A 4 day, in-person experiential workshop for women in midlife & beyond, in Eltham, June and August 2026.

Are you experiencing unexpected change in midlife and beyond? Whether it’s the body maturing into menopause, or your sense of identity is changing, this workshop will provide a safe place to consciously step into your emotional body to find self-compassion, connection, and confidence to step joyfully into this phase of your life. With the ancient Sumerian myth of Inanna as our road map, you are invited to undertake an archetypal journey of descent, symbolic death and rising up into renewal. 

Merilee Bennett and Sarah Houseman will be your guides, as we explore the mythic and personal realms, and glean the wisdom of this ancient story which is as relevant to women in 2026 as it was to women 5 thousand years ago.

Journeying Towards Wholeness uses art, meditation, movement, sound, silence and ritual to create a rich experiential container. Participants will immerse themselves in the wisdom of this myth and reflect on their own midlife transitions. This will be a closed workshop with a small group (12 max). Participants are required to commit to all four workshop sessions. Course materials, a light lunch and refreshments are included. Deposit to hold your place $250.00. Full payment by 31^st May.  

Merilee Bennett is a certified counsellor and psychotherapist in private practice, with clients dealing with grief and loss, life transitions, family and relationship issues, trauma, overwhelm, and stuckness. Merilee is also an artist working with archetypes, metaphors and core emotions. She has created a collection, a constellation of soft sculptures, of ‘Little Goddesses’, symbolic of personal and transpersonal experience. She has many years facilitating creative writing groups, and decades of dream work practice and other explorations of the archetypal/personal realm, where the individual meets the collective.

Dr Sarah Houseman in the sacred power of gathering in Circle and has created her retreat space in Eltham for groups to flourish in a relaxed, safe and beautiful environment. A skilled educational design practitioner, over 4 decades Sarah has facilitated groups across school, university and community contexts. Sarah has qualifications and professional expertise in organisational leadership, strategic foresight and governance. Sarah currently works as a social researcher for the NED Foundation. Recently she has developed a unique approach that integrates ritual and experiential approaches with more traditional group work practices. 

A brief introduction to the myth of Inanna, queen of heaven and earth

Inanna was worshipped in Sumer in a pre-patriarchal world when the Great Goddess still provided vital guidance to people. Inanna’s story was inscribed on clay tablets in the second and third millennium B.C. A powerful deity, Inanna was also known as Ishtar, and associated with the morning star of Venus. Her sister Ereshkigal was queen of the Underworld. Now the presence of the goddess in our modern lives is less evident.

Centuries of patriarchal culture have diluted the power of feminine archetypes. Images of goddesses in social media and literature are often trivialised, their power minimised and their domain marginalised to home and hearth. Until the late 1970’s Inanna’s story was forgotten. Fragments of the Sumerian clay tablets held in Museum’s around the world as ancient artifacts. Feminist scholars worked to restore and translate the clay tablets. Inanna’s archetypal story of surrender and rebirth is being rediscovered by new generations of women.