Introduction
Opening the Door

My Passage

In December 1991, my husband had one of those serendipitous conversations that can change a life. It was at his company’s annual Christmas party in New York. When one of his West Coast colleagues grumbled about having to leave home for this annual occasion, my husband simply replied, ‘‘If I lived in San Francisco, I wouldn’t complain so much.’’ A few weeks later, my husband’s boss, reminding him of this comment, approached him about relocating to California. The West Coast colleague was about to retire, and the position needed to be filled.

To my husband’s way of thinking, all of us are given only so much time on this earth to accomplish whatever we want or need. This window of opportunity was what he called ‘‘the last clear chance’’—an opportunity to change the course of his life. I was intrigued but also apprehensive about a potential move: I’d never lived outside of the New York metropolitan area. I had a very solid psychiatric practice in the city, one it had taken me years of schooling and work to build. My children, in their last years of college, had stayed close to home. 

But I also knew I was feeling stuck at that point in my life. Although the sum total of my living experience could be described as successful and satisfactory on many levels, I no longer felt sure of what my purpose was. What was my mission? What else was I supposed to be doing with my life? 

So when my children laughed at my worries about ‘‘leaving’’ them (they’d already left home years before, after all) and encouraged me to ‘‘Do it, Mom!’’ I did. Perhaps on some level I knew that making this physical move was actually the first step of a much larger reorienting of my whole life—a far more radical shift than I could have ever imagined. Perhaps that was why I was simultaneously so eager to do it and so resistant. In essence, I was subconsciously encouraging myself to embark upon one of the great journeys of my life—and part of me was loath to give up the safety of the home port I’d known for so long.

I closed my practice, left my hospital affiliation of many years, sold my little house in Connecticut, and left behind family and many dear friends. Essentially, except for my husband, none of the ‘‘externals’’ with which I identified was making the journey west with me. Looked at one way, I was free; looked at another, I had lost my home. 

For the first time in longer than I could remember, I had a lot of time on my hands. In my new home, the only people I knew were one or two acquaintances I had previously met through my husband’s company. Immersing myself immediately in work was out of the question, since California has its own licensing requirements for physicians. Without the comfort of all my old roles—doctor, mother, daughter, friend—I was suddenly ‘‘just’’ a person. 

Wandering anonymously around San Francisco, I often asked myself, ‘‘Who are you now?’’ There was an exhilarating freedom in not having to meet anyone’s expectations for who I should be or what I should do, but it was also disquieting and disorienting to be thrown so totally back on myself.

Loneliness can be painful. Several times during the first years after our move, the ‘‘dark night of the soul’’ visited me. Issues I was sure I was done with found their way back to me with a vengeance. These unresolved conflicts, accompanied by acute anxiety, reemerged in both my waking life and my dreams, washing over me like a series of relentless waves, sometimes barely allowing me time to catch my breath between them. My symptoms often bordered on panic, and sometimes even sheer terror. I felt overwhelmed by a force I had not experienced since my late teens and early twenties. Clearly, something was happening to me; it was a process I myself had initiated, but I no longer felt in conscious control of it. 

Aside from learning to just be with myself, I began venturing beyond, finding healers of every kind and opening up to new modalities of ‘‘healing through’’ a problem. As a traditionally trained psychiatrist, I had always had a healthy curiosity about alternative, ‘‘unconventional’’ methods of healing; now, for the first time, I had both the opportunity and the strong desire to learn more about these methods. Thanks to the disruption of my old life and the soul-searching that resulted from it, I was about to learn to see the world in some very new ways. 

Everyone I met had a story to tell, and I began to see that my own uncertain search had opened me up to listening in a new way. I had occasion to meet a woman getting a divorce and choosing to celebrate it with a group of friends. Two special women, aided by various practitioners and rites designed to honor the darkness they were traversing, managed to heal themselves of life-threatening disease. I met one woman who had lost a son in an automobile accident and who felt a sorrow beyond name, a sadness that ran about as deeply as any I had ever witnessed. Isolating herself in her misery, she seemed to be caving in upon herself, her own spirit withering away. Everyone I came in contact with seemed to be at a crossroads. I was struck both by those who seemed able to move on and by those who didn’t. 

