S1 ep. 10: The Fall - An Initiation of Old

Season 1, EPISODE 10 TRANSCRIPT:

“Welcome back to Priestess Initiations: The Goddess Coven. I'm Casey.

This is Episode 10, and I’m recording this at 11:22am on December 30th at the turn of the Western new year, which was not planned but feels perfectly synchronous as today I'm going to tell you about my fall.

Seven months ago—in April 2025—I fell 75 feet while rappelling. My equipment failed. I held onto the rope with both hands. I sustained third-degree burns on both hands and needed 22 skin grafts.

And I survived.

This episode is going to be vulnerable, and parts of it might be hard to hear. So I want to say this up front: if you need to pause, pause. If you need to take a breath, take a breath. If you need to turn this off and come back later, do that.

You don't need to hold me in this trauma. This is my story, and I can hold it now or I wouldn't share it. Your job is just to witness and learn, if you choose to.

And if this story brings up your own trauma, your own initiations, your own moments of near-death or shattering—please take care of yourself. Find support. This podcast is not therapy, and if you need therapy, please find a trauma-informed therapist who can hold space for you.

But if you're ready to hear this story, the story of a modern initiation of old, I'm ready to tell it.

Because this fall was an initiation. It was death and rebirth. It was the complete end of the maiden and the messy, painful, terrifying beginning of the mother.

And it was held by three goddesses: Isis, Lilith, and Kali.

Take a breath with me.

Okay. Let's begin.

Before I tell you about the fall itself, I need to tell you what was happening in my life leading up to it. Because initiations don't come out of nowhere. They come when you're ready—even if you don't know you're ready.

Seven/eight months ago, things were going pretty well in my life. My partner and I were getting ready to officially move in together. We'd been unofficially living together for a while, but we were finally going to get a place that was ours. We have it now, but that process ended up getting delayed because of what happened.

And in my healing work—I was noticing something shifting. Isis and Lilith were channeling through me more. Or rather, they were asking to channel through me.

I want to be clear about this: they don't just do it. I have choice. You should always have agency over what energies you allow to flow through you, and if you don’t, seek support. But Isis and Lilith were making their presence known. They wanted to work through me more directly in the sessions I was holding.

And I kept being drawn to this word: priestess.

I'd been circling around it for a while, but I hadn't claimed it yet. And one day, through my connection to Isis and Lilith, I asked each of them separately: Do you want me to be your priestess?

The answer I got from each of them, in their own ways, was essentially: You already are.

And that landed in me. That shifted something. I was already a priestess. I just hadn't fully claimed it yet, because my insecure parts were asking: who am I to call myself a priestess? 

Two weeks before the fall, my partner and I went on a meditation retreat up in the mountains. There were Kali statues everywhere, and I felt drawn to her. I'd read about her before, I knew her intellectually, but I’d only really met her from an embodied experience once, which I’ll discuss in another episode–it might be the next one, not sure. But I hadn’t met Kali the way I'd met Isis, Lilith, Persephone, and Hekate over and over again.

But interestingly, Kali didn't reach out to me on that retreat. She reached out to my partner.

Kali came to him during one of his meditations—and that's not my story to tell, so I won't go into detail. But Kali showed up, while we were meditating in Shiva (that’s her consort’s) temple and when my partner told me about it afterward, I knew: something is coming.

I believe now that the contact with Kali—for both of us—was preparing us for what was about to happen.

Because two weeks later, I fell.

Take a breath here. We're about to go into the fall itself so if you need to pause, pause. I'll be here when you come back.

Okay. The fall.

It was late April. We were rappelling out in Buena Vista, Colorado, with a few friends. My partner and his friends were experienced climbers. I wasn't. But I had done a 200-foot rappel on my first canyoneering trip, so I wasn't completely new to this.

And in comparison, this was just a single 75-foot rappel. You hike up, you rappel down, and you're basically at the parking lot. Easy.

The weather was good. We were prepared. I was using a grigri device—which is supposed to be the safest device for newer rappellers. It wasn't brand new, but it also wasn't old.

And our best guess is that it was either put on backwards, or—and apparently this can happen—the device initially failed to catch. If a grigri fails to catch at the very beginning, it doesn't work right for the rest of the descent.

And I'm not a climbing expert, and I won't be answering questions about climbing equipment in the comments or anywhere else. That's not what this episode is about.

What matters is: when I went over the edge and started pulling down on the device to control my descent, nothing happened. I just started slipping.

And in that moment, I made a choice. I held onto the rope. One hand above the device, one hand as far below my butt as I could get it, trying to grip as tightly as I could.

At first, there's adrenaline. You don't feel it.

And then, a few seconds later, the burn hits.

The pain was the worst thing I've ever experienced in my life. And I've had two kidney stones. This was worse.

But here's the part that still feels surreal to me: I chose not to let go.

When the pain hit, I gripped tighter. There was a moment when I almost loosened my grip—and instead, I gripped harder.

And I knew, in that moment, that I was not going to die.

I don't know how I knew. But I knew.

Trauma researchers call this the 'active survival response'—your body making split-second decisions without conscious thought.

