The Maiden; Becoming woman. Maidenhood is fraught with self-concern and a growing knowing. This phase is for exploration, of ourselves, of our world, and of our place within it. Maidenhood is where we should be encouraged to tap into our unique intuition and become its apprentice.

The Mother; The Wheel turns and we are no longer the center of our world. This is the season of nurturing, guidance, of growing something to release into the world.

The Crone; we release that which we have grown and come back to ourselves. We reflect on our life experiences and immerse ourselves in the sharing of wisdom and growing contentment in who we are. We surrender to life, in all of its devastating mystery, and we surrender to decay, honoring it as the wise decomposer and sustainer of new life.

Womanhood resists linear definition. Our phases function like the moon, in cyclical wonder, ever flowing and bleeding into one another. We are never not Maiden and at the same time, never not Crone. We Mother much more than just children and wisdom comes through each phase, teaching all the others in an intimate dance of fluidity. There are times when we might feel that we are distinctly crossing over the threshold of one phase to another, and there are times when we realize we are navigating two phases at once.

And yet life is linear; womanhood dances between this fact and the resistance of it. We are liminal spaces, we are new growth, and we are slow decay, an accumulation of flow embodied from pre-menses through menopause and beyond.