As a therapist, of course, much of this was familiar territory to me. Indeed, my interest in milestone events could probably be traced back to my childhood as an ‘‘MK’’ (minister’s kid). To my father, a spiritual leader in the community, births, weddings, and funerals were part of the everyday routine, not exceptional events. In that context, too, I had been taught to keep other people’s secrets, especially about those ‘‘unfortunate’’ happenings that often aren’t acknowledged in ‘‘polite’’ conversation: physical and mental illnesses, accidents, addictions, overdoses, suicides, losses of job or fortune, and divorces.

In one way or another, I’d long been exposed to or directly focused on the problem of how people got themselves through the big moments (both happy and sad, planned for and unexpected) in their lives. But, for the first time, I found myself thinking about that territory in a new way. What was it that enabled some people to cope with the big changes in their lives while others seemed undone by them? Of course, many factors contribute to the mix, but it seemed to me that when individuals could find a conscious, meaningful structure to encompass the events of their lives, they could take more responsibility and feel less lost in the dark.

By the time I finally returned to live in New York, almost four years later, I was a much different person than I had been when I left. I couldn’t resume seeing patients from a strictly clinical point of view, as I had been trained to do; it no longer was enough. Beyond analysis of the psyche, people seemed to be longing for connection and for a sense of meaning in life. Their emerging spirit was expressing itself through the therapeutic process, attempting to come to their aid for a deeper understanding of their true essence. 

When the phrase ‘‘rite of passage’’ first took up residence in my brain, shortly after my arrival in California, I didn’t understand what it was doing there. Some ideas, even words or symbols, just seem to appear randomly, but I’ve learned that it’s worth paying attention to them, for they are the voice of your inner knowing, providing access to the deepest recesses of your self. So I began to do a little reading, and a little led to a lot; gradually I began to see that the phenomenon I had been observing in other people and in myself could be described by this somewhat old-fashioned-sounding expression. By not just surviving but actively accepting and acknowledging the turning points in our lives, we could begin to find what so many people I knew (myself included) were looking for: a life of greater meaning and fulfillment. 

A Brief History

As microcosms that mirror life itself, rites of passage are intimately tied to cycles, or stages, of life. In their study of adult life, The Seasons of a Man’s Life, Daniel J. Levinson and his associates address the idea of the universal quality of life cycles. The literatures of many cultures, going back thousands of years, speak to these same stages: ‘‘The Sayings of Our Fathers’’ in the Talmud cover the ages of man, Confucius marked man’s life in six steps, and Solon identified ten separate stages. ‘‘Unfortunately,’’ as Levinson pointedly notes, ‘‘all of them refer to males; the neglect of the female life cycle has a long history.’’ 

Presenting a far more balanced view, Carl G. Jung, widely considered the father of the modern study of adult development, based his theories on wisdom both masculine and feminine in nature. He divined his philosophies by tapping into anthropological, religious, and mythological sources, as well as relevant clinical data. His strong belief in the concept of the individuation process included the important idea that midlife transition comes with a new developmental impetus to express the self. Using historical, biographical, sociological, psychological, and anthropological sources, Erik H. Erikson broadened the study of adult development by defining eight ego stages of the life cycle. Both of these men knew what the ancients knew: there is an order to the life of man, and the deeper and more complete our understanding of that order is, the richer our lives will be.

In a well-timed ‘‘karmic confluence,’’ Jung’s brilliant theory of the stages of life emerged around the time that Dutch anthropologist Arnold van Gennep published his now-classic text Les Rites de Passage (1908). This coming together of disciplines allowed for a more complete understanding of how humans in various cultures mark their life cycles. The 1970s brought renewed interest in, and a revisiting of, the study of adult development. The popularity of Daniel Levinson’s The Seasons of a Man’s Life and Gail Sheehy’sPassages, both dealing with life stages and cycles, speaks of people’s fascination with understanding how life unfolds and a real desire to know what to expect along the way. Surprisingly absent from these pivotal texts, however, is virtually any discussion of the essential rites that serve as significant landmarks and invaluable road signs along our lives’ paths. Clearly, understanding passages is vital to our evolution; the necessary next step is toward an understanding of the rites that mark these passages.

