Restoring the Mother-Daughter Relationship: A Personal Journey Through the Myth of Demeter
I was imprisoned in a colonial mansion, together with my boyfriend. Before me stood an older man in a three-piece suit. He did nothing but kept us in his grip. I was terrified of him. No matter what we did, we couldn't escape; all exits led back to the living room where we started. Then a door opened on the left side of the room. There stood, in a completely different space with a suspended ceiling, a man with an Indian appearance. He said: you can escape if you settle your bill with me. I took out my debit card, paid, and we left the house.
Looking back, this dream might have been my initiation into a quest for liberation. Liberation from what? No idea. What I did know was that I had been working at a large financial institution for 11 years, and I was unable to bring my authentic voice there. I primarily sought the solution in changing that environment. Making the culture more inclusive. Why didn't they hear me? I developed a chronic illness that prevented me from working, my mother became seriously ill, I came to a standstill. It grew dark around me, I turned inward. I longed for an exit. But where could I find it?
And there she suddenly was, a few years after my dream: the goddess Demeter. At the Anima Mundi school, I followed a program where I was introduced to forgotten female archetypes in the form of goddesses. And of all the goddesses and myths, she touched me the most: the myth of Demeter. This turned out to have a hidden medicine.
Demeter Loses Her Daughter to the Underworld
It's good to know that the myth of Demeter took place in a unique period in our history, between 1600-1100 BCE. During that period, a major transition was occurring from an older South European religion of a Mother Goddess (deeply connected with nature) to a newer religion where patriarchal gods had a more central and dominant role. The tensions between the gods and goddesses formed the backdrop of the myth of Demeter. I'll take you to the beginning of the myth.
Demeter, goddess of agriculture, fertility, and the earth, has a daughter, Kore. Conceived with her brother Zeus, which is completely normal in mythology, so we shouldn't worry about that. Mother and daughter are inseparable. The mother's love was overwhelming and perhaps a little suffocating. One day, when Demeter returns from one of her journeys, she cannot find Kore anywhere.
Kore has gone for a walk on the meadows with her nymphs - and her own innocence. In the middle of the meadow, she found a flower so beautiful that she couldn't take her eyes off it. She couldn't resist and picked the flower. What Kore didn't know was that she was being watched from beneath this flower meadow. Hades, king of the underworld, had fallen completely in love with the beautiful Kore and was determined to have her. Together with his brother Zeus, he made a plan. Gaia, Kore's grandmother, was also involved in the plot; she created a beautiful flower that would catch Kore's eye. The moment Kore picked the flower, the meadow ground opened with great violence. Hades came riding, with horse, chariot and all, to abduct Kore, taking her to the underworld to marry her. When Demeter heard of this incident, she was desperate and furious. Not only had her daughter been abducted - with her own brother as an accomplice - but she would never see her daughter Kore again. A fate that was unbearable for Demeter.
Demeter, in her bitter disappointment about the behavior of the men in her life, makes a decision; she has no choice. She leaves. She walks so far that she forgets herself. And because she - as the goddess of fertility - forgets herself, the land becomes barren and infertile. As long as Demeter's daughter was in the hands of Hades, no one would eat again.
Barren Fields
I remember that I too felt like Demeter for long periods. It felt as if I had lost something exceptionally precious, just as she had lost her daughter.
First, I was angry at the corporate culture of the company where I worked, angry that they could not and would not hear my true voice. That somehow I had no access to my own fertility to create. My lands felt barren and infertile. I had even come to a complete standstill due to chronic illness and spent large parts of the day at home, away from the inhabited world. I had lost myself.
Kore's captivity also resonated with parts of my psyche, parts that felt captured. My dreams also began to resonate with this scene. Dreams in which my own daughter was abducted by strange men. Dreams where strange men entered my room wanting to rape me.
