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Persephone and the Shadow Empress: The Woman Who Authors Her Own Life · Create Love Create Freedom

0:01
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Create Love Create Freedom Podcast.
0:06
SPEAKER_00: This podcast explores feminine psychology, embodiment, sovereignty, archetypes, and conscious womanhood in a post spectacle world.
0:18
SPEAKER_00: My name is Alison Fisher, and my work centers on internal authority and relational clarity across the seasons of a woman's life.
0:30
SPEAKER_00: As you listen to today's episode, there's nothing you need to force here.
0:35
SPEAKER_00: We're simply noticing what is already present within ourselves and allowing clarity to unfold over time.
0:44
SPEAKER_00: On today's episode, we are going to be examining Persephone and the Shadow Empress, and more specifically, how we can become women who author our own lives through both of these archetypes.
1:02
SPEAKER_00: We're going to start by discussing how Persephone is no longer waiting to be chosen.
1:10
SPEAKER_00: There is something about Persephone's story that changes when we stop looking at her only as the maiden who descends into the underworld.
1:20
SPEAKER_00: Because in the beginning of the myth, so much of Persephone's life seems to be determined by other people.
1:28
SPEAKER_00: Demeter has an idea of who her daughter is.
1:31
SPEAKER_00: Hades desires her.
1:34
SPEAKER_00: Zeots participates in deciding her fate.
1:38
SPEAKER_00: Her mother grieves for her, the gods negotiate over her return.
1:43
SPEAKER_00: Everyone seems to have something to say about where Persephone belongs, and Persephone herself can almost disappear from the story.
1:53
SPEAKER_00: She is the maiden who was taken, the daughter who was mourned, the woman who becomes a wife, the queen who eventually sits beside Hades.
2:06
SPEAKER_00: But I don't think that's where her story ends, and increasingly I don't even think that's the most interesting part of her story, because somewhere between the maiden who descends and the queen who learns to move between worlds, something profound happens.
2:24
SPEAKER_00: Persephone has developed an authority of her own.
2:28
SPEAKER_00: She encountered darkness.
2:30
SPEAKER_00: She has encountered desire.
2:34
SPEAKER_00: She has experienced separation from everything that once defined her.
2:39
SPEAKER_00: She has discovered capacities that could never have developed if she had remained forever protected in the world she already knew.
2:49
SPEAKER_00: And eventually the central question of her life changes.
2:54
SPEAKER_00: It's no longer who wants me or where do they want me to belong?
3:00
SPEAKER_00: It becomes what do I choose?
3:04
SPEAKER_00: I think this is one of the deepest transitions in a woman's development.
3:09
SPEAKER_00: There may be seasons of our lives when being chosen feels enormously important.
3:15
SPEAKER_00: Does he want me?
3:16
SPEAKER_00: Does he love me?
3:18
SPEAKER_00: Will he commit to me?
3:20
SPEAKER_00: Does someone recognize something valuable in me?
3:23
SPEAKER_00: And there's nothing wrong with wanting to be loved.
3:26
SPEAKER_00: There's nothing immature about wanting to be deeply chosen by someone we deeply choose ourselves.
3:34
SPEAKER_00: But eventually a woman has to become more than the object of someone else's choosing.
3:40
SPEAKER_00: She has to become one of the authors of the story.
3:44
SPEAKER_00: And that's the Persephone I want to explore today.
3:48
SPEAKER_00: Not simply Persephone as the maiden, not Persephone as the abducted woman, not even Persephone as the queen of the underworld, but Persephone as what I like to think of as the shadow empress.
4:04
SPEAKER_00: The woman who has descended deeply enough into herself that she possesses a kingdom of her own.
4:14
SPEAKER_00: She has judgment now, she has authority, she has desires, she has boundaries, she has a relationship with darkness that no longer frightens her.
4:27
SPEAKER_00: And perhaps most importantly, she has developed enough self possession that she can enter love without asking love to tell her who she is?
4:38
SPEAKER_00: Because this is where the question becomes more complicated.
4:43
SPEAKER_00: What happens when this Persephone loves?
4:47
SPEAKER_00: What happens when a woman who has become the sovereign author of her own life chooses to share that life with another person?
4:57
SPEAKER_00: Can she love deeply without surrendering her throne?
5:01
SPEAKER_00: Can she allow herself to be changed without disappearing?
5:05
SPEAKER_00: Can she share power without borrowing her power from the person beside her?
5:12
SPEAKER_00: Can she build a kingdom with someone else while still knowing which authority belongs entirely to her?
5:20
SPEAKER_00: I think she can.
5:22
SPEAKER_00: But not because she becomes invulnerable, not because she stops needing anyone, not because she refuses to yield, and certainly not because she has learned how to dominate.
5:37
SPEAKER_00: She can do it because she has finally learned something the maiden could not yet fully know.
5:43
SPEAKER_00: Being loved and belonging to yourself are not opposites.
5:49
SPEAKER_00: And perhaps that's where Persephone's story becomes not simply a story of descent and transformation, but a story of authorship.
5:59
SPEAKER_00: Let's begin.
6:02
SPEAKER_00: First we're going to discuss how the maiden asks to be chosen, but the queen chooses.