And here's the other thing: as I was falling, I felt my astral body. And it had wings of fire.

I know how that sounds. But it's what I felt, it was my unique experience. And I think those wings helped somehow. Some other version of me, from some other plane, assisted me in that moment.

But there was another reason I didn't let go.

If I let go, I would fall the full 75 feet and likely die. But more than that—I would crush Matt, my partner, my love. Because he was at the bottom of the rope on fireman's belay, and I knew he was going to try to save me.

Some part of me, as I was going over the edge, must have known. Because I called down twice until he responded that he was there. And only when I knew he was ready for me did I go over.

Matt put all of his weight onto the rope. His full body weight. He was hovering a few inches off the ground, holding the rope with everything he had.

And I landed on top of him.

Let me put this in perspective: he caught my full falling weight from 75 feet up. The physics of this—a falling person generates three to five times their static weight in force. For someone at the bottom on fireman's belay to catch that, especially when the climber and belayer are similar in size, is... it doesn't usually work.

The odds of us both walking away from that—him uninjured, me with only hand injuries—are somewhere around one to two percent according to AI. Because there aren’t stats on this I had to look it up on AI. 

We shouldn't have survived that. But we did.

Miraculously, we were both completely uninjured—with the exception of my hands.

My hands were gnarly. I'm not going to go into detail about how gnarly, but they were bad. They were cauterized and they were black.

I looked at them, and the first words out of my mouth were: We need to go to the hospital.

And then I took off my rings–I always wear a bunch of rings and I had the presence of mind to do that before my hands swelled.

I walked to the car. Matt opened the passenger door for me, and I sat down. And I told him to get me Tylenol out of the first aid kit in the back.

And I’m telling you this because looking back, I'm struck by how clear-headed I was in those moments. My body was in shock, but my mind was sharp, focused, taking care of what needed to happen. That's what the nervous system does in crisis—it prioritizes survival, and sometimes that means becoming hyper-rational, hyper-competent, even while you're in excruciating pain as adrenaline fades.

Our friends drove us to the closest doctor—a walk-in clinic, because there's nothing out there in the mountains.

Take a breath here. That was a lot. If you need to pause, pause. Breathe. Ground yourself. I'm okay. We're okay.

Okay, so we're at the walk-in clinic. They treated me the best they could—cleaned and bandaged my hands, gave me a prescription for painkillers.

At this point, the pain was horrific. On a scale where a kidney stone used to be a 10, this was a 13. The painkillers took me from a 13 to maybe an 8. Which is to say: they helped, but not enough.

For some reason—and in retrospect, this probably wasn't the best decision—we decided to stay the night in Buena Vista before driving back. It was late by then, dark, we were starving, and we were exhausted.

We should have gone immediately to the closest ER, even if it was four hours away, because I needed a burn clinic, not just any old ER. 

We came home the next day. The car ride was awful—every bump, every turn, every moment of my hands not being perfectly still was agony.

And we scheduled a burn clinic follow-up for the next day. But that first night at home, we attempted to do a bandage change, and I just couldn't do it. I couldn't make it through it. The bandages were too dry, pulling on the wounds.

So we went to the ER close to us. And they covered my hands in medical-grade honey. 

Honey, yeah, you heard that.

Which, in retrospect, is so spiritual, so perfect. Honey is sacred. Honey is healing. Honey has been used in wound care for thousands of years.

And it helped. A lot. Honestly, like a lot. 

The ER got us immediately into the burn clinic, where I was admitted for five days. And eventually, I had my surgery—22 skin grafts, 11 on each hand, and they were full-thickness grafts from my belly.

The doctors told us they almost never do full-thickness grafts on hands. My occupational therapist at the burn clinic needed to figure out different ways of working with them and I was expected to need compression gloves for a year. 

I wore compression gloves for three months.

And while scar treatment could maybe make my hands prettier, I didn't care about that. I cared about having full range of motion.

And I do. I wear my scars proudly. 

Breathe here. If this is bringing up things for you, please take care of yourself. Pause if you need to. Drink some water. Maybe I’ll have some water. Ground yourself in your body.

Yeah I needed water, it’s very dry here in Colorado right now. [laughs] So dry, they were doing power outages just last week to prevent fires because it’s been dry and oddly warm.

Alright, so now we are moving into the goddesses and I want to talk about the goddesses, because they were with me through all of this.

First, Isis.

I told you in the last episode about my work with Isis—the plant medicine journey, the ancestral healing, the soul retrieval. I told you that I've worked with her across lifetimes, that she channels through me when I do healing work.

And after the fall, Isis was there immediately.

Because Isis is the Great Assembler. The one who gathers what's been scattered, who reassembles what's been broken, who creates what's missing.

And I was shattered. My hands were destroyed. My sense of safety was gone. My identity as someone who's physically capable, who can take care of herself, who doesn't need help—that was obliterated.

And Isis said: We're going to gather the pieces. We're going to reassemble you. And you're not going to come back the same.

The healing process was Isis work. Every bandage change, every occupational therapy session, every moment of watching my hands slowly knit back together—that was reassembly magic.

