In many Indigenous teachings, the placenta is understood as a hologram of the soul — carrying the life map of a person’s journey.
When the placenta is planted in the earth, Mother Earth receives the message: this soul has arrived.
When puberty comes — with the first blood or seed — that map is activated, and the Earth begins guiding the individual’s path.
Aboriginal elder MinMia, author of Under the Quandong Tree, teaches that each placenta carries a unique Miwi, or soul print
— the sacred instructions for one’s life.
To return the placenta to Nungeena-tya, Mother Earth, is to anchor that soul’s map in place.
Even when the placenta is consumed, it completes its circle through the body and back into the soil.
What causes harm, she teaches, is when placentas are discarded together, mixed, and forgotten — leaving the soul’s map unanchored, directionless.
The Mother–Baby Field
From the very first spark of conception, the placenta begins to form
— not as something separate, but as part of the shared consciousness of mother and baby.
It nourishes, sustains, protects, and remembers.
To know this is to remember something ancient.
Birth connects us to our ancestors, to the earth, to the great web of life.
When we honour the placenta, we honour that mystery.
A Story of Remembering
It was 2006 when my first placenta found me.
Another lifetime remembering as soon as I felt this one in my hands, something else was orchestrating and knew the way.
A reminder to listen.... and then the placentas began to speak.
Some shared stories of who they are.
Some call songs forward that hold the transmission of the medicine they are
Others whispered the story of the birth itself — moments of trust, surrender, quiet inward gaze, fierce outward expressions
Placenta hold consciousness, memory, and spirit.
Since then, I have been in a loving kinship with placentas for two decades.
I allow them to lead; they know the right time (most love the wee hours in the morning to be made into medicine), the right plants, the songs, all which support their vision of why the earth called them to come.
Offering Back
Placenta work is more than a service for me — it is ceremony.
Each element — the medicines (capsules, tinctures, salves), the cord keepsake, the land offering, and the transmission— is part of a greater ritual of return and remembrance.
The capsules nourish the body.
The cord holds the story, and the paradox of the connection and the first separation.
The dried sac offers a way to return a part of the placenta to the earth, completing the sacred circle.
This work honours both the physical and spiritual medicine of the placenta — a bridge between realms, a keeper of the threshold.
It is nourishment for body and soul alike.
“When we connect to the deep significance of the placenta, we awaken to the truth that life itself is ceremony
— and that we are, always, held by the Mother.”
Supportive Options
Another beautiful complimentary support for after birth is Traditional womb wrapping with plants and home visits
Birth Doula Support - Motherwort Doula Team
