After spending our last session exploring the Archetype of Mother, it feels natural, almost necessary, to step into the territory of Daughter. The mythic and folkloric landscapes are rich with tales of daughters making their way onto the path of their own lives. All of them must leave home and venture out into the unknown. None can escape the darkness that lurks in the form of ravenous witches, evil sorceresses, envious stepmothers, deceitful trolls, devouring wolves; even Hades himself awaits somewhere. Psyche, Persephone and Artemis are daughters. So are Little Red Ridinghood, Catskin, Cinderella, Tatterhood, The Handless Maiden, Vasalisa, all of them: Daughters.

Helen Luke, a Jungian writer and analyst, writes that "on the archetypal level the son carries for the mother the image of her inner quest, but the daughter is the extension of her very self, carrying her back into the past and her own youth and forward to the promise of her own rebirth, into a new personality, into the awareness of the self.”

Adrienne Rich, the American poet, adds that "our personalities seem dangerously to blur and overlap with our mothers, and in a desperate attempt to know where mother ends and daughter begins, we perform radical surgery. "

And so, over 6 weeks we will explore what it means to be daughters, as part of our overarching inquiry into the process of individuation through a Jungian lens. We will follow the maiden into the dance through the many trials and tribulations of the mythic landscape—for as Maureen Murdock states in The Heroine's Journey:

"The path of the heroine is not easy, it has no well defined guideposts and no recognizable tour guides. There is no map, no navigation chart, no chronological age when the journey begins. It follows no straight lines. It is a journey that seldom recieves validation from the outside world, in fact the outer world often sabotages and interferes with it."

As we surrender to the wisdom of the body/soul through the dance practice, we will ask ourselves many questions. What has my role as daughter been throughout my life? How has separation, both physical and psychological, unfolded between my mother and I? Which maternal wounds have been passed down through my motherline? Have I assumed aspects of my mother's unlived life and/or repressed emotions? How has my childhood shaped the woman I have become? Where do the threads of our lives meet, cross, knot, and what patterns do they form?

Class 1~ Leaving Home

Class 2~ Self Preservation

Class 3~ Retreat and Solitude

Class 4~Initiation and Descent

Class 5~ Return and Redemption

Class 6~ The New Order