In a related development around the same time, the feminist movement brought with it a fascination with anything connected to the Goddess or the Divine Feminine. Every aspect of ‘‘her’’ life and expression was explored in countless ways by women eager to reconnect with an essential female energy. Meanwhile, in the 1980s, books like Joseph Campbell’s The Power of Myth (as well as the subsequent television series with Campbell and Bill Moyers) reintroduced and popularized the concepts of myth, archetype, ritual, rite, and the hero’s journey—topics that by then had all but disappeared from the forefront of our collective consciousness. As consciousness tends to spiral around, what’s old becomes new.

Because ritual has its roots in religion, a study of religious literature was also undertaken, and there, a profoundly discouraging story was found: evidence that the Goddess, in one form or another, had been revered in cultures prior to the waves of invasions from the Russian steppes by Indo-European peoples (4500–2500 BC) and in occasional subsequent eras, but that in general, the long march of the patriarchal religions of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam had significantly devalued and disempowered not only the Goddess, but all things feminine. This was a key piece of the puzzle. Couldn’t this be part of the reason why the masculine and feminine energies of our contemporary society feel so out of balance with each other, and why, even though women have ‘‘caught up’’ with men in so many ways, we’re left searching for the vehicle to express the process of coming into our own? Isn’t it possible that a very fundamental piece, from way back, is missing?

Putting together what I had learned led me to several conclusions. First, rites of passage are psychologically and culturally necessary to help us move forward in our lives and to invest our lives with meaning. However, the loss of a vibrant culture of ritual that encompassed rites of passage, coupled with the loss of reverence for those traits symbolized by the Divine Feminine, has made it hard for all of us—but especially women—to find the meaning and sense of ‘‘rightness’’ that so many of us are looking for in our lives. Because women have been cut off from our inherent, intuitive ways of knowing and have been taught to look outside ourselves for the answers to life’s questions, we need the freedom and encouragement to design our own rites as a form of finding the answers within. And we need the tools to do so. Where can we look to find these?

This is what I was searching for. Yet in all my reading on the subjects of myth, ritual, and passages, I found remarkably little on the subject of women’s rites of passage, and nothing that offered examples and analysis of rites of passage in the lives of women today, or guidance on their creation and use.

For a culture as dedicated to personal growth and self-improvement as ours is, this seemed peculiar—and worth pursuing.

About This Book

Women’s Rites of Passage grew out of my desire to answer some fundamental questions about the role of rites of passage in contemporary women’s lives. What kinds of passages are most significant to women today? Do we consciously recognize and mark these passages? If so, how? And how does this affect our lives? Drawing upon my extensive research in the fields of anthropology, sociology, psychology, mythology, archeology, history, philosophy, and religion, my aim was to distill the best of the scholarly material that would interest a mainstream audience, combine this with personal stories from a wide range of women, and complete the perspective with my own observations, analysis, anecdotes, and guidance as a practicing psychiatrist and healer of many years. I wanted to create a book that would reconnect women to their important life transitions while giving them the tools to honor those transitions and understand their significance in the broader scheme of their lives. 

Fueled by this mission, I took my questions and hypotheses back into the world to see what kind of feedback I would get. I designed a questionnaire asking women to identify the important events in their lives and to describe those they viewed as ‘‘rites of passage.’’ I asked them how they chose particular rites, and what lasting effect, if any, these rites had on their lives. I distributed the questionnaire to approximately fifty women. Although not a formal or scientific social study, I looked for diversity in my sample, seeking women of different ages and backgrounds, from many walks of life and from different parts of the country and the world. I expected a few interesting responses and perhaps some shrugs and blank looks. What I got far exceeded what I imagined: a flood of stories, each distinct, each giving voice to the energy of a major life transition and the meaning found in it. Even without formal knowledge of a sacred tradition, these women seemed to almost organically understand the need to mark the important events in their lives. The original sources of knowing and relating, which had long been dormant or suppressed, seemed to spring up of their own accord when women got in touch with what was meaningful to them. By borrowing from one tradition or another, or by following their own instinct for what the moment called for, women had fashioned their own rites of passage. If necessity is the mother of invention, then perhaps this was one of the happier by-products of women’s historical exclusion from so much of the tradition of public ritual. Whether the resulting ‘‘rite’’ was a consciously created ritual or simply an instance of heightened consciousness, the effect was the same: a ‘‘momentous moment’’ of awareness and transformation in a woman’s life. 

