Description

---

The bridge from Maiden to Mother has been broken.

When the goddess culture was stolen and buried, so too were women’s rites of passage into our wild, intuitive femininity and maturity.

With Maiden to Mother, Sarah Durham Wilson excavates these ancient rites, guiding us through a sacred and crucial initiation from the immature Maiden into the archetypal Mother—the powerful, safe, compassionate, full-bloom feminine life force that exists within all of us.

Becoming the Mother is every woman’s birthright—regardless of whether or not she raises children. The Mother is who we needed as a child, who we were meant to be in this life, and who the world needs us to be now.

Wilson teaches that while pre-patriarchal cultures honored women’s natural cycles, today’s society infantilizes women, idolizing youthful traits such as “pretty, pleasing, and polite” in order to keep us distracted and dependent. While a healthy version of the Maiden will always remain part of us, there comes a time when we must no longer let her wounds and immaturity guide our lives. We must step into our mature, feminine fullness.

In this journey, you will travel with Inanna—the ancient Sumerian goddess who ventured through the Underworld to meet her severed, dark sister and emerged fully integrated and empowered, giving us an archetypal map to inner strength and wholeness.

Through personal stories, rituals, teachings, and practices, Wilson helps women heal the Mother Wound and dismantle our internalized patriarchy with its false, constricting standards for the feminine, so we may live with authenticity and feast on the richness of life. “Midlife is not, as our culture proposes, where a woman’s power ends,” writes Wilson, “but where it really begins.”

About the Author

---

Sarah Durham Wilson midwives women from the wounded, patriarchalized feminine across the bridge to the archetypal Mother, or mature feminine. Before her service to the Goddess, she was a rock journalist in New York City, beginning with an internship at Rolling Stone and culminating as an editor at Interview magazine. She lives in Maine. For more, visit: themotherspirit.com.

Praise For…

---

“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 Century’—a 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 Sarah’s 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 we’ve 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. It’s 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 haven’t 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 she’s 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 woman’s 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 delivers a confronting and enlivening challenge to men and women in this book—challenging men to examine how they perpetuate the ‘forever maiden’ syndrome, while offering women a clear and truly needed path of excavation, integration, and liberation.” —John Wineland, men’s group facilitator, speaker, teacher, and author of From the Core

“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 force—so 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 Witch’s Herbal Apothecary and director of The School of the Sacred Wild