6:12
SPEAKER_00: There is something very human about wanting to be chosen.
6:15
SPEAKER_00: I don't think we need to pathologize that desire.
6:20
SPEAKER_00: We want to know that someone sees us and says, You, I want you.
6:25
SPEAKER_00: I want to know you, I want to build something with you.
6:29
SPEAKER_00: There can be something extraordinarily beautiful about being chosen by someone we love.
6:35
SPEAKER_00: But I think the developmental question is whether being chosen remains the center of our relationship with love.
6:44
SPEAKER_00: Because the maiden often experiences herself through the eyes of the person choosing her.
6:50
SPEAKER_00: Does he want me?
6:51
SPEAKER_00: Does he find me beautiful?
6:53
SPEAKER_00: Am I interesting enough?
6:55
SPEAKER_00: Am I lovable enough?
6:58
SPEAKER_00: Will he commit?
6:59
SPEAKER_00: Will he stay?
7:01
SPEAKER_00: And beneath all of those questions can be another one.
7:05
SPEAKER_00: What does his choosing me say about my value?
7:10
SPEAKER_00: I think that's part of what makes Persephone's development so interesting.
7:16
SPEAKER_00: The maiden Persephone is surrounded by people making decisions about her.
7:22
SPEAKER_00: She is wanted, protected, taken, mourned, negotiated over, returned.
7:31
SPEAKER_00: Her desirability is never really in question, but her agency is.
7:38
SPEAKER_00: And I think many women eventually encounter some version of this transition.
7:44
SPEAKER_00: At some point, it is no longer enough to know that you are desirable.
7:49
SPEAKER_00: You begin wanting to know what do I desire?
7:53
SPEAKER_00: Not what should I desire?
7:56
SPEAKER_00: Not who will look impressive beside me?
8:00
SPEAKER_00: Not who wants me badly enough?
8:03
SPEAKER_00: Not what relationship would prove that I'm lovable?
8:08
SPEAKER_00: What do I actually want?
8:11
SPEAKER_00: And that sounds like such a simple question, but I don't think it always is.
8:18
SPEAKER_00: Because being wanted can be intoxicating.
8:22
SPEAKER_00: Someone's certainty about us can temporarily become more compelling than our own uncertainty about them.
8:31
SPEAKER_00: We can become so occupied with whether someone is choosing us that we forget to notice whether we are choosing them?
8:41
SPEAKER_00: Do I actually admire this person?
8:44
SPEAKER_00: Do I trust their character?
8:46
SPEAKER_00: Do I like who I become around them?
8:50
SPEAKER_00: Do I want the kind of life they want?
8:53
SPEAKER_00: Do I respect how they treat people when there is nothing to gain?
8:58
SPEAKER_00: Do our values actually align?
9:02
SPEAKER_00: Can this person meet where I am going, not merely where I have been?
9:07
SPEAKER_00: And perhaps most importantly, if I knew with absolute certainty that this person wanted me, what would I choose?
9:18
SPEAKER_00: Because sometimes removing the fear of rejection reveals something surprising.
9:24
SPEAKER_00: We weren't entirely pursuing the person, we were pursuing the experience of being chosen by them.
9:33
SPEAKER_00: And the queen has to know the difference.
9:36
SPEAKER_00: She doesn't become indifferent to whether someone desires her.
9:41
SPEAKER_00: She doesn't sit on her throne declaring that no one is worthy.
9:46
SPEAKER_00: That's not sovereignty.
9:48
SPEAKER_00: That's simply another way of organizing your life around power.
9:53
SPEAKER_00: The queen can want someone enormously.
9:56
SPEAKER_00: She can fall deeply in love.
9:59
SPEAKER_00: She can experience longing.
10:01
SPEAKER_00: She can hope he chooses her.
10:04
SPEAKER_00: But somewhere inside all that desire she remains present.
10:09
SPEAKER_00: Her choice remains in the room.
10:13
SPEAKER_00: And I think that changes relationships profoundly.
10:17
SPEAKER_00: Because now she isn't auditioning.
10:20
SPEAKER_00: She isn't endlessly asking how do I become the woman this person wants?
10:26
SPEAKER_00: How can I make this work?
10:28
SPEAKER_00: How can I demonstrate my value?
10:30
SPEAKER_00: How can I convince him that I belong in his life?
10:35
SPEAKER_00: Instead she becomes curious.
10:38
SPEAKER_00: Who are you?
10:39
SPEAKER_00: Not who could you become?
10:42
SPEAKER_00: Not who do I hope you are?
10:45
SPEAKER_00: Who are you?
10:47
SPEAKER_00: What have you built?
10:49
SPEAKER_00: What do you value?
10:51
SPEAKER_00: What do you do with responsibility?
10:55
SPEAKER_00: How do you behave when you're disappointed?
10:58
SPEAKER_00: How do you handle power?
11:01
SPEAKER_00: How do you love?
11:03
SPEAKER_00: How do you repair?
11:05
SPEAKER_00: What kind of life follows from choosing you?
11:09
SPEAKER_00: Those are queen questions.
11:12
SPEAKER_00: And I think there's an important distinction here.
11:16
SPEAKER_00: The queen, the shadow empress, isn't evaluating someone because she believes herself superior.
