Happy September!

I hope this summer has been treating you well, and that you’ve been able to relax and regroup a bit. I’m so pleased to send this update, because I have news that I’m incredibly excited to share. Some of these things have been in the works for over a year, and seeing them come to completion provides me with a sense of joy. I hope you find them interesting too, and that you like the new design of my newsletter. Come join me on Facebook at Carol S. Pearson, PhD or Twitter @cspearson and let me know what is going on with you. Just click on one of the buttons on the right to connect.

‍Website Is Re-Launched

‍After many months of hard work, I’m delighted to announce that my new website is live as of September 7th. It is my hope that this website will be a dynamic meeting place for the discussion and expansion of ideas as well as a resource regarding my work and the work of many of my colleagues in the fields of narrative intelligence, archetypal psychology, leadership, and myth scholarship. The website will offer much in the way of information and links on various topics, and it even will include a blog with posts from me and several of my colleagues, with a comment section for you to add your voice to the conversation—my own virtual version of a French salon created especially for us all to stretch our archetypal wings.

Come Visit Us at: www.herowithin.com

‍Persephone Rising Set for Release

‍My latest book, Persephone Rising: Awakening the Heroine Within, will be published on October 13th and is available for pre-ordering here. Although the book itself is new, the inspiration for it actually took place much earlier, during one of the more intense periods in my life—when I found my perfect job and my life mate, but then experienced a devastating loss. The mythic story of Demeter and Persephone comforted me then and has strengthened and supported my own inner heroine in all the major junctures of my life since, whether difficult or exhilarating.Our era of professional and familial pressures and constant connection, as well as the renewed debate on “having it all,” presents unprecedented challenges to contemporary women. My deepest hope in writing Persephone Rising was to provide a revelatory modern manifesto that speaks to the heroine in every woman, offering potent strategies drawn from the archetypes inherent in the myth of Demeter and Persephone to forge lives of greater happiness. Its audience begins with women who desire fulfillment in the many elements of their lives, and expands to include the numerous men who live and/or work in partnership with women and any of us who foster gender-equal environments.

Writing this book has been a labor of love, and I’m elated to share with you the process through which I’ve come to know myself and gain the deep wisdom this myth offers. The publisher, HarperElixir, has been kind enough to share a free sample of the book. You can preview it here.

‍Help to Spread the Word

‍If you would like to help me and my team at HarperElixir spread the word about Persephone Rising, all the materials you need (book description, suggested e-blast copy, and social media posts) are in the attached PDF. Of course, we’d be open to any of your ideas, as well!

• We hope you can feature the book on your website and/or blog, if you have one.
• If you have an email list, we would very much appreciate your sending an early e-blast between now and September 15th to boost pre-orders and/or an e-blast on October 13th to announce that the book is on sale.
• You could post pre-order and on-sale announcements to your Facebook and Twitter communities.
• You also could reach some of your networks by including information about it in the newsletters and other outlets of groups to which you belong.
• If you write reviews for a publication, you could volunteer to write one about Persephone Rising—and if you do, be sure to send me a copy!

Upcoming Events

‍As part of the launch of my new book, I will appear at several discussion and signing events. You can find a complete schedule, which will be updated regularly, on the News section of my website, but I wanted to let you know about three events in particular in case you’d like to save their dates and register for them. The bookstore appearances listed on the website do not require you to preregister.Other events related to the release of Persephone Rising are still being generated, and I am always interested in discussing possible additions to them. If you would like to schedule a talk or workshop, please let me know.

‍New York Open Center

‍Speaking and Book Signing Event

‍October 23, 20157:00 pm ETNew York, NY

‍Details

‍Houston Jung Society

‍Workshop November 5-6, 2015 Houston, TX Jung Center Houston

‍La Casa de Maria

‍Workshop

‍February 5-7, 2016 Santa Barbara, CA I will lead a weekend workshop on the Sacred Feminine at La Casa De Maria, a beautiful and meditative space that offers many different events for the sake of spiritual examination and illumination. Visit La Casa’s website for more information about this and other events.

My segment of the weekend will center on Persephone Rising: Awakening the Heroine Within. Here is an excerpt of the workshop description:The chief characters in the myth of Demeter and Persephone enact in symbolic form the journeys that women and men can take to gain access to the full range of our human capacities: open hearts, healthy egos, connected souls, and collective joy. Through lecture, discussion, movement, and writing, we will explore the four archetypal characters and their application to the heroine’s journey today.In addition, as part of the workshop, Dr. Maureen Murdock will offer a presentation tentatively titled Evolution of the Image of the Sacred Feminine. More details to come, but here is a teaser:

‍If we believe, as Jung did, that the whole history of the human race is in some ways always alive in the psyche, we can reclaim images of the Sacred Feminine, which is an eternal archetype. In this slide lecture we will look at images of the Sacred Feminine throughout recorded history from Paleolithic times to the present to remind us of how she is alive within each of us today.

‍Not Too Late: Assisi Institute Teleseminar

‍This summer, I participated in a teleseminar series titled Understanding Archetypal Patterns in Times of Conflict and Crisis with several colleagues at The Assisi Institute. If you missed it live and wish you had not, you can listen to the complimentary June panel discussion here.

This panel drew so much interest that the Institute then offered a four-week series of individual presentations on the subject in July. In my presentation, Staying Sane in a Crazy Time: An Archetypal Narrative Intelligence Toolbox, I discussed situations such as the standoffs between police and African Americans and suggested ways in which the antagonists could move from confrontation to recognizing their commonalities, linking current events to the mythic stories in Persephone Rising. Expressing my own grief at how being locked into certain knee-jerk narratives keeps us from recognizing the existence of alternative plotlines, I explored stories that offer possibilities for moving forward together and for remaining calm in face of the larger social storm. Deeper archetypal patterns are at work today, and it is essential that we gain facility with the steps that transform what could be a chaotic mess into artful beauty.

You can listen to my session here and access The Assisi Institute for the four-week series of presentations.As always, please feel free to forward this message to others who might be interested.Sincerely,Carol S. Pearson