Author Archives: Vania

Being Initiated by Life: The Blood Mysteries that Serve Us

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Autumn is connected to the queen, virgin, mage or wild woman archetype. It is also the perimenopausal portal for folks with wombs and blood cycles. Just like a queen or virgin forest, we are whole unto ourselves. The threshold that stands in our way at menopause is the chance to reclaim our life, and what our soul’s code was meant for. It is a time to remember what we love, reclaim what we were meant to do with our life, and also to re-wild in the best possible way.

Fall is the time where we balance light and dark. It is the time where we start to compost and shed what is coming to completion. Known as the harvest season, we honour the Earth and the Earth that is our own body. September honours the turning of the wheel, October is when we notice the veil is the thin between our world and our ideally departed. If our womb is our oracle, the luteal stage is the shape-shifting truth teller.

We are in the Chrysalis of our life. We’re turning even more towards the darkness.

I’m tired. I’m feeling the drain of my perimenopausal portal. I haven’t been sleeping through the night in months, and my hot flashes keep reminding me of the stress that I carry. I have started to love them as a conduit of the collective rage i feel on behalf of women and bodies with wombs. There is a lot to be angry about.

And so, when I don’t have the energy or capacity to do the things I like, I turn to social media as a way to feel connected with the world. And then it pulls me too far in: I have been in a relationship with my “smart” phone and it’s keeping from living my life. I had a light bulb moment that it’s a Part of me that relies on social media for company. And it is sabotaging me from actual connection. It’s a limiting belief and legacy burden of loneliness that is keeping me stuck. There are some cycles when my luteal lows are just insufferable. My most recent menstruation experience highlighted for me just how old this feeling is in me. I recalled my teenage self and her loneliness. I am becoming more like myself at 15 and 20 than in my 30s, with what interest me as well as my emotional wellspring. I lost myself there for a while, especially by internalizing patriarchy and becoming a mother. I am now coming back in alignment with my Self. Some of it is the modern-day experience of being busy and burning out because my soul knows it’s time to make an upgrade. What has changed is the version of me know has the capacity to hold the feelings.

Our core wound is the work that has to heal still. Mine is my loneliness that shows at my door uninvited, like the blood hungry vampire she is during my luteal stage. It is our soul’s calling to heal the bite marks, and also the use this wound as a portal to a bigger purpose. One way the see-saw is present is I have a Perimenopausal Part that holds wounds and a bit of guilt about not knowing more about my mother line, and their experiences with menopause.

I never got to see the goddess rise in my own mother. More so, I wasn’t able to realize that my mom was a goddess. We all are the embodiment of Her. My mother’s menopause was not honoured, a lot like her life in general. I have no idea when she moved through the portal and what her experience was like. Sometimes i feel guilty about this. And then i realize no one really understood menopause back then, let alone discussed it. So i give myself compassion. And i honour it now, i speak about her story now, i have been initiated by my own cycle, which moves as a monthly descent and initiation as it is.

Menopause is not just a physical change, a time of hot flashes, insomnia and changes in our menstrual cycles. it is not just brain fog, emotional irregularity and dysregulation. it is not just a change in our arousal and less kindness to others. Folks are concentrating so much on the symptoms that are distracting us from this bigger truth that we’re meant to evolve and reclaim our wisdom.

Venus of Willendorf and the primordial female statues were devotional goddess figures. And they were not postpartum bodies. They were menopausal and post-menopausal bodies.

Menopause is actually a spiritual transformation and an ancestral healing opportunity. It is the initiation into elderhood and it comes with sacrifice, the blood that is shed is that of our former fertility. We are stepping into our shamanic resonance, our medicine, our elderhood. Menopause is when we drop these good girl masks to step into our power. And if our own mothers didn’t get to do that, there is so much at stake for us to be able to repair and reclaim.

Birth → Menarche → Sexual awakening → Motherhood → Menopause → Death

Not all rites of passage are physical but the ones that are also connected to a lineage of red threads. Our birth is connected to our mother’s personal red thread. In fact, at the half-way point of her journey, we are born. My womb was in my mother and before that her mother created the seed that became me. My womb carried my children: I love how our stories are woven together in this way.

The transition from maiden to mother is the first rewiring of a woman’s life and yet it’s one that we are wanting, that we asked for, that we have chosen to be initiated by. It’s one thing altogether to be initiated by perimenopause because it is a wake-up call or reconfiguration and a possible complete rewiring of what we thought our life was.
For an uninitiated maiden, the sacrifice is their full self. They chose to be the good girl or pretty one. For midlife, it is their former self they are sacrificing in order to step into their full power – to become the conscious virgin.

If matrescence is a deep initiation and identity shift, perimenopause is the invitation to our own death’s dress rehearsal (thanks Kimberly Ann Johnson for this reference). It is an opportunity for us to look back at our life at this moment in time and notice what we might want to still do or what we might want to change or become. This is why it’s called initiation into the second act of our lives.

We are living longer than our ancestors did. The average age at death is 78, so that is at least 20 years post-menopausal. Surely there is a reason we survive after menopause. We are becoming more seasoned by life, a well-seasoned woman is one that has lived a long life.

The Seasonality that Lives in Us

With this current reality, i turn to other species of nature that have existed long before us. The mother trees, Inanna’s story, metamorphosis, roses. Each has a season, a cycle of birth, death and rebirth. So too do we – each stage of our menstrual cycle has a connection to a season.

For instance, the follicular stage is known as Inner Spring. It’s when we have more energy and access to our creativity, and possibly a lighter mood. There’s a fresh energy similar to someone on a maiden journey.

Summer is associated with ovulation as our body opens a pathway where creating life is possible. It is not just about being pregnant with babies, but with life, with tending to our gardens and our dreams, cultivating the life we want. Summer is the halfway point of a year just like the initiation of motherhood is the halfway point of the stages of womanhood. It is the balancing act between two halves of the story.

The Autumn time is our luteal phase, when things start to feel darker and more heavy. The luteal phase is when everything that hasn’t been addressed rises to the surface. PMS is not a dysfunction in the body – it’s a message that some work to do to cleanse and clear. Sometimes it’s because you’ve taken on a lot that particular month and you are overwhelmed. Sometimes it’s because there are emotions and needs that haven’t been heard or honoured. This is the time to prune and compost what we no longer need and also harvest our potential, our purpose, our passion project for our life. This is the time that is needed before the winter years of our life. It serves as the portal to the descent. It is like the third stage of metamorphosis, that in-between time of no longer being a caterpillar, and not yet becoming a butterfly.