11:23
SPEAKER_00: She's evaluating because choice creates consequence.
11:29
SPEAKER_00: Who we love affects our lives.
11:32
SPEAKER_00: Who we build with affects our lives.
11:36
SPEAKER_00: The people we allow close to us influence our peace, our work, our finances, our homes, our futures, sometimes even our understanding of ourselves.
11:50
SPEAKER_00: Love is not a trivial choice.
11:54
SPEAKER_00: So perhaps discernment isn't the enemy of romance.
11:59
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps it is one of the ways mature women learn to honor it.
12:06
SPEAKER_00: Persephone can look at Hades and say I can love you without making your desire for me evidence of my worth.
12:15
SPEAKER_00: And that creates the possibility of a very different kind of love.
12:21
SPEAKER_00: Because if I don't need your choosing to prove that I matter, then I'm finally free to discover whether I choose you as well.
12:35
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's the transition from maiden to queen.
12:40
SPEAKER_00: The maiden asks, will I be chosen?
12:45
SPEAKER_00: The queen understands that there are two different people standing here two desires, two futures, two people with the power to say yes, and two people with the power to say no.
13:03
SPEAKER_00: She still wants to be chosen, but she no longer forgets she is choosing to.
13:14
SPEAKER_00: Next, let's examine how Hades does not make Persephone a queen.
13:21
SPEAKER_00: I think one of the most interesting things about Persephone's transformation is that it would be very easy to tell her story through tell her story as though Hades makes her a queen.
13:35
SPEAKER_00: After all, he already has the kingdom.
13:39
SPEAKER_00: He already possesses the throne, he already has power.
13:43
SPEAKER_00: Persephone enters his world, becomes his wife, and eventually becomes queen of the underworld.
13:51
SPEAKER_00: And if we aren't careful, we can tell that story as though her evolution comes through proximity to him.
14:00
SPEAKER_00: She was a maiden, a powerful man chose her, and because he chose her, she became powerful too.
14:09
SPEAKER_00: But I don't think that's the most interesting interpretation of Persephone at all, because Hades can give Persephone access to a kingdom.
14:20
SPEAKER_00: He cannot give her the internal capacities required to rule one.
14:27
SPEAKER_00: Those have to become hers.
14:30
SPEAKER_00: He cannot give her judgment, he cannot give her discernment, he cannot give her self possession.
14:38
SPEAKER_00: He cannot simply place a crown on her head and create the woman capable of carrying its weight.
14:46
SPEAKER_00: Those capacities have to be developed.
14:50
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's an important distinction for women, because sometimes we confuse proximity to power with possessing power of our own.
15:01
SPEAKER_00: Being loved by an accomplished person can give us access to extraordinary things money, networks, influence, experiences, security, and status.
15:15
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps even opportunities we would never have encountered otherwise.
15:21
SPEAKER_00: And none of those things are inherently wrong.
15:25
SPEAKER_00: There's nothing particularly enlightened about refusing to benefit from the life someone you love has created.
15:33
SPEAKER_00: But if I love someone who has built something extraordinary, I hope to get to enjoy some of it.
15:44
SPEAKER_00: And if I've built something extraordinary myself, I hope the person I love gets to enjoy mine.
15:51
SPEAKER_00: That's part of sharing a life.
15:54
SPEAKER_00: But there is a difference between sharing another person's power and deriving your identity from it.
16:02
SPEAKER_00: Because what happens if the relationship ends?
16:06
SPEAKER_00: What happens if the status disappears?
16:09
SPEAKER_00: What happens when you walk into a room without him?
16:13
SPEAKER_00: Who are you then?
16:15
SPEAKER_00: What authority remains?
16:18
SPEAKER_00: What judgment remains?
16:20
SPEAKER_00: What have you developed that cannot be taken away simply because the person beside you is no longer there?
16:30
SPEAKER_00: I think the mature Persephone has an answer.
16:33
SPEAKER_00: She is still queen.
16:36
SPEAKER_00: And perhaps Hades plays an important role in that development, but I don't think we have to diminish him in order to give Persephone her authority.
16:47
SPEAKER_00: In fact, I think there's something beautiful about imagining that Hades may recognize capacities in Persephone that haven't fully developed yet.
16:57
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps he sees something in her that protected that the protected world above ground could not see yet.
17:06
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps the underworld creates conditions in which those capacities finally have to emerge.
17:15
SPEAKER_00: But that is a very different thing than saying Hades created them.
17:20
SPEAKER_00: Someone can recognize your power before you fully recognize it yourself.
17:26
SPEAKER_00: Someone can challenge you, someone can expose you to a larger world, someone can create conditions in which you discover capacities you didn't know you possessed.
17:39
SPEAKER_00: Someone can believe in the woman you are becoming, and that can be an extraordinary gift.
17:47
SPEAKER_00: But recognition is not authorship.
17:51
SPEAKER_00: The person who saw something in you did not manufacture it.
17:55
SPEAKER_00: The person who opened a door did not walk the entire road for you.
18:03
SPEAKER_00: The person who introduced you to a kingdom did not necessarily make you capable of ruling it.