In The Cultural Creatives, Ray and Anderson note that ‘‘each person’s path is unique, but true stories can be maps of some of the major landmarks and compass settings for the journey.’’ The stories gathered here form a map of many kinds of passages, from leaving home to leaving a husband, from camping alone in the wilderness to alternative healing, from coping with depression to changing careers. They are candid, revelatory, and moving—and are an important tool for learning by doing and by example. Many of the women who participated in this project told me how grateful they were to have had the opportunity to thoughtfully process and write about their lives. Some even sent their stories to other women. When we share the stories of our initiations and transformations, we inform each other about the journey. By telling our own story, we see things we didn’t see before. And by listening empathically to someone else’s story, imagining ourselves in her shoes, our world is expanded. As a therapist, I have always said that my patients are my best teachers. Bearing witness to another’s life story has not only broadened my own compassion but has allowed me to live through the experience vicariously, informing me without the necessity of going through it myself.

In analyzing the collected stories, certain trends emerged. Women were interested in two kinds of passages: those surrounding the life cycle, whether biologically or relationally oriented, and those pertaining to their individual development. The passages and the rites they used to mark them were both traditionally and personally defined. Moreover, in consciously creating their rituals, women discovered and drew upon a surprising array of resources and tools.

The structure of this book reflects these findings and is framed by my own perspective. It is divided into two main parts. The first part, ‘‘The Passages,’’ begins with an overview that defines and categorizes passages, analyzes the historical movement from societally prescribed passages to individually designated passages, looks at the traditional limits of women’s rites of passage, and sets forth general principles and goals of conscious passage making. The three chapters that follow focus on the major types of passages identified above: passages of the body (menstruation, sexual initiation, childbirth, menopause, illness, etc.) and passages of the self (marriages, birthdays, and personal milestones), with a separate chapter on the special challenges of passages through loss (breakups, divorce, and death). The second part, ‘‘The Tools,’’ investigates the resources that women use to make and mark their passages. The five chapters each correspond to a main category of these, including myths and symbols, journeys, creative projects, religious and spiritual traditions, and communities.

Each chapter includes a provocative discussion of the topic at large, including its historical and conceptual underpinnings; edifying and inspiring examples of particular passages or rites drawn from the many stories I gathered; an analysis of the principles and lessons of these stories; my further observations and anecdotes; and exercises designed to help readers bring conscious ritual into their own lives. An introduction describes my own midlife passage, my study of the field, the genesis of this project, and the organization of this book. The conclusion discusses how rites of passage can elucidate the structure of our lives and help us to find and follow our life’s themes.

Life is the thing that happens when you’re making other plans, we’re often told. This book is dedicated to helping you avoid that trap by learning to identify, respond to, and honor your own moments of growth and transformation. One definition of the word passage is ‘‘the power to move freely.’’ A rite of passage both honors that power and helps to create it. What makes a rite meaningful is your own involvement in creating it. It’s not about following a set of directions; it’s about learning how to recognize and respond to the particulars of your own life. This is what I hope this book will teach. Designing your own rites of passage gives credence to what is intuitively understood and allows for the creative expression that strengthens the individuation process. Over time, your cumulative rites of passage—and, more importantly, your ability to look at life through this lens—will help you to map a path of greater fulfillment and meaning.

I don’t promise that Women’s Rites of Passage will change your life, but itwill help you recognize and navigate the life in which you find yourself. After all, you already have what you need. It’s a matter of learning to listen to and trust the one true authority in your life: yourself. 

Excerpted from Women's Rites of Passage © Copyright 2012 by Abigail Brenner, MD. Reprinted with permission by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.. All rights reserved.