This flows into our menstruation time in Winter when we’re shedding and releasing, but also needing time to rest and cocoon just like winter offers. Every time we shed skin or let go in menstruation, we release something that is no longer needed and gives us more spaciousness and ease for what is becoming, and emergent. It is a messy process, destabilizing at times and also a cleansing for the next stage. This is the rebirth that comes from death, and is similar to our own monthly bleed and cyclical nature. It doesn’t have to be painful but it is a spiral descent and ascent process.

We are encoded with the birth, death and rebirth transformation in the depths of our body. Menopause offers recalibration, as it is a redefiner of our life. It is an opportunity for us to look back at our life at this moment in time, and notice what we might want to still do or what we might want to change or become still. This is why it’s called initiation into the second half of life. It starts with our body trying to get our attention.

These seasons continue in our post-menopausal time of life. Known as the Second Spring, this new season of life is no longer creating life outside us. It is a time for us to reclaim our own creativity. What we’re creating now is our spiritual awakening, our leadership, and stepping into our soul’s purpose and power.

When we enter perimenopause, this is a reckoning that takes place. Perimenopause is the last reproductive threshold for women. It’s the final opportunity to receive a report card, showing us how we have navigated our fertile year. What we have learned about our body via the menstrual cycle and monthly blood. It is a different type of blood test.

Let’s recognize the midlife transition as an initiation of the power and magnitude I had not experienced before. It is the invitation for individuation and sovereignty. Those of us with wombs and regular blood cycles experience a rite of passage each month, a ritual and ceremony offering, and an initiation if we are open to the blood mysteries underneath the physiological experience.

“The body is the ground of our being. When we listen, it tells us exactly what we need.” Marion Woodman

It’s time to gather, to sit together and learn from the elders, to be mentored by each other. It’s time to challenge ageism and the misogyny that co-exists with it. Our elders are not meant to run around but bestow wisdom from a body of rest. Let the young folk run around. They have the stamina for it. We need women in different seasons of life to come together. In order to recognize what season we are in, we need women in the same or other seasons. This is where our hormones dance and weave a shared tapestry together of mutual support and appreciation. The interplay of hormones, the mitochondrial DNA in women, the endocrine systems that reach towards each other, that send subliminal codes from one womb carrier to another, to sync up our cycles.

Perimenopause is known as the second puberty as it mirrors the influx and overhaul of hormones similar to adolescence. It is also a time machine portal because old traumas and emotional wounds can come back up to the surface.

Remember that connection we have to our mother, that womb that was our first home? Going through the perimenopause portal can bring up these earlier wounds of attachment. If our own mothers are our first experience of attachment, identity, safety, and relationality, these memories get stored in the body, especially in our womb. We need to offer ourselves care and that may mean we need to put down the hat of caretaking when it is at our own expense. Maybe this is why our hormones fluctuate during the stages of menstruation and drop more fully in perimenopause. If progesterone sedates us from feeling the heavy feelings and estrogen is the bonding hormone, it may serve us that they are depleting with age.

“Old family dynamics become harder to tolerate. It becomes harder to ignore the impact of changing yourself to maintain relationships. Memories from childhood resurface in unexpected ways and you start to consider you future and past in new ways.” ~ Sian Morgan Crossley

Our mom may activate us more when we are perimenopausal. It may be old wounds from her that have transferred onto us. We start to dissolve the daughter identify and become more embodied as the adult in the room. “If your mother suffered in silence, resented her life, never spoke her truth, you may be carrying that inheritance.” Shavita Kotak offers this truth bomb as a stark challenge to us to pick up the baton and do the work of healing.

Gone is the daughter archetype. The mother role is also now dissolving. You are becoming. Menopause isn’t the end but the beginning of selfhood. I may be a daughter but i am also an adult in my own right, stronger and more evolved than my own parents. And that is the way it should happen. And yet, why do we regress in the company of our mothers?

Perimenopause awakens past trauma and unhealed wounds as our body starts to shift and metabolize in midlife. The coping strategies that have accommodated and hid our wounds for so long start to not work as well. And at the same time, the roles we have become to identify with (namely wife and mother) start to lose their significance. It is at this life stage that we start to see unresolved wounds more clearly. The invitation is to turn towards them and heal the younger versions of ourselves now, when we have more clarity and time. This is why mid-life is an awakening and feels like a crisis – because it once was and we are lucky enough now to know what to do for our younger self.

Perimenopause is this opportunity to give ourselves a corrective emotional experience.

The second half of life is when we fine-tune our wisdom, we narrow down our niche and specialization. We move away from peak intense learning where our brain can take in a lot in our 20s and 30s. Our early adulthood is about enterprise and landing on what we want for our life. It’s in our 40s and 50s that we start to specialize as we can’t take in as much information. This is the time for contemplation and pausing so that we can start embodying all that the first half taught and gave us. That’s why we also need to start pulling in our soul self that seed within that lives underneath, so we can discern our own purpose and not be sued, but external move from ego to individuating. That’s why we call this time midlife crisis an emergence.

“At menarche a girl meets her power, through menstruation she practices her power, at menopause she becomes her power.” ~ Indigenous saying, author unknown

The Sacred Wound: Inanna’s Connection to the Stages of Initiation

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As we start to transition into a new season and the final months of the year, I’ve been feeling called to the ancient story of Inanna. She was the Sumerian queen who lived over 3500 years before common era. She went on an epic journey when she heard that her twin sister was grieving the loss of her beloved while due to birth her baby. Inanna felt it was her sisterly duty to go and support her sister, not realizing that her sister carried bitter feelings towards her. After Inanna arrived, Ereshkigal killed her and placed her body on a stake in the underworld. It was after 3 days of death that Inanna’s community were able to come and tend to her body that Erishkigal felt compassion for her sister. It was this loving feeling that played a role in Inanna’s rebirth.

And so in the end, Inanna‘s journey is one of a descent, sacrifice and a death in order to be reborn more fully whole. She is now known as the Goddess of Heaven and Earth: It was in her death that she was offered an opportunity to be reborn more fully and also without her ego. (If you want a more in-depth psycho-spiritual telling of the story, check out Rachael’s podcast episode on Deconstruction.)

Inanna’s story follows a clear map that depicts the process of transformation. She needs to walk through seven gates down to the underworld that include stripping down, and removing the material items that have symbolized her queendom. As she becomes more raw and vulnerable, she also becomes more pure and complete.

There is so much more to this story but I like to think of this process as a weaving that is unfolding the Spiral of Life:
Incomplete → Something is missing and feel called to seek it
Death Portal → Everything falls apart – the job, the relationship, previous version of you
Awakening → The aha moment of a realization
Rebirth → Stepping into a more full expression of you

Mythopoetic stories offer us a map that weaves us through a journey. The threshold awakens time of in-between, and then flowing into the becoming and possible initiation. I say possible because we are not always aware of the potential. So many of us move through life uninitiated by it, closed to the possible full expression of our soul’s calling. It is our psyche that constantly moves us towards truth so that we can come back to who we really are. I look to these ancient stories of feminine archetypes and heroines’ journeys, as well as nature, as guides when I am on my own journey that leads to a threshold where I feel stuck, and I can’t see a way out. They offer us transformation literacy, by teaching us the flow of becoming, developmental transitions, and rites of passage. I know that humans have been here before me and what feels more like a guide or reassurance is this deeper trust that this is actually meant to be a journey of transformation, of maturation of evolving.

I’m not saying that trauma needs to happen in order for us to become whole, but rather when trauma happens the healing we embark on after is what can ultimately create a new pathway, as well as help us come back to our original blueprint before the trauma happened.

Recently, I had this realization that the stages of trauma therapy mirror the journey Inanna takes to the underworld and back. She moves down and through various gates before ultimately accepting her fate. Trauma therapy, according to Judith Herman’s model, moves through a similar arc: Resourcing for safety, stabilizing our memory and mourning intentionally, and then integrating this story into our everyday life. Post-traumatic growth offers folks a chance to offer their lived experience to others who are newly on the path of healing.

I’m not alone in making this connection. I just starting finally reading Carly Mountain’s book Descent and Rising. Her book centres the Inanna myth as a way for us to see her story in us. I noticed how Carly refers to Erishkigal as the exiled parts of Inanna and it make me realize that this ancient story is a great depiction of Internal Family Systems and the healing process of integration. “When Inanna descends to meet Erishkigal she enters a healing journey to embrace what she has abandoned inside of herself.” Maybe somatic therapy and parts work is in fact the modern-day version of Inanna’s feeling her body morph as she moves through the gates. Maybe the items that she removes are protectors that have gotten in the way of her full self. Maybe it is not a coincidence that it 7 gates she must walk through – we have 7 chakras in our body.

Healing includes grief tending because trauma includes grief for what was taken from us that should’ve happened. Grieving is also holding space for what happened that should not have happened. Stages of healing need to include time to mourn, which comes with its own arc of denial, anger, bargaining, and acceptance. As the body heals in stages, so does this practice of acceptance. It can take time to heal from each stage and healing takes time.

Let us also remember all the versions of who we were are still in us. They shaped us. That younger child that i once was, who believed in magic and played with fairies, she set a path of magic and intuition in motion. That teenager who rebelled – she taught me i have my own gnosis and truth and deserve to follow this path. Maybe i am just born again in my middle-aged body, not quite who i was too, but i am also an integration and immersion of all of the women who i was. Now, i am called to something more and i have the capacity to fulfill my younger selves dreams.

We are not meant to be alone.

We are not meant to go to the deep end without having a harness or life jacket.

We’re also not meant to always stay at the shallow end, not taking risks.

Growth and maturation happens when we find this balance of both.

Incorporating our heavy moments with the ones that are more easeful is how we can be our true most fullest expression of self.

Inanna as the Autumn Queen
Let’s go back and remember how we are nature too. The Autumn season is known as the time of perimenopause, and second spring is the first stage post menopause. These cycles mirror the seasonality of mother earth and all her creations. It is mirrors the butterfly journey: We are in the chrysalis during Autumn and this is the underworld cave that Inanna dies in. She is yet to be reborn as a butterfly.

“The female body is its own spiritual path. We have in-built rites of passage.It doesn’t work when we dig our heels in, claw the side of the mountain, clinging, trying to stay how we were. The ego has to die. Our self-perception has to die. And that is erotic.” Kimberly Ann Johnson

When we apprentice with nature and weave a thread of connection back to our ancestors’ wisdom, our everyday life becomes a devotion our souls calling is heard. When we embrace this truth of our story and the way that we can be of service it is a rebellious reclamation and remembering. That’s why I do what I do as a village tender and community builder. I know it’s my calling to build community in an intentional, sacred and natural way.

In her lovely book, When the Ache Remains, Lisa Olivera shares a process of Coming Whole to Self. It starts with a Descent that is clearly an underworld journey. Like the story, she trusts that we need to go inward and deep and do the necessary grief work to become whole. After that, we need to Face the Depths. This is when the Portal Opens – the pain needs to be faced in order for it to soften. Just like the goo in a chrysalis, it is during this alchemical stage that offers us a door to move Out of the Cocoon. We are unfolding and emerging. Only then can Integration manifest the wounds as medicine teachers. We need to accept them and not fix the scar. Finally, when we Surrender to Presence, it offers us the fullness of life – the joy, love, the pain and the grief. We can’t bypass joy because it is a way to honour and remember our infant self, the seed of the caterpillar that remains in us, only to be offered back to the soil of life. We can still hurt and feel deep joy. This is the whole-hearted way to become whole unto self. It means integrating the shadow parts of us, not running from them. Lisa Olivera offers us this truth: “The task is to stay devoted to your own aliveness, knowing it is the true path to wholeness, knowing it is the true path of fully living.”

I feel called to pause here and share that i write from my own perspective, and these reflections are about the mental, emotional, and psycho-spiritual perspectives of menopause, and so are not medically-based. I am not here to tell you what to do with your body and developmental changes. That is for you to decide. I am hoping that by reading this so far (a big thank-you by the way!) that you see that The Change is not all about the body and what we are losing. We also have the potential to gain something – our own life.

