the shadow… Gradually, light is being shone on this too frequent expression of cultural shadow. Again, when the sacred feminine is rejected and forgotten, her shadow is projected onto innocent females. Those fearing this repressed aspect of themselves, often men, attack its expression in others, through abuse, rape, incest, and so on. Relegating pre- and perinatal memories to shadow similarly expresses this fear and denial of the feminine. In that they occur within the feminine womb and the function of birth, these are also feared and demeaned. They are aspects of the Mystery, well understood in the feminine psyche but dreaded by the masculine as impossible to fully dissect, analyze, or control.
Little ones often attempt to communicate about their experience of birth and the womb. In working with babies, I have seen repeatedly how they readily demonstrate the way they moved through the birth canal.
This Baby Just Needed to Tell His Story
Many years ago I was delighted to work with a little eight-week-old boy. His parents were aware of the value of Craniosacral therapy for newborns. Although they didn’t see any issues and thought the birth had been non-eventful, they wanted me to treat little George and make sure he was healthy.
In our first session, George seemed very present. He readily made eye contact and seemed to enjoy my hands holding him. Just to be sure, we arranged a second session. This time I was surprised when George suddenly started to twist in my hands. After making quick eye contact apparently to ensure that I was with him, he began to rotate toward the right, expressing some effort and then crying as he moved through a stuck place. He then emerged from an apparent birth canal and continued crying. In working with babies, it is important to help them to stay in present time. Because they are nonlinear, “left-brained” oriented, their memories are implicit, body-based, and outside of time. In this state, they don’t differentiate between past and present. They just experience directly.
In this case, I could see that George was still present in the room, looking around and making eye contact every few minutes. I also realized that he had been showing us his birth from his perspective, which hadn’t been as easy as his parents believed. When he was done, resting in his mother’s lap and making eye contact with me, I spoke to him with what I felt in my own heart. I found myself apologizing to him. I said something like, “I’m sorry I didn’t realize it was so hard for you. I missed it.” After a moment, this little eight-week-old baby began to laugh and laugh! He evidently enjoyed that I was apologizing to him. He wasn’t very traumatized by his birth experience, but he did need to tell his story and have it be recognized and received. Being present with him in the session, his parents were now able to understand what his body movements were about and to appreciate how he had struggled.
Toddlers frequently talk about how it was for them at birth, in mommy’s tummy, or even where they were before conception, and how they chose their parents. If they are lucky, their parents or others they speak to are interested in their story and ask for more details. This provides the reflection and reinforcement to establish these memories in consciousness.
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More often, adults respond to these utterings from the innocent as nonsense. They may say or think, “Aren’t they cute!” or “Yes, dear,” or distract them with a different topic or activity, without appreciating that these are actual valid statements of memory. Within a culture that values “left brain,” masculine analysis and denies sentience before verbal language develops, these expressions cannot possibly be valued. The child in this context learns that these are unacceptable experiences, and memories are buried in the unconscious, becoming shadow.
Watch the Podcast Interview with Stephanie Mines and Cherionna Mezam-Sills
RESOURCES
Explore Kindred’s posts and podcasts on birth psychology/prenatal and perinatal experiences
Discover national and international resources supporting healthy birth and pregnancy.
Soothing Perinatal Experiences is one of nine components of our Evolved Nest, our evolutionary pathway to wellbeing. Explore the Evolved Nest’s Learning Center science-based resources for prenatal life.