Women’s Rites of Passage
An offering to demystify, reimagine, & restore connection to the cycles and rhythms across her lifespan.
What does it mean to be a girl? and a woman today?
In my practice, I witness women feeling separate from themselves and lost - a consequence of generational & ancestral trauma, cultural changes, politics, and societal and ecological shifts. Women experience confusion and lack - something is off, something is missing. There’s an experience of being dissociated from our bodies, cut off from our voices, and buried.
In an attempt to heal the disconnect, women have turned to an array of healing modalities But then, even after all this “work on ourselves” a lingering sense of separateness remains. That we still haven’t “healed enough”. Defaulting to a self-blame that amplifies feelings of frustration, loss, isolation and burnout.
For over a century, psychotherapy (in all its evolving guises - talk, somatic, art, depth...) has been the primary guide and support for people through difficult times, picking up the banner where religion and culture have failed, to treat mental illness, mood disorders, and chronic stress conditions. An approach that individualises the problems, as if these were strictly personal issues. There is an unacknowledgement of greater collective experiences beyond the “I”.
In these individual healing modalities (which I am a part of!), there is little opportunity to ask, explore and grasp the idea of their womanhood, and how to transform within that framework.
To ease the burden on each woman, the answer may be found beyond what you do and how you see yourself as an individual.
Instead, you share the weight by recognising that you exist within a greater context, which includes your culture, politics, and environment. You start to frame your healing and transformative process within the archetypal cycles and Rites of Passage that you and every girl and woman journey across the lifespan.
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The Rites of Passage are the different stages, thresholds, life chapters, or lessons that girls and women traverse throughout their lives. They symbolise the particular tasks, lessons, and skills important to learn for each phase of a woman’s life development - and help facilitate changes through shifts in values, attitude, perspective, focus and how to act and relate.
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We are all daughters and sons of the patriarchy, and live within a culture of competition, hyper-individualism, and secularity (simply put).
This has led to a skewed and limited idea of the Feminine, with an internalised belief that femininity and womanhood are inferior subsets to the Masculine and manhood.
We’ve lost the diverse wisdom about who girls and women are and what their vital roles are within the community.
As such many of us have remained unguided and so uninitiated through important life stages. Leaving us to feel lost and disconnected at this very deep and impersonal level.
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Re-initiation is a process of going back and working through the passages we have missed or been stuck in, and relearning the lessons and rites of that age.
We also rewrite - restory - our hurts, so they can be woven into the greater context of our lives - rather than carried as unprocessed burdens.
When we do this for ourselves, this allows us to ensure that other girls and women in our communities have better guidance. We become the new initiated elders.
As a culture, we need time to rebuild and lay down the wisdom for this modern age.
“The psyches and souls of women also have their own cycles and seasons of doing and solitude, running and staying, being involved and being removed, questing and resting, creating and incubating, being of the world and returning to the soul-place.”
DR CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTES
I envision women and girls from different walks, places, and times coming together to investigate what‘s known of old rites of passage, bear witness as they re-story their lives, and share what they discover in that context.
We work to re-initiate each other and re-write what it is to be a girl, a young woman, and an aging woman in the modern age.
I invite you to join me in seeing this as a calling—as an initiation in itself—to create 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.
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Access my free workshops, Rites of Passage Ebook, and resources and learn more about upcoming offerings related to the Rites of Passage.
FREE MASTERCLASS | 45 Minutes
Introduction: Rites of Passage
Rediscovering the Cycles of Life for Healing, Transformation, and Meaning
This introductory workshop is on revisiting the passages of initiation to re-know, re-story, and reclaim your place as an individual within a collective of women. You'll experience the material through the alchemy of psychology, story, symbolism, imagination, movement, energetics, and contemplation.
FREE EBOOK
Women’s Rites of Passage
This job is not for just one elder, healer, or therapist.
Collaboration, communal care, and broad, diverse networks are key to investigating the old rites of passage. The e-book includes more information around the history of the Rites of Passage, the 13 passages, and my invitation for you.
FREE MASTERCLASS | 45 minutes
The 13 Passages
The Cycles of Initiation for Girls & Women
Even though women know how to heal, for all their efforts, they still feel separate from themselves - due to personal, generational & ancestral trauma and broader cultural, political, societal and ecological circumstances. In this workshop, I outline each of the 13 passages of the archetypal journey that happens across the life span of girls and women - from birth to death.