18:10
SPEAKER_00: You did that through what you became inside the experience.
18:16
SPEAKER_00: And I think this matters enormously in love, because there can be something seductive about being chosen by a powerful person.
18:26
SPEAKER_00: Their power can begin to feel like evidence of our own significance.
18:32
SPEAKER_00: If someone extraordinary loves me, perhaps that means I am extraordinary.
18:39
SPEAKER_00: If someone successful chooses me, perhaps that validates my worth.
18:44
SPEAKER_00: If I become part of his world, perhaps his world becomes evidence of who I am.
18:51
SPEAKER_00: But the shadow empress eventually asks a harder question What belongs to me?
18:59
SPEAKER_00: What have I cultivated?
19:01
SPEAKER_00: What do I know?
19:03
SPEAKER_00: What can I carry?
19:05
SPEAKER_00: What can I create?
19:07
SPEAKER_00: What authority have I earned through living my own life?
19:13
SPEAKER_00: Because a crown received through association can disappear when the association does, but internal authority travels with you.
19:25
SPEAKER_00: And this is where I think Persephone becomes so much more interesting than the woman who marries the king of the underworld.
19:35
SPEAKER_00: She eventually becomes someone who can stand beside him, not beneath him, not above him, beside him.
19:45
SPEAKER_00: Two forms of power, two forms of authority, two people capable of contributing something different to the kingdom they share.
19:57
SPEAKER_00: And perhaps that is what allows their relationship to become partnership rather than incorporation.
20:04
SPEAKER_00: Hades doesn't need to become smaller for Persephone to become queen, and Persephone doesn't need to diminish what Hades already possesses in order to claim authority of her own.
20:21
SPEAKER_00: She simply has to know I am not powerful because you chose me.
20:27
SPEAKER_00: I am not queen because you placed a crown on my head.
20:32
SPEAKER_00: You may have recognized something in me.
20:35
SPEAKER_00: You may have invited me into a world where I discovered more of myself.
20:40
SPEAKER_00: You may have even helped me create conditions in which I became someone I could not have become alone.
20:48
SPEAKER_00: But the woman who emerged from that experience she belongs to me.
20:55
SPEAKER_00: And perhaps that is one of the deepest expressions of love after sovereignty.
21:01
SPEAKER_00: To be able to look at someone who has profoundly influenced who you've become and say you mattered, you changed me, you helped me discover something extraordinary, and still I am the author of the woman I became.
21:21
SPEAKER_00: Next, let's look at how love can change the queen without dethroning her.
21:28
SPEAKER_00: I think one of the most important things we can understand about sovereignty is that sovereignty does not mean remaining unchanged.
21:37
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes after a woman has worked very hard to come home to herself, she can become understandably protective of the woman she has become.
21:48
SPEAKER_00: She knows what she wants now.
21:51
SPEAKER_00: She has boundaries, she has preferences.
21:55
SPEAKER_00: She has built a life that feels like hers.
21:58
SPEAKER_00: She has learned that Not to abandon herself simply because someone else wants something from her.
22:07
SPEAKER_00: And after everything it took to get there, there can be this almost unconscious belief that maintaining sovereignty means maintaining the life exactly as it is, that if love changes me too much, perhaps I've lost myself again.
22:26
SPEAKER_00: I don't think that's what sovereignty means, and Persephone certainly doesn't teach us that.
22:34
SPEAKER_00: Persephone is transformed by what she encounters.
22:38
SPEAKER_00: The woman who emerges from the underworld is not the same woman who entered it.
22:44
SPEAKER_00: She has seen things.
22:46
SPEAKER_00: She has experienced desire, separation, grief, power, responsibility, darkness, perhaps love.
22:58
SPEAKER_00: She has encountered the parts of herself that could not have emerged in the protected world she knew before.
23:08
SPEAKER_00: And I don't think her transformation means she has somehow failed to remain true to herself.
23:16
SPEAKER_00: I think it means there was more of herself available to become.
23:21
SPEAKER_00: That's an important distinction because sometimes we talk about authenticity as though there is one fixed, true version of ourselves buried somewhere inside us, and our job is to discover her and then protect her forever.
23:40
SPEAKER_00: But perhaps authenticity is more alive than that.
23:45
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps I can genuinely know myself today and still become someone I cannot yet imagine.
23:53
SPEAKER_00: And love can become one of the experiences that makes that possible.
23:59
SPEAKER_00: Someone enters your life and suddenly you see something differently.
24:04
SPEAKER_00: You encounter another person's mind, another history, another way of living, another set of dreams.
24:13
SPEAKER_00: You begin considering possibilities you never would have considered alone.
24:18
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you change where you want to live.
24:21
SPEAKER_00: Maybe your relationship with work changes.
24:24
SPEAKER_00: Maybe something you thought was non negotiable turns out not to matter very much.
24:30
SPEAKER_00: Maybe something you barely considered before becomes extraordinarily important.
24:37
SPEAKER_00: Maybe love reveals a tenderness in you that you had protected, or a courage, or a capacity for devotion, or a desire for a kind of life you had never allowed yourself to imagine.
24:55
SPEAKER_00: None of that necessarily means you have lost yourself.
24:59
SPEAKER_00: The question isn't did loving this person change me?