After following various dream courses, including at the JUNG academy, and now studying Jungian Psychology, I slowly came to understand that these negative male appearances did not only live in the world outside of me. These oppressors also reflected parts of my own inner psyche. Within me lived masculine energies that wanted to overpower, overwhelm, and hold captive my inner young woman, my innocence, my authentic self, my femininity. Just like in my dream in the colonial house.
As Demeter longed for the liberation of her daughter, I longed for the liberation of these feminine parts within myself. I wondered how I should escape. What did I need to settle?
And meanwhile, my mother grew more ill.
Who Was Holding Me Captive?
Although I have very warm memories of my mother, as a child I also experienced a lot of rejection from her. Something I had safely tucked away. Something not to discuss with her at all, for fear of hurting her. But now she was dying. Should I then take this last chance to talk with her? I was ready, but I also wanted to protect my inner child. I placed the outcome in the hands of the goddesses.
With the approaching end, I saw my mother reflecting more on her own life and past. She opened up more and more, and there came a natural moment when she initiated the conversation about the past. I felt safe enough to discuss the past. In the precious conversations we had, I learned that my mother's rejection stemmed from a wound that she in turn had.
The conversations we had together helped me see that my mother had a strong negative animus. Which means that she too was held in the grip of her own negative masculine energy. Learned from her father and other examples in the world around her. I had taken over that negative animus from her.
The more authentic I was - more creative, more outspoken - the more challenging that was for her. And the more she limited and rejected me. She thus taught me to keep my creativity and authenticity captive, because I became fearful of rejection. So Hades doesn't always return in the form of men in our lives.
I wanted to bring out my own authenticity, but I couldn't, because at the same time I was always looking for confirmation from mother figures. The mother in me had to be born to gain authority over myself. To be able to mother my own creations.
Again, the myth preceded me here.
In response to the desperate realization that her daughter has been taken from her, Demeter travels so far that she forgets who she is and where she comes from. The earth loses its fertility. The gods see no other option than to send Hermes to find her. They promise Demeter that if she makes the earth fertile again, daughter Kore may return from the underworld.
Demeter waits in joy for their reunion, but when Kore arrives, Demeter understands that her daughter has eaten six pomegranate seeds in the underworld. This means she is forever connected to the underworld. From now on, her name is Persephone, bringer of death, queen of the underworld.
Because the gods want fertility to return, a compromise is reached. Kore will spend six months a year in the underworld. During that time, Demeter will mourn, and the earth will be barren and still. The other half of the year, Persephone returns, and the world blooms again.
Restoring the Mother-Daughter Relationship
Together with my sisters and father, I experienced my mother's dying process very closely. Now that I, like Persephone, was so close to death, I could see my mother's qualities and simultaneously feel within myself what a 'good death' needed. When my mother died, I sacrificed to Persephone my well-intentioned but restrictive inner prison guards, colonial landlords, and rapists. The figures I had unconsciously taken over from her.
Forty days after my mother's death, I received a dream in which I saw my mother coming back to life. We had given her some kind of medicine that had made her heart work again. She had consciousness, and she was even aware of her consciousness. You could say that she had fully come to life, this time in my dreams. My inner mother had come to life. In the dreams that followed, she became increasingly heavier and returned more and more to her old weight, the weight she had before she was ill.
By being able to meet the qualities of the mother archetype within myself again, I could make contact with my creative power from a different place. I learned to nourish the seeds of my soul myself and bring them to fruition, instead of first seeking approval from my environment, often in the form of projected mother figures.
The Balance in All of Us
The myth of Demeter was an incredibly rich medicine for me that helped me restore the mother-daughter relationship inside and outside of me. I gained insight into what needed to die within me and also how I could nourish and grow my inner creations. There are many more aspects of this myth that brought me insights, even too many to mention here. One thing I know for certain now, however: this myth contains a very potent elixir for all women living now, in a time when patriarchal norms still predominate and women struggle to live their authentic selves.
The myth of Demeter is an invitation. An invitation to experience the transition from female to male gods in reverse and to reconnect with the powerful energy of the female goddesses.
