Motherhood, spirituality and culture

Philosophy of language reminds us of the importance of linguistic naming for meaning. Wittgenstein emphasised the importance of the nexus between language and human activity, where words vivify and narrate significance of human experience. In a Kantian-influenced Western society, where reason and rationality oversee our more ambiguous experiences of spirituality, language to express the paradox of such an elusive-knowing is a pressing need. Such language or, in scholarly terms, ‘framework’ is what Noelia Molina offers, through her recent contribution to the growing field of spirituality studies, inMotherhood, Spirituality and Culture. Drawing on her expertise as a psychotherapist, her work examines and gives voice not only to the importance of spirituality for motherhood but to the impact the embodied birthing process has on forming spirituality. Molina’s research aims to establish a ‘maternal-spiritual framework’ (p. 196) to assist maternal learning for mothers and a broad category of caregivers and health professionals in the transitional stages of mothering, through an extensive literature review of spirituality and motherhood, alongside narratively descriptive interviews with mothers. Crucial questions scaffold Molina’s core thesis: