Summer is almost over. The grandkids are all back in school, and I’m back on pickup duty on Fridays, with sports practice pickups as needed. I’m still in shock that Maddie and Caleb are in high school already!
With the turning of the seasons, I’m feeling the call into the descent, the climax of Summer, through Fall, toward the darkness of Winter.
We can follow the stories of the Goddesses to teach us how to navigate these time. We begin with Demeter, the Greek Goddess of the harvest. She teaches us about sowing and plowing, endurance and ferocity.
Demeter asks us to consider what is most important for us to sow in the world. What do you stand for? What will you spend your one precious life on? Where will your tears, sweat, laughter, love, and sacred work serve?
As Mother, Demeter also celebrates the harvest with us. She invites you to look back at all you’ve accomplished, all the lives you’ve touched, and all the work you’ve created, and to truly celebrate what has grown because you were here.
She also plays a powerful role in the story of Persephone, reminding us that there are seasons for holding on, seasons for letting go, and seasons when we are called to descend into the depths in order to discover what is waiting for us there.
Which leads us to Persephone,
Persephone was the maiden, the goddess of spring. The daughter of Demeter. A deity of growth and happiness, spending her days making flower crowns with her friends.
And Persephone lived in that brightness completely. But then, the descent.
The myth tells us she was taken into the underworld. And whether we read that as abduction or as initiation, it marks the moment when innocence meets the depth. It’s the moment that forces transformation. She moves from daughter to queen, from who she was to who she must become.
Persephone falls in love with Hades, and with the darkness. She chooses to eat the pomegranate seeds, ensuring that she may always return for six months each year. When she chooses, she becomes the Queen of the Underworld, the guide of lost souls. She discovers who she is meant to be.
That’s the invitation for us too. The descent isn’t punishment. It’s initiation.
The descent can look like losing interest in a business model you once loved, questioning a relationship, feeling less certain about who you are, or realizing that an old identity has become too small. Sometimes it comes through grief, illness, menopause, children leaving home, financial changes, a move, a breakup, or simply a deep inner knowing that says, “I can’t keep doing life this way.”
And the maddening part is that the new thing often hasn’t revealed itself yet. The familiar world tips sideways but you have not yet discovered your Queendom.
The descent can feel like confusion, exhaustion, restlessness, boredom, grief, anger, betrayal, or a longing you can’t quite name. We often think something has gone wrong, so we rush to fix it. We make a new plan. Buy another program. Push harder. Try to get our old energy back.
But Persephone offers a different possibility: maybe you’re not supposed to climb out yet.
Maybe there is something in the dark that you can only meet by going down. Maybe this is your most sacred moment of becoming.
The descent asks, “What are you willing to let die? What truth have you been avoiding? What part of you has been waiting beneath all the roles, expectations, and shoulds? And who are you becoming now?”
This is where Hecate takes over.
She meets us at the crossroads, torch in hand. She is the guide for the witch, the seeker, the woman willing to travel beyond the surface and into the hidden chambers of our soul. She teaches us how to walk through the darkness and listen to what is buried beneath the noise and hustle of everyday life. To welcome back the parts of ourselves we have hidden in fear, silenced in embarrassment, or made more acceptable for the comfort of others.
Hecate is the Wisdom Keeper. She reminds us that wisdom is not earned through certifications or degrees. It’s not written in any book we can download, nor any podcast we can tune into while we drive.
Wisdom is written in the tears you have shed, the traumas you’ve healed from. It is written in loving children, nurturing them, watching them grow with pride… and then, in letting them go. It is written in the clients we have served, the people we have taught, the communities we have built … and in the bittersweet moment when they no longer need us in the same way.
Hecate, the grandmother, the crone, weaves her magic through the honesty of her story and through the words that call something into being before the world can see it.
Hecate asks that we stop hiding our magic. Stop choosing just the right words merely to make nice. To stop softening the truths we came here to speak.
Bring the parts of yourself you once thought were too strange, too wild, too magical, too much.
This descent is not about losing yourself.
It is about finding the woman who has been waiting beneath everything you were taught to be.
Demeter gathers the harvest to feed our souls.
Persephone descends and becomes Queen.
Hecate lights the path through the darkness and whispers:
Now, what will you do with all this wisdom?
PS. We still have two spaces available on our Into the Depths Retreat Photo Retreat, Oct 21-23.
If you are called to explore more with the Goddesses schedule an interview to see if this is a fit.
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