25:03
SPEAKER_00: The question is was I present in the choosing of what I became?
25:10
SPEAKER_00: I think that this is where the queen differs from the maiden.
25:15
SPEAKER_00: The maiden can be swept away by experience.
25:19
SPEAKER_00: She can find herself adapting before she is even asked whether she wants to adapt.
25:25
SPEAKER_00: She can mistake intensity for destiny.
25:30
SPEAKER_00: She can mistake another person's certainty for her own.
25:36
SPEAKER_00: She can become so consumed by what is happening between them that she loses contact with herself.
25:44
SPEAKER_00: But the queen has developed something the maiden didn't yet possess.
25:49
SPEAKER_00: She knows the road home.
25:52
SPEAKER_00: And perhaps that's one of the deepest meanings of Persephone moving between worlds.
25:58
SPEAKER_00: She knows how to descend and she knows how to return.
26:03
SPEAKER_00: That doesn't mean she never gets lost.
26:05
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean love never destabilizes her.
26:09
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean she never experiences grief or fear or longing or uncertainty.
26:18
SPEAKER_00: Intimacy itself can be an underworld.
26:22
SPEAKER_00: Because another person can expose things in us that solitude never will, fear of abandonment, fear of engulfment, jealousy, vulnerability, desire, control, shame, and need.
26:40
SPEAKER_00: The parts of ourselves we would rather believe we had transcended can become remarkably alive when another human being matters deeply to us.
26:51
SPEAKER_00: But the mature Persephone doesn't have to make those experiences her identity.
26:57
SPEAKER_00: She can descend into them, look at them, learn from them, allow them to change something, and then return.
27:07
SPEAKER_00: She can enter the darkness of love without making darkness her home.
27:14
SPEAKER_00: And I think this matters because mature love will sometimes ask us to sacrifice.
27:20
SPEAKER_00: There may be times when loving someone means changing a plan, giving something up, carrying more for a reason, allowing another person's needs to become more important than our preferences.
27:36
SPEAKER_00: And I don't think we should automatically interpret that as self abandonment.
27:41
SPEAKER_00: A sacrifice freely chosen is very different from a sacrifice silently experienced.
27:49
SPEAKER_00: A compromise made from love is different from accommodation made from fear.
27:56
SPEAKER_00: The Queen can yield.
27:58
SPEAKER_00: She can say this is not what I would have chosen if I were alone, and also but I am not alone, and because you matter to me, this is what I choose now.
28:13
SPEAKER_00: There is tremendous sovereignty in that, because authorship does not mean getting your way.
28:20
SPEAKER_00: Authorship means remaining present in your choices.
28:24
SPEAKER_00: And perhaps that is how love changes the queen without dethroning her.
28:29
SPEAKER_00: She doesn't remain sovereign by ensuring that no one ever affects her.
28:35
SPEAKER_00: She remains sovereign because even when love transforms her, she stays in relationship with herself.
28:43
SPEAKER_00: She listens, she discerns, she chooses, she changes, she descends, she returns.
28:54
SPEAKER_00: And perhaps every time she returns, she understands her kingdom a little differently.
29:01
SPEAKER_00: Because the throne was never her life remaining exactly as she designed it.
29:08
SPEAKER_00: The throne was never the plan.
29:11
SPEAKER_00: The throne is the woman who remains capable of meeting life, meeting love, and still participating consciously in who she becomes.
29:26
SPEAKER_00: Next let's examine how a shared throne does not require surrendering your own.
29:34
SPEAKER_00: I think one of the reasons I continue to return to Persephone is that her story gives us a way to think about something that can be difficult to articulate in relationships.
29:46
SPEAKER_00: What does it mean to share power without surrendering yourself?
29:52
SPEAKER_00: Because Persephone does not rule the underworld alone.
29:55
SPEAKER_00: There is already a king there.
29:58
SPEAKER_00: Hades has authority of his own.
30:00
SPEAKER_00: He has a history that predates her.
30:03
SPEAKER_00: He has responsibilities, a kingdom, a way of ruling, a life that existed before Persephone ever entered it, and eventually Persephone develops authority thereto.
30:17
SPEAKER_00: So the interesting question becomes what happens when two people with genuine authority choose to share a life?
30:28
SPEAKER_00: I don't think the answer is that one person becomes less powerful, and I don't think the answer is that they spend the rest of their lives negotiating over who gets to sit higher on the throne.
30:43
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps mature relationships and partnerships require a more sophisticated understanding of power than that.
30:53
SPEAKER_00: There are things that belong to me, there are things that belong to you, and there are things that, because we have chosen one another, now belong to us mine, yours, ours, and wisdom is knowing the difference.
31:12
SPEAKER_00: Mine belongs to me.
31:14
SPEAKER_00: My mind belongs to me, my body belongs to me, my integrity belongs to me.
31:22
SPEAKER_00: My relationship with myself belongs to me.
31:26
SPEAKER_00: There are choices about my inner life that another person cannot make for me, and the person I love has those territories too.
31:39
SPEAKER_00: But then we create something together, a relationship, perhaps a home, perhaps a family, perhaps shared finances, perhaps traditions, perhaps work, perhaps a version of the future, and I cannot say I am sovereign, therefore I will make every decision according to what is best for me, because now there is something else in the room.
32:10
SPEAKER_00: There is an us.
32:13
SPEAKER_00: And if I genuinely value what we have created, then us deserves consideration too.
32:21
SPEAKER_00: This is where I think the image of the shared throne becomes so interesting, because sharing power does not mean having no power of your own.
32:32
SPEAKER_00: And having power of your own does not mean you must exercise it consistently.
32:39
SPEAKER_00: The shadow empress does not need to win every disagreement.
32:44
SPEAKER_00: She does not need every decision to go her way.
32:48
SPEAKER_00: She does not interpret compromise as defeat.
32:52
SPEAKER_00: She does not experience another person's strength as a threat to her own authority.
33:01
SPEAKER_00: And she doesn't need to continually remind us or remind everyone that she is queen.
33:09
SPEAKER_00: Because power that must constantly prove itself is not yet secure in its own authority.
33:19
SPEAKER_00: I think secure power can sometimes be remarkably quiet.
33:23
SPEAKER_00: It can say you know more about this than I do.
33:27
SPEAKER_00: I trust your judgment.
33:30
SPEAKER_00: It can say this matters more to you than it does to me.
33:35
SPEAKER_00: Let's do it your way.
33:38
SPEAKER_00: It can say I don't have the capacity to lead this right now, will you?
33:44
SPEAKER_00: And none of those things dethrone her.
33:47
SPEAKER_00: In fact, I think there is something profoundly sovereign about being able to yield deliberately, because yielding and surrendering yourself are not the same thing.
34:00
SPEAKER_00: There is a difference between I trust you enough to let you lead here and I don't trust myself enough to have a voice.
34:12
SPEAKER_00: There is a difference between I'm choosing to give this to you and I have learned that keeping you requires me to give myself away.
34:25
SPEAKER_00: The queen knows the difference, and perhaps Hades knows it too.
34:31
SPEAKER_00: Because if Persephone is genuinely queen, then her authority cannot exist only when it agrees with his.
34:41
SPEAKER_00: If he only values her power when it reinforces his own decisions, then he doesn't actually want a queen, he wants an ornament beside the throne.
34:54
SPEAKER_00: A sovereign partnership requires both people to tolerate the reality that the other person possesses a will.
35:04
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes she will disagree, sometimes he will.
35:08
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes one will see things or something the other cannot.
35:16
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes one person's judgment will be better, and sometimes they will have to remain in uncertainty long enough to create an answer neither person originally brought into the room.
35:30
SPEAKER_00: That is coauthorship, not endless agreement, not perfect equality in every moment, not keeping score to make sure everyone has exercised exactly fifty percent of the power.
35:46
SPEAKER_00: Reciprocity does not require symmetry.
35:50
SPEAKER_00: There may be seasons when one person carries more.
35:54
SPEAKER_00: There may be areas where one person's expertise naturally leads.
36:01
SPEAKER_00: There may be moments when love asks one person to yield far more than the other.
36:08
SPEAKER_00: The deeper question is whether both people's agency remains intact across the life they are creating.
36:17
SPEAKER_00: Can both speak, can both influence, can both disagree?
36:23
SPEAKER_00: Can both change the direction of the shared life?
36:27
SPEAKER_00: Can both be trusted with power, and can both occasionally put that power down.
36:34
SPEAKER_00: Because perhaps that's the paradox of the shared throne.
36:38
SPEAKER_00: The more secure I become in my own authority, the less terrified I have to be of yours.
36:46
SPEAKER_00: I don't need you beneath me to know that I am powerful.
36:51
SPEAKER_00: I don't need to place myself beneath you in order to love you.
36:56
SPEAKER_00: We can stand beside one another.
37:00
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I lead, sometimes you lead, sometimes neither of us knows, and sometimes we create the answer together.
37:10
SPEAKER_00: The shadow empress can put down her scepter, she can rest, she can receive, she can trust.
37:18
SPEAKER_00: She can allow someone she respects to carry something for her, because she understands something the maiden may not yet know.
37:28
SPEAKER_00: Putting down the scepter is not the same thing as giving away the throne.
37:35
SPEAKER_00: And perhaps that is what makes shared sovereignty possible, not two people constantly defending their kingdoms from one another, but two people secure enough in what belongs to each of them that they can begin creating something that belongs to both.
37:57
SPEAKER_00: Lastly, we're going to examine how Persephone moves between worlds because she belongs to herself.
38:06
SPEAKER_00: I think this may be the part of Persephone's story that resonates with me the most now.
38:14
SPEAKER_00: She moves between worlds.
38:17
SPEAKER_00: She doesn't descend into the underworld and remain there forever, and she doesn't return to the world above and decide that freedom requires never going below again.
38:28
SPEAKER_00: She moves.
38:30
SPEAKER_00: There are seasons of darkness and seasons of light, seasons of solitude and seasons of intimacy, seasons when she is deeply internal, and seasons when she turns outward toward the world.
38:47
SPEAKER_00: There is the maiden, the lover, the queen, the daughter, the woman who belongs to herself.
38:55
SPEAKER_00: None of those identities has to eliminate the other.
