Sharing space with twenty-six incredible women. All ranging in ages. All ranging in life stages.
They showed up, fully, bravely, messily, beautifully, for five days of immersive transformation work around the archetypes of maiden, mother, and crone. And what unfolded was something I’m still processing, still sitting with, still feeling in my womb and bones.
This is my attempt to share some of it with you.
Maiden: The years we survived
Maiden. Our inner spring. The archetype of menarche, of beginnings, of that vivacious, creative energy starting to rise.
If you’re a child of the eighties or nineties like me, menarche probably wasn’t celebrated. It wasn’t explained. It was handed to you with a pad or a tampon and a vague sense that this was something to manage quietly.
For me, menarche was where I was made to feel like the other more than I actually was. It was deep, it was dark, it was tiring.
And I know I’m not alone in that.
In this space, with these women, maiden came up hard. Big tears. Big emotions. A lot of stuff surfaced for a lot of people. Because those maiden years, however far behind us they are, have a way of staying with us until we turn and look at them properly.
But here’s what struck me most. When we looked back at our maiden years in that room, we looked back with tenderness. With kindness. With care. And with something I didn’t expect, pride.
We made it through. We did this. And our younger selves would be so proud of who we’ve become.
Mother: The day I celebrated another journey around the sun
The mother day fell on my birthday. Starting my next year with a 6am swim in the lake with two incredible women was just perfect.
Mother. Our inner summer. The queen. The creator. The one who births things into the world, whether that’s children, businesses, ideas, programmes, art, or anything else that comes from that deep creative well inside us.
Because for me mothering and creating are the same thing. I want to say that again. Mothering and creating are the same thing. You don’t need to have carried a child to know what it means to bring something you love into the world and pour yourself into it.
I have birthed things. Programmes, ideas, spaces for women. I have created. And I am deeply, deeply proud of those things.
Someone said it during the weekend, pride before a fall, and it stopped me in my tracks. Because I’d heard those words my whole life. And in that moment I knew, more clearly than ever, that I refuse that story completely. Pride is not dangerous. Pride is necessary. And in that room, on my birthday, surrounded by twenty-six incredible women celebrating me and each other, I felt it fully.
We danced. We swam. We were together. And it was softer than maiden, but for some it was harder. Because mother brings up everything, how we were mothered, how we want to mother, how we want to create. Big things arrived. And they were held so beautifully.
Crone: The wisdom we’ve been waiting for
Crone is perhaps the archetype that women resist most. Our inner winter. The wise woman. The dreamer. The one who has experienced it all and now holds that wisdom like something precious.
In our menstrual cycle, crone is that deep inward turn. Our bleed. The letting go. The shedding of what no longer serves. And in our life stage, it’s the same, a profound invitation to release, to rest, and to pass on everything we’ve learned.
Crone was our landing. The end of our time together. And it was exactly what we needed, a moment to honour what the weekend had been, to celebrate how far we’d come, and to remember what we needed to carry forward and what we could finally put down.
Wild Woman: the one the books forgot
Here’s something that came up for me strongly over the weekend, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since.
The traditional framework of maiden, mother, crone misses someone. She sits between mother and crone, in that inner autumn, that quickening phase, that perimenopause space. And her name is Wild Woman sometimes called enchantress.
Wild Woman is the one who no longer gives a damn about taking up too little space. She’s the one who is ready to own her intuition, her intentions, and exactly where she wants to be. She’s done performing. She’s done apologising. She’s not yet in her crone wisdom, but she’s got everything to give and she knows it.
I felt like I sat in Wild Woman energy for the entire weekend. And I think a lot of the women there did too, whether they named it or not.
She is the opposite of maiden. The other side of the cycle. And she deserves so much more than a footnote.
The things I’m still carrying
Pauline shared a quote about fear that I haven’t been able to put down since.
Fear: Future Events Already Ruined.
A reminder that fear is a story we tell ourselves about something that hasn’t happened yet. A reminder not to let it stop us. Not to let it take over.
And then Lindsay shared a song she had written, and the words have stayed with me ever since:
I’m not a drop in the ocean. I’m an ocean in a drop.
We are so often told we are small. A small cog in a big machine. But we are everything we need. And everything the world needs.
What I want you to take from this time
This weekend was filled with new friendships, new beginnings, endings, swimming in a lake, saunas, breathwork, processing, and progressing. It was nothing like your standard yoga retreat. It was so much more.
And the thread running through all of it, through maiden, mother, crone, wild woman, through every tear and every laugh and every moment of recognition, was this:
Our menstrual cycles, and the way we cycle through life, are different. But they are also the same. And it is exactly that, the difference and the sameness, that brings us into the deepest connection with each other and with ourselves.
I wish every woman could sit in a room and feel part of a collective. A deep community of love and care. Where twenty-six other women are right there beside you, holding space for everything you are and everything you’re becoming.
Because that’s what changes everything.
Let me close by saying thank you, thank you to Sarah and Eiben (my clay sister) who created the most incredible retreat, to my fellow space holder Inga and to every single one of the courageous, beautiful, funny, caring women that were on the retreat, you my new and old friends are incredible!
Find out more about the fabulous Sarah HERE
