Sarah Durham Wilson - Maiden to Mother: Unlocking Our Archetypal Journey into the Mature Feminine

Praise for Maiden to Mother

Sarah provides deep wisdom and guides us along the most important journey of our lives, from maiden to mother. This book is exactly what the feminine in each and every one of us needs in order to fully step into our fullest expression and our greatest power.

LeAnn Rimes

internationally acclaimed singer, songwriter, and Grammy Award winner

I remember when I was at home giving birth to my first child, Brave. I had just begun active labor. I started to panic and call for my mother, Davi. My midwife came close and said, You are the mother now. It was a powerful moment, an awakening. I was forced to let go of my maiden, ready or not. So many of us are thrust into Mother with nary a blueprint to guide us. Unmothered ourselves, this can be treacherous terrain. Sarah brings her gentle and deep wisdom to walk us through the ancient rites lost to us. Her words have helped me, and now they will help you.

Cree Summer

actress and singer

Maiden to Mother is a timely and powerful book for all women to read and engage with. This time in history is what I call the Sophia Centurya century that will be defined by the rising, maturing, and full self-expression of the feminine in women and also in men. Read this book, engage with the beautiful ideas in this book, and then find your wings and SOAR!

Lynne Twist

bestselling author of The Soul of Money

The words and teachings that Sarah shares so generously with the world are forged in the fire and heat of her fully lived experience. Vital and vulnerable, strong and tender, Sarah is a mystic, a wise woman, and a way-shower, and she will take you on an initiatory journey to deeply meet yourself, to navigate the terrain of womanhood, and to claim your power and presence. I hold Sarah in the deepest reverence. She, and all that she shares in the world, is fierce, much-needed medicine for us all.

Lisa Lister

bestselling author of Witch and Code Red

At the heart of Sarahs book and work is a returning to ourselves in a society that has, in so many ways, attempted to pull us away from our essence. The work of Maiden to Mother invites us to remember, return to, and reawaken who we are underneath the conditioning weve received, in order to show up more fully, vibrantly, and wholly in our lives and within ourselves. This book is a balm, a gift, a mystical weaving of wisdom, and a nurturing companion that will ignite healing for so many.

Lisa Olivera

author of Already Enough

Only Sarah Durham Wilson could make this tale so moving, so funny, so open, and so soulful, in words that sparkle like a love song. In Maiden to Mother, she goes intimately deep into grief, heartbreak, and spiritual rebirth. Its a bravely personal but universal guide to exploring the dark places of the heart and finding fresh wisdom there.

Rob Sheffield

contributing editor at Rolling Stone and New York Times bestselling author

Sarah Durham Wilson is giving voice and vocabulary to a swelling movement of people who want to cast off the inheritance of patriarchy but havent seen a clear alternative. Reclaiming the feminine in all of her phases is the vital work Durham Wilson is engaged in, and I am thrilled that shes chosen to share it with us.

Caterina Scorsone

actress

In a world that worships the maiden, this beautiful book is an invitation to move into the archetype of Mother, which is the most profound gift we can offer ourselves, our inner child, the earth, and the collective.

Ruthie Lindsey

speaker and author of There I Am: The Journey from Hopelessness to Healing

Maiden to Mother is part archetypal medicine and part map for a womans brave and loving return to a whole and healed self. Sarah Durham Wilson suffered a mother wound that nearly crushed her, and she has risen up and courageously found her way home to her own heart.

Sil Reynolds, RN

author of Mothering and Daughtering: Keeping Your Bond Strong Through the Teen Years

Sarah Durham Wilson guides, teaches, and writes from an embodied place of having journeyed into the dark depths. Over the years of knowing her, I have seen this extraordinary witch enter deep communion with the Mother archetype, tending a most sacred relationship and thus feeding Her true forceso often forgotten by modernity. An offspring of her intimate soul journey is this book, and ultimately a contribution to the healing and resurrection of the Great Mother Goddess Creatrix energy so needed on our planet at these times. Sarah reminds us that it is by awakening, embodying, and living from the wholeness of the Mother archetype within us that the powerful love of Goddess will take her rightful place upon the living Earth.

Marysia Miernowska

author of The Witchs Herbal Apothecary and director of The School for the Sacred Wild

Sarah Durham Wilson

Boulder, Colorado

Boulder, CO 80306

2022 Sarah Durham Wilson

Sounds True is a trademark of Sounds True, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the author(s) and publisher.

Published 2022

Cover design by Tara DeAngelis

Book design by Meredith March

BK06086

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Durham Wilson, Sarah, author.

Title: Maiden to mother : unlocking our archetypal journey into the mature feminine / by Sarah Durham Wilson.

Description: Boulder, CO : Sounds True, 2022. | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021051067 (print) | LCCN 2021051068 (ebook) | ISBN 9781683647027 (hardback) | ISBN 9781683647034 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Femininity. | WomenIdentity. | WomenPsychology. | Self-actualization (Psychology)

Classification: LCC BF175.5.F45 D87 2022 (print) | LCC BF175.5.F45 (ebook) | DDC 155.3/33dc23/eng/20211115

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021051067

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021051068

To Avalon

When you have no inner Mother,

Inside, youre still just a little girl trapped in a womans body.

Do you know that feeling?

I know it because I was her.

I was a little girl

Lost at sea

With no one

To watch over me.

Why dont I know how to live my life?

Why dont I have a map?

Why dont I have a key?

I thought I needed a map, but what I needed was a Motheran inner Mother.

An idol of mine, the great Jungian analyst and author Marion Woodman, said if we dont tend to the fire inside, it will kill us. But if we nourish it, it will guide us. She is referring to a voice inside that we often silence because it terrifies us: It will change everything we know. It will demand our greatness. It will require we accept the adventure life is calling us into. It calls us to the heroines journey that we were born for.

So we ignore it, this voice of our destiny, of our ultimate destination. And ignoring that voice will bring us nothing but discontent. But if we can listen to this voice, accept its challenges, and expand instead of contract into suffering, we will find our true selves.

We must do this for ourselvesand the worldbefore it is too late. We must walk with beauty and courage. We must become the Mother: the Mother we needed when we were little and the Mother we need to be for ourselves now and for the world that is so desperately crying out for Mother. She is unconditionally loving, compassionate, wise, intuitive, infinitely creative, strong, sensual, serene, capable, fierce, gentle, reliable, a lover, and a queen.