If you feel, when looking back on your life so far, that you've wrestled with primal forces and not always won, be assured that you're pretty much like everyone else. It is a rare individual who reaches midlife without a lot to grieve. And whether or not your tears are acknowledged--whether or not you give them the chance to actually fall down your cheeks--there's no question that they're there.

Arrogant in our modernity, we thought we were invulnerable to ancient myths and archetypes. We thought we could avoid the descent into the psychic underworld . . . until we realized that no one can and no one does. And there is a reason for that. The underworld of personal pain and crisis, while difficult, is the inevitable breeding ground for the strengths and talents we were born to embody. Our problems transform themselves into our medicine when we learn to face how we created them to begin with. This spiritual medicine--often so bitter tasting when it is going down--will one day be seen to have been that which saved your life. From divorce to illness to bankruptcy to whatever other form of loss, you finally come to realize that your crisis was in fact your initiation into the fullness of your self.

Having faced the fire of your initiation and survived its heat, you can now serve others in a whole new way. By being a living testimony to life transformed, you carry in your cells a sacred knowledge, and in your mind and heart a sacred fire. It's not the fire of youth but the fire of Prometheus, who emerged with the light that would light the world. It's a light that you could only have gotten from having faced some version of your personal hell, and now you are inoculated to the fires that rage around you. Sometimes only fire can put out fire, and such is the fire that now burns in you. This is not the fire of your destruction but of your victory. It is the fire of your middle years.

Listen to Marianne's recent interview with Liz Sterling of Be You Radio.