39:00
SPEAKER_00: And perhaps that's one of the deepest signs that Persephone has become sovereign.
39:06
SPEAKER_00: She no longer needs one world to contain all of who she is.
39:13
SPEAKER_00: I think earlier in our development we can become very attached to finding the version of ourselves that is finally true.
39:21
SPEAKER_00: Who am I?
39:22
SPEAKER_00: Am I the independent woman, the lover, the intellectual, the ambitious woman, the homemaker, the mystic, the woman who wants solitude, the woman who wants intimacy, the woman who wants to build, or the woman who wants to rest.
39:43
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes we treat those parts of ourselves as though they are competing for the throne.
39:49
SPEAKER_00: If I am one, perhaps I cannot be the other.
39:54
SPEAKER_00: But the mature Persephone doesn't need to resolve herself into a single identity.
40:02
SPEAKER_00: She has become capable of multiplicity without fragmentation.
40:08
SPEAKER_00: She can move between worlds because she knows who is doing the moving.
40:14
SPEAKER_00: That's very different from being pulled from one identity into another depending on who is standing in front of you.
40:23
SPEAKER_00: The fragmented woman changes because she has lost contact with herself.
40:30
SPEAKER_00: The integrated woman changes because different parts of herself are appropriate to different seasons.
40:38
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes Persephone is below, sometimes she is above.
40:43
SPEAKER_00: Neither realm invalidates the other.
40:48
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's why the underworld eventually stops being a prison.
40:52
SPEAKER_00: She knows she can leave, and perhaps equally importantly, the world above stops being a prison too.
41:01
SPEAKER_00: She knows she can descend.
41:04
SPEAKER_00: She doesn't have to remain endlessly bright, available, productive, social, easy to get along with.
41:13
SPEAKER_00: She doesn't have to live in perpetual spring.
41:17
SPEAKER_00: There can be winters inside a woman's life.
41:21
SPEAKER_00: Periods where she turns inward, periods where she becomes quieter, periods when she tends to the inner hearth, periods when she isn't producing something visible for anyone else.
41:39
SPEAKER_00: And she doesn't have to panic and assume she has lost herself completely because the season has changed.
41:46
SPEAKER_00: She knows the road between worlds.
41:50
SPEAKER_00: I think this becomes especially important in love because partnership adds another world to move through.
41:58
SPEAKER_00: There is my life, there is your life, there is the life we create together.
42:03
SPEAKER_00: There are moments when I am deeply engaged with us, and there may be moments when I need to return more fully to myself.
42:12
SPEAKER_00: There may be seasons when your work requires more, seasons when mine does, seasons when we are extraordinarily intertwined, and seasons when one of us needs more solitude, more independence, more space to develop something that belongs primarily to the self.
42:34
SPEAKER_00: A mature relationship doesn't have to interpret every moment away from togetherness as abandonment, and it doesn't have to interpret every moment toward togetherness as engulfment.
42:48
SPEAKER_00: There can be rhythm, movement, return.
42:52
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps that's another thing Persephone teaches us.
42:57
SPEAKER_00: Love doesn't have to be static in order to be secure.
43:02
SPEAKER_00: We can move toward one another.
43:04
SPEAKER_00: We can move into ourselves.
43:07
SPEAKER_00: We can tend the shared kingdom.
43:11
SPEAKER_00: We can tend our individual kingdoms.
43:14
SPEAKER_00: And then we can return.
43:18
SPEAKER_00: Because when I belong to myself, I don't need to clutch another person to make sure I exist.
43:27
SPEAKER_00: And when I trust that you belong to yourself, you don't need your individuality to threaten what exists between us.
43:38
SPEAKER_00: This is where I think Persephone becomes something much larger than the maiden archetype.
43:44
SPEAKER_00: She begins to contain something of all the feminine archetypes.
43:49
SPEAKER_00: She is still the maiden within her, the capable, the part capable of wonder, curiosity, and beginning again.
43:58
SPEAKER_00: There is Aphrodite.
44:00
SPEAKER_00: The lover, the woman capable of desire, sensuality, and love.
44:06
SPEAKER_00: There is Artemis, the huntress, the woman who can walk alone, pursue what calls her, and protect what belongs to her.
44:17
SPEAKER_00: There is Athena, the sage, the woman of strategy, intelligence, craft, and civilization.
44:26
SPEAKER_00: There is Hestia, the mystic, the woman who knows how to return to the inner hearth, to solitude, to the sacred center.
44:36
SPEAKER_00: There is Demeter, the mother, the capacity to tend, nourish, protect, and steward life.
44:46
SPEAKER_00: And there is Hera, the queen, who understands commitment, partnership, dignity, and authority.
44:57
SPEAKER_00: Persephone doesn't have to choose among them.
45:00
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps her journey through the underworld gives her enough depth to hold them together.
45:07
SPEAKER_00: Not all at once, not necessarily equally, not as some perfect expression of feminine wholeness, but as possibilities within her.
45:18
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's why I've come to see Persephone less as a final archetype and more as an integrative one.
45:27
SPEAKER_00: Her gift isn't that she finally becomes queen and remains on the throne forever.
45:33
SPEAKER_00: Her gift is movement.
