Why My Coaching Practice Is Called Persefone
When people ask me about the name, the conversation that follows is usually one I enjoy, because it gets quickly to the heart of what this work actually is.
Persefone is the Italian form of Persephone, the figure from Greek mythology who was taken into the underworld and eventually returned to the world above. It is an ancient story, and it has survived for thousands of years because it describes something that is still completely recognisable: what it means to go through a difficult period, and to come out the other side changed.
The Myth
Persephone was the daughter of Demeter, goddess of the harvest. She was taken by Hades into the underworld, a realm of darkness and the dead, and while she was gone, her mother searched for her so desperately that nothing on earth grew. Winter arrived and life stopped, and when Persephone eventually returned, she was not the same person who had left. She had eaten pomegranate seeds in the underworld, which bound her to that place for part of every year, and some people read this as a tragedy. I read it very differently.
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Persephone did not simply survive the underworld. She became its queen. She went into the darkness and came back with authority, depth, and a power that could not have been found anywhere else, and the key to understanding why is this: she did not look away from what she found there.
Going Through Something
Most people who come to coaching are not in crisis, but many are carrying something heavy. A transition they did not choose. A version of themselves they have outgrown. A question they cannot shake, or a pattern that keeps repeating no matter how much effort they put into stopping it. A career that made sense for years and suddenly does not. A period of loss, confusion, or reinvention that has gone on long enough to feel unsettling.
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In other words, they are in the underworld, and the underworld feeling is one that most of us are strongly inclined to escape from as quickly as possible. We try to go around it, or we wait for it to pass, or we keep ourselves busy enough not to have to look at it directly. What the myth of Persefone suggests, and what I have seen repeatedly in coaching, is that this instinct to avoid is exactly what makes the experience last longer and cost more than it needs to.
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The period you are in has something to give you. The question is whether you are willing to find out what that is.
What We Tend to Avoid
Part of what makes difficult periods so uncomfortable is that they bring us close to parts of ourselves we would rather not examine too closely. The psychologist Carl Jung called this the shadow: the aspects of our character that we have learned to suppress or disown, often because we were told at some point that they were unacceptable, too much, or simply wrong.
The shadow is not only about darkness in the dramatic sense. It includes the ambition we worry looks like selfishness, the anger we think makes us a bad person, or the capacity to influence and persuade that we prefer not to acknowledge even though, brought into awareness and used with intention, it becomes leadership and the ability to move people towards something worthwhile. We push these parts of ourselves underground, and from there they tend to run us in ways we cannot see, surfacing as self-sabotage, resentment, or patterns of behaviour we cannot seem to change despite our best intentions.
Integrating the shadow does not mean acting on every impulse or abandoning ethical judgment. It means seeing yourself whole, understanding where your energy actually comes from, and using it consciously rather than being driven by it unconsciously. That shift, from being run by something to choosing what to do with it, is one of the most significant transformations a person can make.
The Return
Most people who come to coaching are not in crisis, but many are carrying something heavy. A transition they did not choose. A version of themselves they have outgrown. A question they cannot shake, or a pattern that keeps repeating no matter how much effort they put into stopping it. A career that made sense for years and suddenly does not. A period of loss, confusion, or reinvention that has gone on long enough to feel unsettling.
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In other words, they are in the underworld, and the underworld feeling is one that most of us are strongly inclined to escape from as quickly as possible. We try to go around it, or we wait for it to pass, or we keep ourselves busy enough not to have to look at it directly. What the myth of Persefone suggests, and what I have seen repeatedly in coaching, is that this instinct to avoid is exactly what makes the experience last longer and cost more than it needs to.
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The period you are in has something to give you. The question is whether you are willing to find out what that is.
Why “Persefone”
Persefone Coaching was born in Rome, which made the Italian spelling feel like the natural choice. There is also something I simply like about the f: it gives the name a warmth that the ph does not have for me.
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The Italian spelling also helps with pronunciation: I say all four syllables, Per-se-fo-ne, and the f makes that far more intuitive than the English ph, which pulls the name towards the word 'phone.'
Who This Is For
Persefone Coaching works with individuals navigating change, transition, and reinvention. A career that has stopped making sense. An identity that no longer fits. A pattern that keeps repeating despite every effort to stop it. A period of transition, loss, or reinvention that has left you uncertain of what comes next.
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Helping you see yourself whole, including the parts that have been underground, so that you can move forward with the full force of who you actually are.
Persefone Coaching works with individuals navigating change, transition, and reinvention.
If you would like to find out more, get in touch.