As I have been journeying through my own transformation through perimenopause, it’s led me through a path of realizing I need to offer support during this time in our lives. I see my role as a psycho-spiritual therapist as a womb to tomb midwife, a guide for someone’s Inner Inanna journey. And yes, we are all may go through this descent. It is when we turning inward into the body, and thus into the soul that we can be transformed.

And yet, it is not a given – not all of us of transformed by life’s initiatory rites. Becoming a mother is an invitation to descend and be changed, as is perimenopause. It is when we become aware of the gift of descent that we can hear our soul’s calling. And so integration needs to happen, not unlike a plant medicine journey. Having a ceremony on the other side can also be really empowering, because rites of passage are meant to be greeted and witnessed upon the return. Seeing each person as a unique template with different needs and paths is part of village tending, for both receiver and honouree.

Where do we return to after perimenopause?

Motherhood and menopause follow on arc. Becoming a mother is a deep initiation. It can re-open past wounds and is the death of something as you are becoming something new. Moving through perimenopause offers a transformation because we alchemize our shadow parts in order to integrate us and make us whole. Those hot flashes are your body’s call to action. That rage is reclaiming your full expanse of feelings. That brain fatigue is making room for your own creations.

Motherhood is at the beginning of our midlife and marks the bridge between the first half and second half of life. It can be a decent journey, but it is definitely an initiation. Not all rites of passage have a descent, but all decent mark a right of passage. Perimenopause is just after the arc and is a new descent that offers us a reclaiming of our own life and not just the roles we play. Each blood rite acts as an initiation to deepen into self.

Blood Rites of Passage in 7 Gates
Birth = our beoming
Menarche = be continue the maternal line
Sexual Awakening = be devoured and pleasure
Mother = vessel for life
Perimenopause = our renogiation
Menopause = wise elder
Death = Our rebirth

So what is the time in-between? This is the wet, impressionable Clay Time to deeper into truth. Perimenopause is the compost time to clear the path and the one chance to come into self. The second half of life is our gift to embody life learnings.

I’m so grateful that i studied human development in my undergrad degree. It focused on developmental stages and transformation literacy. When we can orient to what is changing, accept what is no longer, and build resources for this dysregulating time, we can embrace the unfolding. As Jessie Harrold shares, this allows us to eventually emerge filled with power and potential. Similar to adolescence and matrescence, this is the time to move through what Jane Hardwicke Collings has called Sageessence. This is the process of becoming a sage. That means, we need to integrate this identity into the rest of who we are. We need to weave the previous versions of ourselves into a new tapestry. We cannot go back to who we were before.

Before that can happen, we do need to slow down and grieve those old parts, paths, and identities. They shaped us even though they are no longer needed. We may carry disappointment about what didn’t get to happen, regret for what we didn’t try in time, and that needs to be held in order to be metabolized.

One way to help us embrace this new stage is to learn more about the spiritual aspect of transformation and learn some new skills and gather resources. This is not just a time for strength classes – we also need to remember what our calling is, what our magic is, what our passion is. We cannot have this wisdom without the embodied learning process. This fast fashion culture is making us lazy versions of our truest potential.

We can look back on Inanna’s story and see its relevance to the transformative power of menopause. Maybe perimenopause is the dark underworld cave of remembering and reclaiming that needs to happen. Maybe it’s not unlike the chrysalis of transformation that needs to happen in order to become more truly ourselves. Mabye Inanna was in perimenopause when she went through the gates.

We have entered an age of quick fixes. We also exist at a time of humanity that doesn’t revere our elders or mentors. We focus on the symptom and supplement without also seeing the transformative power of surrender. We have learned to want the answer without the depth and the transformation without the sacrifice. This leaves us unchanged and uninitiated. A full ascent and rising doensn’t work that way. Sorry, not sorry.

I love working with women in midlife: Who you’re becoming now is born from incorporating your wild self with your soul’s essence. Therapy and friendships that have the ability to go deep are a lot like in Inanna’s underworld journey. They can go deep and also be a safe, brave space to be witnessed in the depths. This helps us feel less alone so that when we do come back up we’re not alone.

I want to go to the depths of your sorrow so it can be alchemized as a place for healing.

I want to accompany you to the descent so that we can come through it and experience the ascension of our full self.

I want your body to feel safe enough in my presence so that you can share those things that you have told no one, so that you can experience the felt sense of the missing experience of connection, trust and being understood.

Raising Teens: Becoming the Lighthouse

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I am just back from a vacation of a lifetime with my youngest. It was our first ‘just the two of us’ trip. It was to honour her passage into high school, and so l gave her a girls’ weekend at a favourite city with all the perks of a city that never sleeps – shopping, good food, and lots of selfies.

This summer has been all about marking this developmental transition of adolescence. My big kid was home alone overnight for the first time, we had our first parents-only camping trip, and both kids got a big trip with just one parent. This is us honouring what is ending and also becoming. And, i don’t mean what is happening for our kids. We too as parents are in a transition season: The end of school-age parenthood needs to be honoured in ceremony. It may not be a major life transition but it is still a rite of passage.

I’m glad i’m not alone in wanting to honour these initiations with some type of pomp and circumstance. I’ve been watching the show Sterling Point with my youngest. It has been such a good bonding opportunity as we watch certain episodes, stories, and themes. We have a cottage near the location so it’s an added bonus to watch the show from this vantage point. One storyline that i loved was how the group celebrated Maple starting her menstrual cycle. They made her a flower crown, howled like wolves, and shared advice. I had a ceremony for my daughter when she started her menarche. At the time, she was not as into it as i am, so seeing this portrayed in the show was really exciting for me. It normalized ceremony as an important part of growing up. If you want to see my hot take on the show as a therapist and mom to teens, take a look at my recent instagram post.

In the coming weeks, both my kids will be in high school. This is a pivotal rite of passage for me as well as my youngest kiddo. It dawned on me only a few weeks after school ended that I need to honour the rite of passage for myself. It was our last year at the same tiny alternative school both my kids started at when they were a mere four years old. She celebrated the end of an era for herself. She had a party after-party, and got all dolled up. As much as we honour commencement and ceremonies for our kids when they’re moving through different pivotal stages of school, we also need to have a way to mark this for ourselves. And so this is something I’m noticing I need to do as my youngest starts high school.

And so, I am working on crafting a ceremony for myself to honour the arrival of high school. I need to mark this transition for myself, and i suspect other mothers will gladly participate to honour this threshold for themselves too. Plus, i am always looking for a good reason to host a ceremony.

