Episode 01: LUCY

We are all Persephone, plunged into Hades, tricked into undervaluing our gifts, our creativity, our communities of support. We exchange them for ambition, commerce, success, individual recognition. It happens so gradually it’s hard to notice and when you do, you brush it off as an isolated incident falling deeper into the quest for the right answer. You think you’re doing the right thing when suddenly you realize you’re not. Or that you haven’t done enough, by your standards or someone else’s.

You’ve been looking for the one right answer when there are many right answers and you’re submerged, alone in the dark, and you’ve brought it on yourself, you can see it now, in the dark center of the forest, where the roots and branches are thick and slow you down. You see that not only is there no one right answer, but several, and that you need better questions, and you can’t find them alone. You need your community of resistance, your creativity, your trust in yourself. Now more than ever this is illuminated, now that we have been asked to sacrifice our communal rituals.

We are all Persephone waiting to re-emerge from the cold darkness. The realm of the dead, the ones who forgot, or never learned to make things on their own, never questioned, just accepted and went along. Fallen prey to the marketplace, the rat race, left wanting. A contagious discontent sweeps across the nations, fueled by commerce and greed. Leaving us aching with deadlines impossible to meet, yesterday is gone already, and we’re not sure how we agreed to add more to our plates.

Was it self-imposed we ask ourselves? Uncertain, it’s easier to blame ourselves, to not speak up. We lose our intuition, our protective instincts, and our individuality on this shaky ground. Chasing the right answer, the right way to be in the world, but is the world the way we want it to be?

This pause in our history sets us back, slows us down, brings us outdoors, reminds us we are interconnected. Not just human to human, but to our natural world. In this time when breath is being taken away, we are forced to slow down and notice. And maybe, if we’re lucky, catch our breath.