Maiden, Mother, Crone, her memoir in verse exploring the spiritual feminine, will be published in March 2025.
I’ll weave pixels into promises and shared words into prayers of hope, and so transform this world of men to somewhere crones can fly again. —Madeleine F White
About the collection:
Maiden, Mother, Crone is a memoir in verse, challenging the traditional approach to faith by putting Madeleine’s own stories at the heart of a narrative defined by a quest for spiritual identity. Encased within the spiritual feminine it offers magic and mysticism, abuse and reconciliation, power and perception, faith and feminism. This collection is a cri de coeur for women who may have been side-lined, abused, and disenfranchised to find their seat at the table.
Maiden, Mother, Crone takes us on a journey from ‘mother goddess’ to modern faith, taking its cues from the older, more matriarchal nature and Celtic and Nordic traditions. With inclusion and spiritual expression at the heart of it, the collection calls upon us to find a new way to be and to connect; reminding us that as ‘Maidens, Mothers, and Crones’ we speak the same fundamental truths the world over.
Welcoming Madeleine to the Sea Crow family brings the press around full circle to its original ideas of community building through the angle of the spiritual feminine. Maiden, Mother, Crone picks up where Owl Magic: Your Guide Through Challenging Times (Petiet, 2020) left off to continue a vital spiritual and creative journey. We are delighted to be able to bring the fruits of this collaboration to our readers.
Madeleine on Maiden, Mother, Crone
To be able to bring the collection to life with Sea Crow Press, an award-winning, women-owned publishing house created to amplify voices is a dream opportunity. I’m excited for Maiden Mother Crone to be out in the world!
I’ve always been fascinated by folklore and mythology. Growing up in Germany, and discovering my Canadian roots in my twenties, I was keen to connect the identity of who I was to where I was. The more I looked, though, the more this seemed to slip away. Indeed, some of the darkest days came from getting lost in the impact early experiences had on my life. However, even the most damaged trees will grow towards the light…
Part of my recovery, mentally, physically, and spiritually, has been based on the concept of service. By using my own experience, strength and hope and my identity as a writer to help others understand their own journey, I’ve tried to give back. Added to this, the idea of unity, coming together as a community, is critical. I’ve spent my life standing on the shoulders of my grandmothers and women like them! Resilient, strong, loving and ultimately there: willing to share their lives, their love and their own journeys to help me find my own way through.
For me, though, none of these things are enough in and of themselves. For as long as I can remember, I’ve also been a spiritual seeker. From a catholic atheist childhood to a blazing moment of recognition around the power of the spiritual feminine when reading the Mists Of Avalon as a teen, to starting to seek solace in traditional faith when my life was falling apart some ten years later.
As is often the case – and referenced in my collection as the cats’ eyes I follow into the night – there are patterns we try to navigate to make sense of the whole. We need to be open enough to recognise physical, emotional and spiritual clues, to weave the threads needed for our own lives; only so can we take our place in the wider tapestry. An example of this is the large crow that started sitting on my second-floor window sill just as I was starting discussions with Sea Crow Press around publication of Maiden Mother Crone!
My writing journey to this point has been part of the pattern. The ideas I’ve flagged above, were initially presented in Mother Of Floods, my debut novel published by Crowsnest Books in 2020. Conceptualised in order to give some of the wonderful women I’d met in my work in international development a voice, it quickly developed into something wider and deeper. Reaching beyond the present, it moved into the speculative and spiritual, forever binding the binary world of pixels to the binary beat of the drum via our oldest myths and legends. It has directly impacted the work I do today, including the conceptualisation of the Write On! suite of publications.
The Horse And The Girl was a transitional collection, in which I started understanding the power of nature through Lucie, a middle-aged mare who came into my life unexpectedly. The connecting force between me and her, translated into one between me and the natural world, a place I’d only had superficial access to up until then. In the new, magical place Lucie opened up for me, sparrowhawks joined us on our morning rides while the man-made scars in the land scored my own flesh. My horse has allowed me to actively engage with the life force of the world around us, flagging up the need to protect our environment from the human ‘road’ that is spreading inexorably, smothering what is alive with its ‘tarmack.’
Now in the spring of 2024, I can finally say I’m a writer, a creator of worlds. I believe everything I’ve been through has contributed to me being secure enough in this identity to invite others in to join me. I also know this invitation to my world is best issued through poetry, bringing people together who might share similar ideas. Indeed, poems, written in response by beta readers, gave rise to the idea of a Maiden Mother Crone Anthology. Based on collecting women’s experiences written in response to poems from this collection, and co-edited myself and Mary Petiet, it will be published in Spring 2026 .
I’m in my mid-fifties now and proud to embrace cronehood. I have earned and claim the spiritual and physical space I inhabit. And I’m not alone; if we connect with the determination to make our stories heard, we can shape a world where we truly belong. As a community of girls, women who are physical mothers or seek motherhood in other ways, and those navigating the sometime invisibility of midlife, we can write this brave new world into being.
About Madeleine F White:
Madeleine was born in Germany, with roots in Canada and the UK. A magazine publisher and editor, she has produced national and international web and print magazines, creating a voice for those without one, such as the successful Nina-Iraq, a project she created for the World Bank to reach out to Iraqi women everywhere. Since 2019, she has been founder/editor of Write On! magazine Write On! Audio Podcast and Write On! Extra e-zine, published by Pen to Print, an Arts Council NPO organisation and has led workshops and guest lectured at a number of universities in the UK and abroad. Her debut novel Mother Of Floods was published in 2020 with Crowsnest Books and her debut poetry collection The Horse And The Girl was published in 2022 with Lapwing Poetry. A second edition is to be published by Sea Crow Press in January 2025. Maiden, Mother, Crone will be her second collection.
Maiden, Mother, Crone will be released in March 2025. Keep in touch through our newsletter to follow the publication progress and do watch this space for further announcements re related workshops and activity. There’s lots more to come!
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