It is time we brought back more ceremony into our lives, and less superficial celebration.

A rite of passage is not just celebrating the transition. It is needs to include some work and letting go. It needs to honour what is ending and also offer a bit of elbow grease. Marking it in this way offers the somatic experience of The Return, the coming back but anew felt sense. In Arnold van Gennep’s Book, Rites of Passage, he shared that this step is key and often overlooked. Having time to to integrate an experience is as important as embarking on it. We may not go on pilgrimages as a society anymore (though i definitely advocate for one) but we can practice a modernized version of a quest. It might look like a camping week, a portaging adventure, a summer work experience, or a trip.

Maybe not the most fancy of activities, but one thing we did was request some household projects to be done by our kids. As part of my teenagers experience for the summer, we had them do a few tasks and chores around the house. Some of things that they’ve never done before. And so when my eldest was sanding down the deck, I noticed they were sitting on our rickety outdoor dinner table. I asked them to not sit on it because it was precarious. They grunted and complained and rolled their eyes at me, but stood up. An hour later, they came up to me with the invisible tail between their legs and admitted that they sat on the table again and it cracked.

The moral of the story isn’t that they did the thing I told her not to. It’s that they felt safe to come and tell me they did the thing and knew I’d be upset and possibly even say I told you so and they still came to me because they couldn’t fix it alone. They trusted that even if I was angry at them that the love was always going to remain.
This is what I want to happen if they were ever to do anything out in the world that made them feel scared or in danger: To call me no matter what.

As the saying goes: Small kids, small problems; Big kids, bigger problems.

Raising a teenage daughter today is a modern-day version of the myth of Demeter and Persephone, but the lure is social media and not Hades. Or maybe social media is the new Hades, in a more modern trickster suit. I’m fighting to keep my daughter close but I am competing with a greater force and that is her phone. I’m not fighting my kid about her phone, I’m fighting the attention the phone takes from me. Our smartphones were supposed to be a place we sometimes visit, not a place that we live in all the time. This is my work-in-progress project. As my teen enters the high school jungle, i know that i need to hold onto her a bit more. My grip may not be as tight but it needs to remain nonetheless.

I’m needing to do that consciously and not reactively, so that I don’t fall into anxiety and instead have a clear path that helps me stay clear and secure. I need to also do this in a way that doesn’t lose myself in motherhood as I enter my new Virgin territory.

Many of us are raising children and being parents as an over-correction because we were raised by parents that were emotionally immature or unavailable and so we want to be the most present, attuned, available, and understanding parents to our own children now.

I remember having fights with my own mom about my friends, how long i was on the phone at night, and our competing needs. Now i see it as normal teenage woes. Back then, I grew up being told by my mom “wait until you have a teenage daughter. That will be your karma.”

Maybe it’s not revenge that my kid is giving me a hard time. Rather it’s destiny as a developmental stage. Teens are meant to protest as a way to build individuation. I know this now. I also now see that my mom may have been going through perimenopause at the time i was a teen, and i really wish this was spoken about then. I get back to this point soon.

A part of healing these parts was to first unlearn that anger is scary or destabilizing so that my children can embody it more fully.

I have internalized a wound of unprocessed anger due to ongoing unmet needs, and it is what is fighting with my child at this developmental stage. What i couldn’t say to my mom back then is hard to hear my kid say to me. It’s not karma that i have a sassy kid. It’s a pattern that has taken generations to get to me, and i can now heal what wasn’t repaired. My own Inner Sassy Teen Part is very headset on being able to say what she needed back then. My Mother Parts need her to remember that my kid has her own needs now.

Our teens also lose the mother that they had as a younger child themselves. Gone are the play-based days, the years of wonderment and mini-me dress up. We must grieve the end of that chapter, so we can accept and birth this new one that evolved from it, and also offers more depth and closeness in the present.

‘Becoming a mother leaves no woman as it found her. It unravels and rebuilds her. It cracks her open, takes her to her edges. It’s both beautiful and brutal, often at the same time’. ~ Nikki McCahon

Matrescence is the adjustment period to motherhood, and I think this initiation of becoming a mother to teens needs its own great passage or marker so that we don’t step into it unconsciously or uninitiated, but rather with our eyes wide open. I thought i was moving out of the stage of motherhood, only to realize that it is more that i was moving into a new stage OF motherhood. I was getting excited to claim the identity of Mage/Queen/Virgin, but i am not there yet: I may be perimenopausal and i am still mothering. I’m a baby mage, eager for this new stage of life but it is not yet where i stand.

I’m still crawling.

I am one of the mothers now who are in perimenopause while my children are in puberty. We are not supposed to be at these intersecting stages. In a recent issue of Hot Flash Mag, Jessie Harrold says it so well: “Here we are losing that biological wiring to nurture, and our kids actually need more from us than they probably would have for our foremothers. So there’s this real tension and conflict. The mothering I thought I was going to be doing at this age is very different from the mothering I am doing, which is far more intensive.”

A part of the becoming that happens is that we put on a new suit as advocates and mama bears for our children. No one‘s going to have our kids back like we do; even when we say no to our kid it’s because we have the best interest for them in mind. The tension is that our kiddo may not see it that way, and we need to stand our ground. This is where the messy hormonal conflict can pay a role, and be a toll on our connection. I need to remember my role as a parent is to guide my children to their fullest potential, to grow and evolve, to reach maturation. For this wisdom, i thank Gordon Neufeld.

Parenting teens is learning to embrace your new role as the lighthouse keeper. You are now watching from the beach. You are close enough to touch them, to see and hear them and just enough distance for them to find their own way. In Kim Jon Payne’s book, The Art of Discipline, he offers another theory – the 3 stages of Parenthood – the Governess, Gardener, and Guardian. I am embracing the newly minted Guardian role. It is a time of becoming the guide for my children, not activity playing or weeding like i have been.

Whenever i get a bit lost in the waters of motherhood in modern-times, i come back to my anchor, that is remembering my role as a mother. In their book, Sil Reynolds (now Read) and her daughter Eliza, Mothering and Daughtering, offer us some insight and guidance on how to move through this messy stage. To start, Sil shares that “Mothering” can be seen as a verb, the action of helping our children become the adults they are meant to be. She also offers that we need to incorporate intentional quality time together – like my big trip with my kid and watching teen dramas together. It also serves us to understand counterwill and learn to read our child’s cues. This has been such a life saver of mine over these last few months. And it’s still a work-in-progress.

