In order to bring in new life one must first let go of something. Usually the letting go part comes first. It can appear as a death, it can be of a person in your life, but it can also be of a part of yourself. In the process of individuation, it is inevitable. The old conditioned self must be peeled away, layer by layer, in order for the authentic self to emerge.
This is a painful process. It can feel like one is dying on a psychic level. All the emotions of grief will be there. Becoming Persephone down in the Underworld, and hanging out with The Queen of Death, is not something one willingly chooses. The time will choose you; a time when life brings you to your knees. Allowing yourself to go through this process consciously and staying present is a key element of survival and ultimately of the rebirth. The natural instinct is to want to scratch and claw yourself out of the darkness back to the ordinary surface of the world where everyone is just rushing to get their next coffee and doing ordinary mundane things.
However, if one can sit with the process by breathing into the discomfort of the shedding, knowing that this is part of the grand adventure of life and that one will arrive eventually on the shores of a new day, a new perception, and a new self, one can enhance the experience and bring it alive. Using a creative medium to express the feelings that arise can be helpful to document and move through the days of shedding. Allowing images, shapes, colors, and textures to speak the feelings that are arising, no matter how ugly or difficult, without judging what comes up, can help to embrace the experience, and to milk it; to BECOME the shedding skin. This will help to get most out of the change that you are going through.
Embracing the death of what is leaving and grieving it with an open heart without reserve, being present and sitting with the fullness of your process, and savoring even the difficult parts, can help you create the space for the part of yourself that is ready to be born. It’s a kind of Lamaze approach for the creative life.