THE midlife crisis is the chrysalis
COMING SOON
The Enchantress is the Antidote to a world that’s lost its Soul
She’s left behind a life of crawling
through the wasteland of patriarchy
to spread her wings into a life of her own
creative, sensual and ceremonial design
Mother to Enchantress is the new Midlife Rite of Passage
created by artist, author and teacher
Sarah Durham Wilson
The Mother to Enchantress TEMENOS- or spiritual chrysalis- is designed to support women + femmes in the deeply (and often darkly) Transformative Transition from the First Half of Life to the Second Act.
The Enchantress is an archetype for the Feminine’s most creative and sensual season of Life.
The Enchantress is actively in life’s dance, and gratefully, wholly, in her Second Chance. She’s living a life outside of patriarchal confines, in her own creative and sensual design. She is a dancing, embodied prayer for the world. In the First Act of Life, we lived under Patriarchy.
At Midlife, we lose the patriarchal plot to remember who we are and who we are not. In the Second Act of Life, we re-member ourselves to become whole and live from our soul.
In Sarah’s previous work- the Maiden to Mother Rite of Passage- we left the consciousness of “The Father’s House”- life as little girls in women’s bodies infantilized under patriarchy— to dissent and descend to the lap of the Great Mother within. In the Underworld we did the work to rise to become Mothers to Self and Mothers to World. We left the Spring of our Lives for the Summer, we left the Waxing Moon Phase for the Full, and we came into our Mother’s Summer of Bloom.
In the Mother to Enchantress Rite of Passage we are stopped in our tracks with monumental questions to ask. We’re forced to pause between Life’s First and Second Half. Culturally, white colonial capitalist patriarchy’s misogyny and ageism and emphasis on machine -like productivity has pushed us to the periphery into exile and invisibility. We could believe them, that at midlife the feminine is done, or we could seize this opportunity to get free.
MOTHER TO ENCHANTRESS
is for women and femmes at the Midlife Crossroads
At the Threshold from Mother to Enchantress,
from Life’s First Half to its Second Half,
from Life’s Spring/Summer
to its Autumn/ Winter.
To Move from Archetypal Mother
into Archetypal Enchantress
is to leave the past behind
and become fully alive and be that lover and that magician
you spent the first half of your life looking to find.
To Move from Mother to Enchantress
is to throw away the patriarchal plans
and ideas of success and undress-
to be left quivering with the mystery,
with the Goddess guiding
each moonlit step,
never knowing where She’ll dance you next.
The FEMININE MIDLIFE RITES OF Mother to Enchantress
THE MOTHER TO ENCHANTRESS is a mystical, dark and transformative rite of passage which shows us the door to a more enchanted, authentic, alive, embodied, and conscious present life.
This is a cardinal midlife threshold, We are no longer young but we are not yet old. There is much more mystery and magic to unfold.
Mother to Enchantress includes the ceremonial marking of a life Half Lived- when we pause inside the naturally formed Chrysalis at Midjourney to honor, to grieve, to release the old skin, and eventually- to Begin Again.
At Midlife, we Midwife our True Life.
WHY THESE RITES MATTER
TO ME + the world
My own mother died at 45, and she never got to cross to the other side, to the Second Act - or Half - of her life. She never got out from under the patriarchal lens of centering men, never got to eradicate the ageism and misgony and machine-like pace of capitalism from her bones to live a life of her own. She never got to taste the liberation, illumination, richness of Enchantress. Did not get to embody the concentrated, seasoned feminine magic of this time, when a woman becomes a spell, a dancing prayer stick for a sick world. A sourceress, an effortless ceremonialist- they also call her the wild woman and the witch.
When Patriarchy was done with her and she was done with Patriarchy, with misogyny and ageism and masked perfomance- that was her moment, to join life’s dance, that was her time to be free.
My own Midlife Crisis began at Forty Two, when it felt like the earth of my world quaked and then finally split open, and down into a mental and physical hell I fell and into the crisis of the chrysalis I went.
