The Uninitated Woman

This is an excerpt and Prologue, of a larger work that includes a book draft, and the basis of current and future seminars, workshops and immersions.

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Back in 2019 ~ 2020 - I didn’t know it then, but I was crossing my major mid-life threshold. Popular culture would call it a “midlife crisis”, but that term has become an unhelpful stereotype that’s linked to scrambling for lost youth, and men with red sports cars. I’ve found out that for women, mid-life is shrouded in shame, mystery, misinformation, denial or fear. However, I’ve come to experience my time here to be vital and transformative. 

When it started happening for me, it was at the same time the whole world became discombobulated. As the pandemic revealed flaws and weaknesses in old structures, and with collective grief, panic and rage on high, I was synchronistically “going through a thing”. This “age” - from then until now -seemed to bring about a series of losses - both symbolic and actual.

I “lost” my son to marriage, I “lost” my daughter to University in a different city, my father died, I “lost” my sister to an old irreconcilable difference, I dismantled my private practice, I distanced myself from old dear friends. I lost the hormones that made me a “productive” woman … 

With these came other associated losses - of roles and identity - the containers that helped me make sense of things, and guide my behaviours, and structure my days were crumbling.

Old perceptions, beliefs, and ways of being and doing were being dismantled or torn apart. I found myself in a void of unknowing. It was painful and disorienting. I took to wearing and ‘being’ black - not only were things around me “dying” but parts of me felt like they were too. I went into mourning.

I was surprised by the physical, psychological, emotional, and spiritual upheaval, as I was still blind to the greater context this was occurring in.

As I speak to other women of the age, I’m hearing similar disorienting, grief stories.

Fortunately, I’d done lots of ‘prep’ that would help see me through the passage; I was well resourced through my long-term inner work, a capacity to contemplate and question, and a multitude of inner and outer resources. I was confused, but I never felt in danger. However, I recognised many women don't feel so prepared. The changes can feel like a blindside, and self-blaming women can assume inaccurate labels of hysterical and depressed.

In hindsight, I'd been ‘ceremonially initiated’ the year before in 2018 when I attended my first training in Colorado with Dr Estes. Perhaps an intuitive attendance that marked an ending and a beginning threshold into this dramatic passage.

Now in 2024, I am coming through the other side somewhat renewed - reconfigur-ing, reconsolidat- ing.

My forced re-orientation has enabled me to look back across my lifetime and see the other Passages I’ve navigated - I’ve done ‘this’ before - other ending-beginnings-thresholds-cycles.

Many times - without recognising each cycle as an important passage, and without much conscious guidance through them.

This re-seeing is what sparked the initial stirrings of this work into Women’s Rites of Passage, and this question:

What would happen if I thought of myself as  -  less as a woman who’s lived through trauma, and more as a historically uninitiated girl and woman?

And what if this could also be true of my ancestors, and other girls and women?

The psycho-spiritual burdens and wounds we carry as individuals, can’t be separated from the context of a particular family, ancestry, culture, political climate, cosmology, and timeline.

And so I see the Rites of Passage work, as placing personal responsibility for growing and healing into this greater context, and mutually beneficial cultural container - womanhood.

This might not be a hugely original idea in and of itself - but I don’t feel we’ve ever had a framework to navigate personal + collective healing.

As I am exploring this work, particularly with the transformational experience of my midlife passage (the 9th passage women will go through)  I notice I seem less personally attached to wounds of my past. Don’t get me wrong - that shit still stings - but it’s more fleeting. And when I place the sting in the realm of the container - of Women’s Passages -  I’m able to create a new, wider-deeper story about it.

A new attitude and sight is transpiring - toward what has happened to me and my life to date - and even my future. 

Because it’s not just about me; it's personal and also, it's not so personal. And I find this liberating.

I now want to demystify, share, and transmit what I’m re-learning - and still learning - of these passages that women and girls go through.

Reflect on a period of significant change or loss in your life.

How did these experiences shape your identity and perception of yourself? What new insights or strengths emerged from this transformation?

by Sascha Schneider (1905)

My vision 

I envision women and girls from different walks, places and times coming together - to investigate what‘s known of old rites of passage, and bear witness as they re-story their lives and share what they discover in that context.

To re-initiate each other through and re-write what it is to be a girl, a young woman, an ageing woman in the modern age. 

It's my hope that this conversation around reintroducing women’s rites of passage journeys, can be a drop of elixir into the greater medicinal pool for healing of women, womanhood, and beyond women - into the greater culture

It’s my wish that this work acts as a calling in - as an initiation in itself - of creating a culture of collaboration, meaning-making and healing that goes beyond each of our individual needs and journeys, so we can see ourselves as humans and souls embedded in - greater cycles of life, death, and rebirth.

What role can you play in fostering a culture of collaboration and communal healing?

How can sharing your journey and listening to and witnessing others do the same, contribute to a broader transformation within your community or society?

Mendy x