Crow and Flame

There is a moment in the story of Persephone that often gets overlooked.

Most people remember the abduction and how Persephone was a maiden stolen away to the Underworld. They remember the pomegranate seeds.

Before all of that, though, there was a flower. A narcissus.

The myth tells us that Persephone was gathering flowers in a meadow when she saw a narcissus unlike any she had ever seen. It was breathtaking. Drawn by its beauty, she reached for it. It was at that moment when everything changed.

The earth split open.

The world she knew disappeared. The girl she had been was left behind. I have always found it fascinating that it wasn’t a monster or a weapon that changed Persephone’s life. It was a flower.  It was something beautiful, that appeared innocent.

It appeared safe. How many of us have our own narcissus flowers?

Not literal flowers, of course. But Opportunities, Relationships, Dreams, People. The “narcissus” being the things that seem beautiful enough to reach toward without hesitation. They are the things that change us forever. Sometimes those changes are painful. Sometimes they drag us into seasons we never wanted. Sometimes they force us to confront parts of ourselves we didn’t know existed.

Yet, without that flower, Persephone would have remained only the Maiden. She would never have become the Queen.

The journey through darkness transformed her and it wasn’t because suffering is noble or because pain is necessary.

 She transformed because surviving it revealed a strength she didn’t know she possessed. That is why I often think of the daylily when I reflect on Persephone. A daylily blooms brilliantly for only a single day. Just one sunrise and one sunset. Then that blossom is gone. At first glance, that seems tragic but the plant continues. Tomorrow another bloom opens, and  another, and another. The daylily doesn’t cling to yesterday’s flower.  It trusts that something new will emerge. There is wisdom in that.

Many of us spend years mourning the versions of ourselves that existed before our own journeys into the Underworld.

We mourn the person we were before heartbreak and loss. Before betrayal and trauma. Before grief.

We stand in the field staring at the narcissus, wishing we had never reached for it. Wishing we could return to who we were. But Persephone teaches something different.

She teaches that we can become more than what happened to us.

That we can carry both spring and winter within us. That darkness does not erase beauty. The daylily reminds us that every day offers another chance to bloom. Not the same bloom, mind you, a new one. Perhaps that is the lesson hidden between the flowers. The narcissus represents the moment everything changed. The daylily represents what comes after.

The choice to bloom anyway and to rise again. To trust that even after the longest winter, there is still a season waiting for us. That is what resilience is, after all.  Not returning to who we were before, but becoming someone stronger because we survived the journey.

The narcissus changed Persephone’s path. The daylily teaches us how to bloom after it. Some flowers symbolize the fall. Others symbolize the rise.

For a long time, I hated my narcissus flowers.

I hated the moments that altered the course of my life; relationships that broke me open, the losses that left me wandering through my own Underworld. I spent years wishing I could return to the person I had been before.

But life doesn’t move backward.

The meadow is gone once the flower is picked.

What I’ve come to understand is that healing isn’t about finding your way back to the Maiden. It isn’t about becoming the version of yourself that existed before the hurt.

Healing is becoming the Queen and learning to sit with grief without allowing it to consume you. It is carrying your scars without letting them define you. It is recognizing that the darkness changed you, but it did not destroy you.

Some days I feel like Persephone standing between two worlds.

Part of me still longs for the sunlight of simpler seasons.

Part of me understands that the Underworld gave me wisdom I could have gained nowhere else. Much like the daylily, I am learning to bloom where I am.

Not perfectly andnot without struggle.

And I’m blooming here just for today.

Tomorrow will bring its own blossom.

Today that is enough.

One bloom.

One sunrise.

One season at a time.