I only know now that world shattering split was the split between the Persona (the mask) and the Person (Soul, Authentic Self). I began to study the Midlife Crisis, and it gave me life-saving context for my Chrysalis. Finally my own understanding of the Midlife terrain illuminated, enough smoke had cleared that I could see I had been leaving Mother to enter Enchantress. Like the Autumn leaves, life itself became illuminated, with what and who matters to me. James Hollis would say it was my Middle Passage from Misery to Meaning. Carl Jung would say I grew disoriented to re-orient to what matters to me and to the world.
The crucible of this chrysalis gave me the clarity to live a life of my own, from the truth of my bones, and one that was not at the direction of the dying culture, but the desires of my very own soul. Publicly, For 14 years I have lead women + femmes out of the patriarchal culture back to the lap of the primordial Great Mother, and for the last 8 I guided thousands through the Maiden to Mother Rite of Passage, the crucial work of becoming archetypal Mothers to ourselves and the world in a deeply, darkly, unmothered world.
For the last four years I have privately endured my own Midlife Crisis and Person/Persona split, and I now exit the Chrysalis to bring you the Boon of theses Rites, from Mother, to Enchantress:
She who lives in spell + ceremony, first she saves her own life with these rites, then she returns that life with her loving wise hands back to the dying wasteland.
From me to you, these Rites are now Yours.
photo by Brandy CunninghamMeet Your Guide through the Midlife Rites:
Sarah Durham Wilson is an artist, author, teacher & rites of passage guide. A former arts journalist for Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, GQ and Interview magazines, she experienced a spiritual awakening to the Goddess in 2011 and began to teach women & femmes on a return to the Goddess. She published the book Maiden to Mother on Sounds True in 2022. She’s an active and avid voice against the Polycrisis of Ecocide, Genocide & Femicide and believes in a world where we center the sacred to put Life, Mother/ Earth & the Children first. She now devotes her life’s work to women + femmes in the Midlife Passage.
THE PASSAGE INTO ENCHANTRESS
OFTEN BEGINS IN DEEP DISTRESs
apathy, lack of motivation, anxiety, nostalgia, loss of libido, malaise, regret, boredom, dissatisfaction, lack of confidence, terror of mortality, emptiness, depression, cast out or exiled by the culture, insomnia, hopelessness and despair, grief, irritability, passionless, pronounced inner ageism, obsession with keeping up youthfulness, reckless behavior, karmic circle completions, intense jealousy and comparison, suicidal ideations, feelings of invisibility, feeling cast out by the culture, burned out, voluntary isolation, on autopilot, waves of grief and rage
The Passage into Enchantress is about becoming whole and finally living a life of your own from the truth of your bones. But before that glory— the gory.
The symptoms of this transition are, to put it mildly, uncomfortable. To put it more truthfully, harrowing.
The Crisis is a CHRYSALIS
The time of the Midlife Crisis or Crossroads is constantly compared to the Metamorphosis of the Caterpillar to the Butterfly for good reason- our old identity has to die. There is a time when we are no longer in the old life and not in the new and we become absolute mush, like caterpillar soup.
The Midlife Crossroads is a period of self reckoning leading to self acceptance, and identity crisis leading to self discovery.
It can mean feelings of grief, depression, and anguish, as well as a loss of confidence and creativity. And a host of other symptoms that feel can feel dark and daunting, although each has a sacred message to speak. I invite you to look at the midlife crisis through a rites of passage lens with me.
“There comes a time in your life
when the life you have been living
is over and you have no clue
who you are becoming."
marion woodman.
MOTHER TO ENCHANTRESS
WEEKLY: THURSDAYS at 12 PM EST: The Midlife Crisis Teachings with Sarah Durham Wilson
Meet with Sarah and the other Midlife members with your Chrysalis for the first time, hear the stages of the Midlife Crisis through the Rites of Passage lens.
