She Died and I Missed the Funeral

A Sacred Reflection on the Maiden-to-Mother Threshold

I’m a mother now.

And just like that… the maiden is gone.

There was no ceremony. No official farewell. No sacred pause to mark the ending.

I blinked—and I was here.

Mother.

And yet… I’m not quite sure who she is.

I’m standing in a threshold of time lost, staring at the ghost of a girl I used to be and the woman I’ve become, and I wonder: When did this happen?

I look at old photos, frozen frames of my maiden years, and I feel… detached. Like I’m studying a myth.

She feels like a stranger—light-soaked and untamed.

I don’t remember her laugh. Her longings. Her loneliness.

I don’t remember saying goodbye.

No one told me I would grieve her.

The Unspoken Transition

We romanticize motherhood. Package it in soft filters and matching outfits.

But what of the soul-splitting that comes before?

What of the quiet death that makes room for the birth?

No one talks about the existential vertigo that happens when your name becomes “Mom” and suddenly the world expects you to forget the you who came before.

No one warns you that time, once vast and slow, now collapses into a blur of nap schedules and snack bags.

No one tells you that in gaining a child, you might lose access to entire parts of yourself.

This threshold—the crossing from Maiden to Mother—is not a gentle one.

It is a sacred rupture.

A holy reckoning.

And it deserves more than silence.

The Deaths We Don’t Mourn

We live in a culture that reveres birth and avoids death.

And yet, as womb-bearers, we are always dying.

Dying to the versions of ourselves we’ve outgrown.

Dying to identities that once defined us.

Dying to dreams we no longer carry.

And yes—birth is terrifying, too.

Not just the physical birth of a child, but the birth of a new self.

Unfamiliar. Tender. Raw.

There is no epidural for soul transformation.

It is blood and breath and surrender.

And still, we rise.

Still, we midwife ourselves through every identity collapse.

Through every silent funeral we hold in the quiet of the night.

The Grief of Becoming

This time is different.

Because with Motherhood came something I wasn’t prepared for:

Aging.

I feel it now—in my body, in my bones.

The quiet awareness of life’s swift passing.

The ache of realizing how fast it all goes.

And the fear: if I blink again, will I be Crone?

This grief isn’t just about youth.

It’s about the speed of existence.

About the lives we live inside a single lifetime.

It’s about remembering that we are always in motion, and yet so often missing the ceremony.

I didn’t know my maiden had died.

And now I stand here, mothering my child… and trying to mother myself.

The Medicine of Remembering

So what do we do?

We slow down.

We honor the parts of us that were left behind.

We dig through the rubble of memory and collect what still belongs.

We hold funerals for our old selves.

We speak their names aloud.

We create ceremony for what was never witnessed.

We offer our maiden a thank-you. A kiss. A song.

And we let her rest.

Because we cannot fully embody the Mother until we integrate the grief of the Maiden.

And hear this: the Maiden is not gone.

She lives in your laughter. In your wonder. In the way you still ache for beauty.

She did not leave you.

She became you.

A Blessing for the In-Between

To the woman standing in this liminal space—

Grieving the girl she no longer is,

Meeting the mother she is still becoming,

Scared to blink and find herself changed again—

You are not lost.

You are simply in between.

And in this space of unraveling and remembering,

You are sacred.

You are whole.

You are in ceremony, whether anyone else sees it or not.

Let this be your rite of passage.

Let this be your return.

Let us stop missing our own funerals.

And begin attending them with flowers, tears, and full hearts.