Did Persephone Forget?

Becoming queen of your own underworld

Did Persephone forget
like I do
that the easy feeling of a summer season
must always come to an end?
Did she fool herself
like I do
into thinking she had finally figured out 
the secret formula of
how to stay above forever
where the sun shines on her face?

Year after year
each time the earth opened to swallow her 
did she claw at the walls
and let out a mournful cry?
Did she try to negotiate for better terms
or look for a way out of her fate?
Did Persephone feel like a failure
like I always do
for not deciphering how to stay forever
in the topside world
of light and life and laughter?

When an impending loss 
jump starts the torment of every defeat not fully felt
when melancholy or anxiety abducts you
when your productivity shatters
when you are in that place
beyond the reach
of all your efforts
to control
or optimize your life
do you too make yourself the problem?

No one gets out of it, do they?
Some too-heavy measure of grief 
of pain
of sorrow
that takes you down
from time to time
reminding you 
that forces larger than you
are a part of this world
that we must share space with
Reminding you that a beating heart
must periodically break
and that the breath of life
must occasionally sob out its own rhythm
that this is the sacred contract 
inherent in being alive

Did Persephone forget
like I always do
that she was never meant 
to be in control
of this cycle?

Meanwhile 
the earth
pulls its energy back into itself
for the winter
the moon wanes 
and the nights swell into their dark fullness

Meanwhile spring grows
as a quiet promise 
in the belly of the earth 
not in some heroic defiance 
of winter
but nourished by it
brought into being 
by its surrender 
to that long passage 
through the dark

How many times
did Persephone descend
before the panic abated
and she stopped looking for a way out?
For how many years
did she enter the Great Below 
before she could keep her breath steady
and stay with the ache in her chest
vibrating with the memory of all she had lost?
How long before she knew she could trust
that the descent was no punishment
and that spring would rise
out of this death
when the moment was right
and bring her with it

How many times did Persephone descend
to the Underworld
before she no longer blamed herself
or lost herself in fear?
How many seasons was it
before she understood
before she felt herself to be
no longer its victim
but finally 
walked down
with her head held high
knowing herself
as its Queen

---

I have had a long fascination with the Goddess Persephone. She began tapping on my shoulder during my Saturn Return (around age 27) when I was going through an exceedingly difficult time. Her ability to travel between the worlds, as well as to turn trauma into a kind of triumph fascinated me.

As I understand it, the story that has been passed down to us of Persephone’s abduction by Hades and her being tricked into eating those pomegranate seeds may very well be a veneer from the later stage Classical Greece era that lays over an even older and more ancient story in which she had more agency (I can point you towards a version that takes that approach if you want).

Here, of course, I want to tell you how each year for more than 2,000 years, the story of Demeter and Persephone was enacted in a series of rites and dramatic forms during the Eleusian Mysteries, a secret ritual which every Greek - man and woman, free and enslaved, had to attend at least one in their lives and which is said to have reliably produced profound inner transformation and made people understand the reality of life and death in a new way, but that would be an essay unto itself.

Suffice it to say that for a very, very long time, this story has held deep psychological relevance, and the story of Persephone is one I have turned over and over in my mind for a good many years now.

Each time I start working it (or is it working me?), it teaches me something new and profound; about seasons and cycles, about the mother-daughter relationship, about grief and laughter, about trauma and healing.

This winter when the hard-earned internal steadiness I had been feeling started to wobble yet again, I came back to Persephone.

This poem is the fruits of this most recent exploration with this story.

Thank you, dear ones, for reading.

---

If this spoke to your heart, if you could relate to the inner seasons and cycles of your own life, I love hearing about it. Leave me a comment below.

With love,
Olivia