45:35
SPEAKER_00: She can descend, she can rise, she can love, she can rule, she can withdraw, she can create, she can tend, she can change.
45:48
SPEAKER_00: And none of those movements require her to abandon the woman she was in the world before.
45:56
SPEAKER_00: Because perhaps sovereignty isn't finally arriving at the one place where you belong.
46:05
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps sovereignty is developing such a profound sense of belonging within yourself that you become capable of inhabiting many worlds.
46:16
SPEAKER_00: And that's why Persephone can move between them, not because she belongs nowhere, but because wherever she goes she takes herself with her.
46:30
SPEAKER_00: As we conclude today's episode, I want to discuss how the throne was always hers.
46:39
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps this is where I understand Persephone differently now.
46:44
SPEAKER_00: For a long time her story can look like a story about becoming a queen.
46:50
SPEAKER_00: The maiden descends, she enters the underworld, she encounters Hades, she changes, and eventually she takes her place beside him.
47:01
SPEAKER_00: But perhaps the deepest transformation isn't that Persephone finally receives a throne.
47:07
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps it is that she becomes capable of recognizing the throne was always hers, not Hades' throne, not the throne of the underworld, something much more intimate than that, the throne of her own life, the authority she chooses to speak, to desire, to change, to leave, to return, to love, to belong, to decide what she will build and what she will no longer participate in.
47:43
SPEAKER_00: No one can hand that authority to her, and no one can permanently take it from her once she knows that it belongs to her.
47:52
SPEAKER_00: Hades may love her, he may recognize something extraordinary in her.
48:00
SPEAKER_00: He may introduce her to a world in which parts of her become possible that could never have developed above ground.
48:10
SPEAKER_00: She may become profoundly different because she loved him, and none of that makes her less sovereign, because sovereignty was never about remaining untouched.
48:22
SPEAKER_00: It was about remaining present.
48:25
SPEAKER_00: Present in her choices, present in her desires, present in the woman she is becoming, and perhaps this is what separates the shadow empress from the maiden she once was.
48:39
SPEAKER_00: She does not control everything.
48:42
SPEAKER_00: She does not need to win every argument.
48:45
SPEAKER_00: She doesn't need to remain fiercely independent.
48:49
SPEAKER_00: She doesn't need to prove that she can live without love.
48:53
SPEAKER_00: She can share a kingdom, she can put down the scepter.
48:58
SPEAKER_00: She can allow another person to lead.
49:01
SPEAKER_00: She can rest, she can receive, she can be changed.
49:06
SPEAKER_00: Because none of those things determines whether the throne remains hers.
49:12
SPEAKER_00: She knows where her authority lives.
49:15
SPEAKER_00: And so she can move between worlds.
49:18
SPEAKER_00: She can ascend into the light without pretending she has never known darkness.
49:24
SPEAKER_00: She can descend into the underworld without believing she has become trapped there.
49:30
SPEAKER_00: She can be Artemis when something requires independence, Athena when something requires judgment.
49:38
SPEAKER_00: Hestia when it's time to return to the inner hearth.
49:43
SPEAKER_00: Aphrodite when she wants to surrender to pleasure and desire.
49:48
SPEAKER_00: Hera when partnership asks for commitment and stewardship.
49:55
SPEAKER_00: And she can still contain the maiden who looks at the world with wonder, and she can be Persephone, the woman capable of moving among all of them without becoming fragmented by any of them, because she belongs to herself.
50:15
SPEAKER_00: Maybe that is what the mature Persephone ultimately teaches us.
50:21
SPEAKER_00: You do not become sovereign because no one can affect you.
50:25
SPEAKER_00: You do not become sovereign because you never need anyone.
50:28
SPEAKER_00: And you certainly do not become sovereign because someone powerful places a crown on your head.
50:35
SPEAKER_00: You become sovereign when you understand that your life requires your participation in its authorship.
50:44
SPEAKER_00: And from there, love becomes something entirely different.
50:49
SPEAKER_00: You can sit beside someone powerful without borrowing his power.
50:54
SPEAKER_00: You can share a throne without surrendering your own.
50:58
SPEAKER_00: You can sacrifice without becoming a sacrifice.
51:03
SPEAKER_00: You can descend without becoming imprisoned.
51:06
SPEAKER_00: You can love without disappearing.
51:09
SPEAKER_00: And you can allow another human being to become profoundly important to you without making them the author of who you are.
51:19
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps that is the shadow empress, not the woman who rules over everyone around her, but the woman who has finally learned how to rule herself.
51:31
SPEAKER_00: And maybe Persephone was never meant to choose between the maiden and the queen, between the world above and the world below, between independence and love, between belonging to herself and belonging with another.
51:49
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps her wisdom is that she can move between all of them.
51:54
SPEAKER_00: She knows the way down, she knows the way back, and wherever she goes, she knows the throne of her own life travels with her.
52:06
SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for listening.
52:10
SPEAKER_00: Let whatever was useful settle in its own time.
52:14
SPEAKER_00: Clarity I have found tends to unfold naturally when we give it space.
52:21
SPEAKER_00: Until next time, stay rooted, stay sovereign, and trust your own becoming.