I was recently gifted a beautiful deck of cards by my friend Jessie Harrold. She wrote the wonderful book Mothershift, which is a guide through matrescence and finding our north star as parents. This deck is a visual reference that helps us see what kind of mother we are at a specific moment in time. I am no longer the Crafty Mom or archetype. According to Jessie, I am the Heron Mom: I am walking the threshold between who i was a mom and who i becoming. That means i need to trust the magic and also grieve what is no longer true. I can feel the pull of the Imaginal Mother who is becoming who i truly am, but it will take time to mothermorphize (a word Jessie and i made up) as my kiddo has to adjust to being in high school herself, first.

Speaking of getting lost in the waters, one thing i do when i feel like i’m drowning in unfamiliar waters is to seek out who has been here before. This new terrain of mothering teenagers may be new to me, but i am not the first parent to do so. This is not uncharted territory. Ideally, this is where mothering mentors come in. I have found some older mothers in my life that i can turn to at times, but not consistently or for the actually themes i need support in. Since we live in a society that is void of true mentorship, i have to turn to some other guides. Folk tales, myths and the timeless stories of our ancient ones and ancestors.

And, for me that includes looking at mythopoetic stories that depict motherhood in universal time and space. It’s a good thing that there are many examples. One of my favourites is the story of the Greek goddess of Harvest, Demeter, and her daughter Persephone. It is Persephone (or Kore’s) journey to the underworld and her mother’s grief of losing her daughter that we can thank for our seasons.

What i have also found is that the story of Persephone as many variations. For instance, Carolyn Elliot shares in her powerful book, Existential Kink, that maybe Persephone’s journey was in fact subconsciously manifested by herself as a way to integrate her shadow parts and becoming whole. We need both our conscious and unconscious parts to complete us after all. And maybe, Persephone’s flight to the underworld was her way to get space from her over-bearing mother. Maybe she needed this time to find out who she was. So she rebelled and flew the coop (like i did at 16, incidentally). This allowed her to find herself and integrate the tension of opposition and reliance, struggle and ease, independence and connection. And Demeter herself had to reckon with the truth that her daughter needed to find herself separate from her role as a daughter. I like to think that Demeter had to grieve losing her daughter as a maiden in order for her to find herself in mid-life as a woman herself, and not just her leading identity as a mother. In her acceptance and surrender of Persephone’s individuation, Demeter was initiated into Virgin Mother territory – a woman who belongs to herself first, who is whole unto herself and who has the qualities and strengths of a Mother. She no longer puts her needs last, she models that having needs is not only okay but a part of being human. In fact, it is through her practice of caring for herself that she is paving the path for her child to reach individuation and maturation herself.

So maybe the story of these two goddesses set the stage for us all along. Maybe they carved a path for us to follow but we forgot that Persephone needs to find herself on her own, and we are meant to grieve what is ending – not the relationship but itself but the duties that came with it change over time. Grief means needing to say goodbye to what was in order to become anew and also find our new meaning. Maybe our modern-day experience raising daughters is not that different than Demeter and Persephone’s. What offers me solace is that it is just a stage and Persephone comes back. When we trust this, it makes the grief in Winter tolerable.

The Sacred Union: A Recipe of the Elements

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I just celebrated being with my partner for 26 years, 20 of these years officially married. It has not always been a smooth ride, and it was the bumps along the way that deepened our commitment. We are lucky in that way, and we worked on building a strong foundation together. So, while our path together has been a meandering one, with shifts and turns over the years, it has always led us together. Even when I’m a few steps ahead, he catches up.

What does give us a bit of an advantage is how our work has offered us more access to tools, resources, and strategies. Oftentimes, it is said that our parents are who model relationships and conflict for us – that how they treat each other sets the stage for how we expect to be treated. If we only had our parents as models, I know that I would not have made it. Not because our parents divorced (because neither pair did) but rather what was modeled for me was to stay together even when unhappily married, to not do the work to become stronger, to not be each other’s rock, and to not take the vows seriously.

I never saw my parents go on dates or boost each other up. So, you could say that my parents were an inspiration for me – about what not to do.

Studies show that happiness in an intimate relationship truly has a positive impact on our health and life expectancy. I heard someone share that they were at a wedding and a game was played to see who was with their partner the longest. The point was to celebrate longevity, not depth of happiness. Our society has a warped view of seeing commitment and loyalty as the core values to aspire to.

Let me exclaim this from the rooftops, or from my 90’s boombox: It is not enough to grow old together. We deserve to be seen, supported, valued and loved along the way. We are also meant to evolve, to deepen into ourselves as human, to find our true north star within.

Mutual growth happens when in a healthy and mature relationship. We are meant to grow in the world separately and come back together stronger, not be threatened by what each other does when we’re in the world. We are meant to rest in each other‘s presence, not need breaks from each other. That doesn’t mean we only find ourselves in each other, but a partnership is home base. We are not meant to make our partner happy. That is their work. We are meant to experience mutual delight in our shared experiences of life. That is what fosters aliveness together.

In some partnerships and relationships, one partner grows and matures into a new version of themselves. While the other partner remains the same. As the butterfly so wisely schools the caterpillar, we are meant to change. In her article, Growing, Apart, Jessie Harrold speaks more about this experience. We are not meant to only bounce back and stay the same. More importantly, going on a spiritual quest to find our soul self is not a mere hobby, it is a step towards levelling up and evolving into a more full human.

When I started to go to women’s festivals and weekends away, my partner was at first threatened by it. Not that he thought I’d meet someone else, but that I would find myself and not want to come back to him. And so that initial worry turned into a catalyst for him to start doing his own work in finding himself alongside my journey. That is what a healthy relationship is meant to do. We’re meant to inspire each other, to become better and stronger separately so that we are even more solid together.

Individuation is the process of coming home to ourselves. Differentiation is the experience of being respected, seen, and held with dignity when our views, dreams or needs are different from our partner’s. That doesn’t mean we can be on completely different paths but rather my love for women’s festivals is not a threat, and his love of basketball is received with understanding by me.

