The Daughter of Demeter

 Fall is a bittersweet time for me. It was right before my birthday in October, that my mother told me she had an incurable form of cancer and had a few months to live. I didn't know how to handle the news and so as I often do I turned to mythology to help me through life. I don't think anyone is ever prepared for a parent dying or their death, even if they've been ill for quite a while. The mythical Goddess Persephone "She who Destroys  the Light" came to gather me and to descend into the Underworld with her.

Persephone (usually pronounced /pərˈsɛfəni) was the young beautiful daughter of the Goddess of the Grain and Earth, Demeter. Actually her first name before she became Persephone was Kore; meaning "young maiden." Like every mother-daughter relationship, they had their differences; but also a love of enduring strength.. One day, Kore was out with her friends on a beautiful Spring day  gathering flowers. Hades, the King of the Underworld, ruler of the Dead had his eye on Kore for some time and knew that her mother would never consent to the marriage of them. So, with his great chariot of ghostly black horses, he ripped a hole through the underworld and abducted her down into the his realm. Kore cried out to her mother, which Demeter heard but she came too late to rescue her.
Only a few gods were allowed to enter the underworld then return to the world of the living. One of them was Hermes, the god of communication, travel, messenger for Zeus. When Demeter found out about Kore's abduction and was told there was no way to save her, she mourned so greatly that all the flowers, plants, and wheat that was of vital importance withered and died. Zeus, knew that this couldn't continue and so send Hermes down to see if he could bring Kore back to her mother. This is the part where the myth of Persephone differ. Some say, she was brutally raped by Hades and was forced to be his queen, some say she met the Crone-Goddess Hekate, and learned magick and prophecy from her. While others believe, she grew to love Hades and saw that the dead needed a queen ruling next to the king.

Hades was so in love with Persephone he seduced her with a fruit which we know as the Pomegranate. Persephone who had never seen such a fruit, ate six of its seeds. She didn't know that anyone who ate or drank anything in the Underworld wouldn't be able to leave. When Hermes went to the underworld and found out about Persephone eating the Pomegranate seeds, he had to tell Zeus. Zeus knew to both appease his brother Hades and Persephone's mother Demeter, a compromise had to be found. It was decided then that for each of the seeds Persephone ate, there would be three months of Fall and Winter and three months of Spring and Summer. When Spring returned, Persephone would be able to return to her mother.

As I was watching my mother dying, I was forced to go into my own underworld of grief and depression. My mother was not able to communicate with me what she was feeling partly because of how sick she was and also there was always a lack of an honest, open and loving communication between us. I knew that I would never be able to fix and repair the relationship I so wanted but never had with her. A mother daughter relationship is one of the most complex relationships a woman will ever have. Every woman is either a mother or a daughter and even if the mother is the most positive and loving mother there is, there will still be wounds to heal.  I was blessed enough to have a therapist who was this wise, gray-haired, older woman who walked me through the dying process of my mother as Hekate mentored Persephone. It was also at this time, I started to seriously study tarot cards which opened up a whole new world for me of prophecy and magick. I wasn't consciously following the myth of Demeter and Persephone, the myth was living through me though. 
My mother passed into the Summerland in January, a day of rain and freezing cold winds. The Banshees were singing their song of death while I was in the middle of a "celebration" that my mother had requested when she died instead of a funeral. She asked to be cremated and then those who loved her, remember her through stories they had experienced with her. I was surprised at how many people, especially younger women showed up. My mother was able to nurture, support and love these other women for some reason in a way that she wasn't able to do with me. I didn't envy them, I was just surprised at the number of my "sisters" my mother had created, like Demeter's harvest. I had now become the  Queen of the Underworld and knew it was time to learn and enter depression as consciously as possible for my own sake and my son's as well. Did I do it gracefully? Hell no, pardon the bad pun. But I did learn and am still learning how to become at peace with the spirit of my mother and the path of depression.
 In Spring time all of my mother's roses would burst forth with these magnificent blooms emitting a heady perfume, I would think of her then ever after that . For like Demeter, she loved to garden and would spend hours quietly and peacefully while I had no interest ever in gardening. Now when Spring comes, I greet my mother back into my life, with one of the rose bushes, I transplanted from her house to mine. A mother's love no matter how damaging still bears a gift of beauty if you can find it. Do you get along with your mother or if she has died; what was your relationship like? If you have daughters, do you see your own mother now inside of you? I'm always interested in hearing about mother-daughter relationships.

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