+ Witness and be witnessed in our Midjourney Stories.
Hear the story of Sarah’s Midlife Crisis and Chrysalis.
Discuss suggested Reading List.
Meet Somatics Teacher Lulu Zadoyan and Rites of Passage Guide Kamya O’Keeffe
Identifying the Identity Crisis + its Symptoms
Recognizing our Midlife Split: between the Persona (societal mask) and Person (true self).
Identifying our Persona and its inception.
Midlife Women are Volcanos: They Set Patriarchy on Fire Wherever they Go: Working with the Lavic Rage that has boiled up in our bodies.
+ COMPLETING THE TEENAGE QUEST To make it to the other side of this dark night, your inner rebel teen needs to come back alive.
Honoring the grief for our own lives, the end of the First Half of Life, Grief for the Planet + All that’s been lost to the Polycrisis of Genocide, Ecocide + Femicide
+ Grieving our Eve and Setting our Lilith Free: We will be laying down our Good Girl Archetype and meeting our Lilith Archetype.
“It’s Time to Live Like You’re Going to Die: Welcome to Your Midlife Rites.”
Midlife + Mortality, our Death as our Ally.
the Death of Illusions of our Life and the World
Life Under Ageist Misogynist Patriarchy + Cultural Invisibility
Midlife Rites bring us to the Front Line of Life: caring for children + parents + a world on fire all at the same time
+Unmasking + Shedding Skins: As Joseph Campbell said, “The old skin must be shed before the new one can come.”
With the Persona Identified, the True Person Starts to Rise
We will work with the Death Bed wisdom of poets, authors and teachers Stephen and Ondara Levine.
Personal + Cultural Midwifery: allowing the old to die so the new can birth through
+ The First Act Funeral, Ritualized
Releasing the Relationships We’ve Lost in the First Act Fires
+From Dante, to Carl Jung, to James Hollis, Marion Woodman to Kathleen Brehony:
learning from those who have gone before
Hear the stories of Midlife from those who have crossed to the other side
Discuss the work of the great Midlife Guides
Guest teacher Kamya O’Keeffe
+Traversing the land of the Underworld and the Crossing the Dark Night of the Soul.
when we don’t know much, just that we’re mush. This is when the caterpillar loses its old form in the temenos of the chrysalis, when she becomes mush, formless, caterpillar soup. It’s when we lose our old First Act form, too.
Gorgonhood: letting the “ugly:” out + rejecting patriarchal misogyny + ageism
Empathy + Identifying with the Dark Feminine in us and in myth: Medusa, Ereshkigal, Hecate, Kali and More as our Allies in the Underworld.
Double lives + Repairing the split
Letting the unconscious rise
Understanding the concept of psuedocide
From self rejection to self reclamation
Reorienting to what matters in the second half of life
Meeting the Enchantress Archetype in the Third Season of our Lives
+working with the Enchantress, Her Magic, Her Spells for Life + World
Claiming the “omen” in W/omen
Heralding The Birth of our Wise Woman + Initiation toward Sacred Elder with Kamya O’Keeffe
“Fuck thinking, I want to feel. Fuck fantasy, I am starved for what’s Real.”
The body lost + the body found, from disembodiment to solid ground.
The Intelligence of Eros : Midlife is When We’re Most Ripe
+ Erotic Embodiment as Resilience, Resistance with the work of Tantra Teacher Margot Anand, Poet + Feminist Professor Audre Lorde.
post patriarchal relationships
from ego to soul: Mature Love in the Second Act
SAGING + the art of sacred aging
the wisdom of perimenopause + menopause
+ recovering wise elderhood with Kamya O’Keeffe
+ slowing down to savor: the Presence Process from Michael Brown
+ the Meaning of Life through the lens of enlightened sages
+Living in Generativity: conscious of what we’re living behind, and living generous lives for the next generations.
Creating the Blueprint for the Second Half of Life
Making and Taking our Second Act Vows in Community.