We do need to find a balance in this trifecta of needs – my needs by myself, our shared needs for mutual delight, and the need to have our life witnessed by the other. For instance, i go to dance classes by myself, we go on trips together, and at times we witness each other in our goodness.

“I pray for a world where we live in partnership rather than domination… where power is no longer equated with the blade, but with the holy chalice: the ancient symbol of the power to give, nurture, enhance life.” ~ Riane Eisler

In honour of our 20 years together, we celebrated with an intimate ceremony where we marked ourselves permanently. Getting tattoos was a way for us to be bonded together as well as declare this commitment formally, in writing if you will.

When i was dreaming up my own sigil, i wanted something that honoured the elements (namely fire and water) as well as a nod to a compass or directional energy. (I am just noticing as i write this that the root of compassion is compass, and not just com-passion.) My commitment fuses the elements as a compass back to love: Air offers us a chance to listen so that we can connect together; Fire gives us alchemy and transformation through passion; Water teaches us how to be more intimate by offering space for our feelings; and Earth reminds us to root together. At the centre is Spirit, a reminder to trust our inner knowing. My partner had just read The Chalice and the Blade by Riane Eisler and so we noticed the synchronicity to these symbols too.

I have learned that a sacred and true union is one where:
*Physical proximity does not match the closeness that is fostered by emotional intimacy
*You make each other laugh
*You inspire each other
*You are each others biggest fan and supporter
*You can feel you lost self around the other
*Individuation happens as we hold trust and respect and my opinions and views are heard
*Time apart doing things we love is healthy
*You still find the other delicious, grey hairs and all
*Maturity and growing together creates the long road
*They takes your needs and feelings seriously
*True partnership embodies maturity
*Celebrate life, not love alone

We are not the same humans that met in our mid-twenties. Our lives have shaped and carved out new versions of us, together. We became parents together and these shared roles have also catalyzed us. It is through our commitment to learn how to communicate our needs and make requests that we have been able to trust that we have each other’s back. It is also my partner’s understanding that the work that needs to be done at home is not my work as the wife, woman and mother. It is the responsibility that comes with being an adult – it’s not called ‘adulting’ for no reason.

There are many theories about love, many resources for healthy relationships, and attachment theory “experts.” I have previously shared Susan Campbell’s 5 Stages of Relationship Building myself. Another theory i love that displays various types of love is Sternberg’s Triangular Theory. And yes, since it’s based on a triangle, i loved the way it connects to my tattoo and the elements.

“Matrimony is the workings of alchemy upon the solitary, sufficient human heart. It isn’t the affirmation of human affection. It is the redemption of that affection, recasting it as spirit citizenship. It is the mothering of a culture.” ~ Stephen Jenkinson

In his book, Matrimony, Culture, and the Heart’s Work, Stephen Jenkinson urges us to remember that matrimony is the inner domain of creating a family culture. One thing that my partner and i have come to agree on is that anything that is built on ceremony, commitment, and connection is worth working on. It is also a long game, so we can’t always know where we are going, only that we want to move along this life path together and alongside each other.

Ultimately, love is an ever-emerging vessel that moves with us. It expands when we let our heart out of its safety cage. It also needs care and attention, treated with dignity and respect, and always, always seen with reverence. When we close ourselves to love, and the work it demands of us, we close ourselves to the reward of true belonging.

Childbirth is a Time Travel Machine

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My eldest child just turned 17. Born during Pride weekend, and via emergency C-section, this kiddo who made me a mother also initiated me into a new life and path as a woman, therapist, and mystic in general.

I had other plans with how they would come into the world. I had really wanted a home birth and thought i did everything i could to manifest it. It was this birth that taught me how little i was in control of this process, even if it was via my body. My body became the vessel and portal for my child to emerge. I spoke about it in a very early journal article here, if you want more of a summary of the birth story.

Little did i know then that my newborn babe, whose birth was supported by medical intervention and surgery, would also rely on modern medicine to become more of themselves years later. If being born on Pride Sunday (while the medical team shared their Pride festivities’ plans no less) was an oracular hint at all, it comes to no surprise that my kiddo is once again relying on medicine to become fully herself. They also like to be on time and have a singular focus, coming home to themselves as the Cancer Sun they are.

It all makes so much more sense now.

In my studies about menstrual rites of passage called Blood Rites, i have learned from Jane Hardwicke Collings that how we are born sets the stage for how we move through the world and how we make decisions. When we are initiated by menarche, it creates a blueprint for how we care for ourselves and listen to our body’s wisdom. Our first sexual experiences pave the way for how we view sex and our own pleasure. Each blood rite is a stage of the spiral called life and sets the stage for the next iteration.

Our Blood Rites:
1) Birth is the model of who we become
Be it a home birth, free birth, supported by midwives or a c-section, they all are an initiatory portal that paves the way
2) Menarche
We know that our menstrual cycle is a vital sign for our overall health. But did you know that how it is received and honoured is also a key part of the iniation?
3) Sexual awakening and Eventual Union
Initiation of sexual experience is our sex code. For instance, even in a consensual experience, did we learn to centre his pleasure. This can have a hold on our embodiment of love moving forward.
4) Conception and Birth
The conception and birth of our own children also play a role in our story, namely how we experience postpartum connects to our own birth story as we as sets the course for our child’s journey through life.
5)Menopause
The way in which we navigate menopause is a testament to our earlier blood rites. It is also a reflection of the trauma we may have endured earlier in our life and did not heal.

No pressure. And also, thank-you for this map that was unfolding all along. The linear path of life we were taught never made sense to me. I’m so grateful for the reframe of a spiral instead. It was hidden in plain site but needed me to unseen the lies that were repeated until they felt like truth. In her informative article called From Womb to Tomb, Jasmine Alicia Carter unpacks these stages more.

I like this reframe from a popular book – “the body keeps the lore.” It’s not just that the body holds memories or keeps the score of what happened, but also our body is the site of our own mytho-poetic saga.

I shared recently the story of Vasalisa and Baba Yaga. In that folktale, we see how Vasalisa has to learn to trust herself in order to be fully initiated by the rite of passage of becoming her Self. Maybe Baba Yaga was a real human. Maybe she was the dark psyche of Vasalisa. Maybe her doll truly was magical. Maybe it was her own self-sufficientness that she didn’t know she had.

In the birth portal, we can look at the story of Inanna, and the gates she goes through in order to strip down and become whole unto herself. In Pam England’s body of work, Birthing from Within, we pull from Inanna’s lore to understand the process of becoming a mother. Those of us that birthed our child via Cesarean can also relate to this story.

The C-Section that birthed your child into being is no different than the seven gates Inanna had to cross in order to become her full self. Receiving a Cesarean is major abdominal surgery that cuts through seven layers of skin. The initiation our body experiences mirrors the descent into the cave.

The process takes us through a journey that requires a descent through the darkness, and then emerging on the other side of it a mother. I can’t help but notice the similarity to Inanna’s journey through the seven gates of descent as she went to meet her sister in the underworld. She had to sacrifice herself, her body, and die in order to be reborn even stronger. Maybe I’m reaching, but a C-section is a major abdominal surgery that cuts through seven layers of skin.

Maybe I’m reaching but the stages of healing include the states of mourning – denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance; as the body heals in stages, so does this practice of acceptance. It can take time to heal from each stage and level of scarring. Being in relationship with the scar is part of the growth and healing and takes time.

Maybe I’m reaching, but I can’t help but notice that this is a very similar experience to our own rite of passage journey. Not in the surgery itself, but in the reclamation that we too give birth to new life – ourselves and our child – even if we have a C-section. Most importantly, we also need to entrust our care to others as we just had major surgery. We need the support of others to feed and nourish us, tend to our wounds, warm our bodies, and do the work that is needed so that we can rest and heal. The wound that is the site of our child’s birth needs to become a scar that heals, in order for us to become whole.

Becoming a mother is an initiation. Pregnancy is the separation from our old self and so is a threshold. Birth is the transition threshold that offers a portal that we push our baby into the world, and therefore our new identity. Postpartum is the becoming of what has emerged, and so our adjustment time becomes the integration. It is the initiation that comes with the invitation to expand.

Similar to the chrysalis that hosts the goo that becomes a butterfly, we are the vessel of our child’s emergence. It is one thing to emerge, and another thing all together to become. That is a process that takes time. This is why having a ceremony on the other side can be really empowering, like Closing the Bones or a women’s circle.

Marion Woodman shares in her pivotal book The Pregnant Virgin that how you are born predicts your way of making decisions. I was born via c-section and so was my eldest daughter. According to this theory, that means we actively avoid conflict. I had to admit it, but there is some truth to this for me. The original conflict is the push to come into the world. Not that surgically assisted birth is simple, but the coming into the world at that exact moment can be more easeful.

“In the womb, we marinate in the energy that becomes the foundation of our beginnings, our sense of self.” ~ Iyanla Vanzant

Raising our own children now has a way of playing a game with time. It brings back our own childhood in the present as parts of us become activated. Is my melancholy or loneliness related to my mother? Is our PMS a trait or an example of luteal rage? Am I repeating an inherited intergenerational trauma trait?

I’ve come to believe that we are born at a time when what we have to offer the world is what is needed. Or maybe it’s the healing that my line needed and wasn’t able to do before me. I believe that we are here now for a reason. What I’m learning and unlearning for myself and others is part of the alchemy that needs to happen for change to be manifested. This is especially true for those of us who have children in our lives (in whatever way) because they are the change that we need to keep this momentum going.

“The perinatal portal establishes a spiritual, psychological, and energetic connection from Mom’s present to her implicit, embodied past.” Jessica Tomich Sorci and Rebecca Geshuri, When Good Moms Feel Bad. Our early attachments add to our blueprint and this blueprint maps out the details of our attachment wounds and sense of belong. We know that anything that doesn’t get processed or healed in our childhood can materialize again when our children are the same age we were when we were hurt.

Maybe our children are not our legacy, but our initiation to live more fully and mindfully so that we can step into our purpose. That may be motherhood and it may not. Having discernment is what allows us to trust what is our calling. Otherwise we martyr ourselves and call motherhood our service.

“All the eggs a woman will ever carry form in her ovaries when she is a four-month old fetus in the womb of her mother. This means our cellular life as an egg begins in the womb of our grandmother. Each of us spent 5 months in our grandmother’s womb, and she in turn formed within the womb of her grandmother. We vibrate to the rhythms of our mother’s blood before she herself is born.“ ~ Layne Redmound, When the Women Were Drummers

We also now know that egg that formed us was first created in our grandmother’s womb. It might sound witchy, and while it is just that, it is also scientific. Think of your own maternal grandmother. Do you know her story? When was she born, where was she born? It might play a role in your own story as it is all connected.

So it’s not just how we were born and lived our life, but also how our mothers experience it is a model for us. If your mother didn’t know to embrace postpartum (or menopause) or resented it or didn’t understand it, this is something to intentionally unpack and of course correct now in your own timeline.

Take a moment and think back to your own birth. Do you know the story? How did your mother experience it and the early postpartum period?

The care a woman receives in the first 40 days after birth shapes the next 40 years of her and her child’s life. It’s no wonder that there has been a re-awakening towards the care we receive after becoming parents. It is not in fact enough to focus on the newborn’s needs. Newborn parents also need care and support as they too are being born into this new identity.

Birth is the catalyst of transformation. It is not just how we give birth. It is a rebirth of ourselves in this new identity.

All births are a Rite of Passage. We become something new, birthing a new reality into being. How it happens does not matter as much as the fact that it happened. The initiation that is becoming a mother and parent needs the transition stage of birthing a new being into life.

“Becoming a mother leaves no woman as it found her. It unravels and rebuilds her. It cracks her open, takes her to her edges. It’s both beautiful and brutal, often at the same time.” ~ Nikki McCahon

This means we need to be intentional about stepping into being who you have never been before. A mother is becoming something new so we need community, and being seen, as well as resources, rituals and ceremony.

Birthing your baby is the part we focus on, and yet birthing yourself into this new identity of motherhood is an initiation of a lifetime. To be a mother is not just a role but a sacred spiritual transformation and responsibility. To be entrusted with creating new life for this world is no small task and deserves more reverence and respect. The physical, emotional, spiritual and mental healing process that comes after the surgery are a part of our ascent. We need to be held and deserved to be witnessed in this process.

Birth is not just a moment. It’s the ongoing initiation that leads to transformation. Becoming a mother is a sacrifice of who we were and becomes a portal to something new that’s being born, and it not just our child.