But it wasn't just physical. Isis was reassembling my psyche, my sense of self, my understanding of who I am and what I'm capable of.

Because the maiden died in that fall. The one who thought she could do everything alone, who didn't need help, who was fiercely independent—she died. And Isis was teaching me how to become someone new. Someone who could receive care. Someone who could be vulnerable. Someone who could let others hold her.

And I healed faster than expected. Better than expected. I know—I KNOW—it's because Isis was with me. Because I've been doing this reassembly work for years, and my body remembered. My body knew how to gather the pieces and make itself whole.

That's Isis magic. That's the power of the Great Assembler.

And then there was Lilith.

Lilith came after the fall. She came in as survival rage. As fierce protection. As the part of me that said: You survived. Now you have to stay alive.

Because there's this thing that happens after a near-death experience: your nervous system is still in survival mode. You're still in fight-or-flight. And Lilith held that for me.

Bessel van der Kolk calls this 'the body keeping the score'—trauma gets stored in your nervous system, not just your memory. And you can't think your way out of it. You have to work with it through the body.

She was the rage that said: No one gets to minimize what happened. No one gets to tell you to 'just be grateful you're alive' without also acknowledging that this was horrific and traumatic and life-altering.

But here's what's really interesting: Lilith also had to learn to be vulnerable.

Because for the first month after my surgery, I had little to no use of my hands. They were bandaged up like clubs. I couldn't feed myself. I couldn't dress myself. I couldn't shower. I couldn't do anything.

And I learned very quickly how much I'd been doing that I now couldn't—and how much I needed help. And Matt helped of course, and his mom came to help. And my mini coven—the women I formed my circle with over a year ago—they were immensely supportive. They brought food, they helped clean, they sat with me, they fed me. 

My parents flew out for a week to help. Matt's parents helped. So many wonderful friends showed up.

And I had to let them. I had to let myself be vulnerable. I had to let Lilith—fierce, independent, 'I don't need anyone' Lilith—receive care.

I think I had a total of 10 or 11 different people physically feed me meals during that month. And even after that first month, I gained some use back, but I didn't have full function for another month after that.

And this was one of the biggest lessons: learning to rely on others. Learning that community is not optional when you go through something traumatic. Learning that being held is not weakness—it's wisdom.

Attachment theory teaches us that humans are wired for interdependence, not independence. The myth of rugged individualism—that you should be able to handle everything alone—is actually counter to our biology. We're pack animals. We need secure attachment. We need people we can depend on when we're vulnerable.

And what I was learning through this process is what therapists call 'earned secure attachment'—even if you didn't grow up with it, you can learn it later in life by having experiences where people show up for you consistently, where you let yourself be vulnerable and discover you're still loved, still worthy, still held.

Every time someone fed me, sat with me while I cried—my nervous system was learning: You are not alone. You are safe to be vulnerable. People will show up. You’re not too much.

That's reparative work. That's healing old wounds about self-sufficiency and worthiness and whether you deserve care. And it doesn't happen through insight—it happens through experience, through your body learning something new.

Lilith learned she doesn't have to do it alone. She learned that being vulnerable with safe people is not submission—it's trust.

And that reframed everything for both me and my partner. We both learned how important it is to have community, to have people who show up, to let yourself be cared for.

And I want to, I want to take a moment to express deep gratitude here—to Matt, to his parents (especially his mom), to my parents, to my mini coven, to all the friends who brought meals and sat with me and helped in a thousand small ways. To my very patient nursing staff at the burn clinic and to my OT who learned alongside me how to work with these rare grafts.

We would not have gotten through this without that support. And I won't forget it.

Take a breath here. This is heavy. This brings up a lot of fears for a lot of people…this peace of being dependent, right? So just take a moment to feel your body, drink some water. You're okay. I'm okay.

And finally, there was Kali.

Kali, who came to Matt in that meditation two weeks before the fall. Kali, who I'd been circling around but hadn't truly deepened with yet. I’d only danced her death dance once before, and that was in a releasing ritual. 

Kali is the goddess of destruction and death. She's the one who destroys what's false, what's not serving, what's keeping you small. And her destruction IS love. It's fierce, terrifying, world-ending love.

When Kali made herself known again two weeks before the fall, I didn't fully understand what it meant. I knew something was coming, but I didn't know what.

And then I fell. And Matt held the rope. And he caught me. And we both survived.

And Kali said: This is what I was preparing you both for.

Because Matt had to watch me fall. He had to hold my full weight on that rope, knowing that if he let go, I would die. He had to be present for every moment of my pain, my surgeries, my recovery. He had to learn how to care for me when I couldn't care for myself.

That was his Kali initiation, learning to be Shiva. 

And mine? Mine was death.

Not physical death—I didn't die. But the maiden died–the hyperindependence dies, the illusion that I can do everything on my own died. Completely. Utterly. Irrevocably.

The version of me who thought she was invincible, who thought she could control everything, who thought she could avoid being truly vulnerable—who I'd been working with for years intellectually, she finally died in that fall.

And Kali presided over that death. She held the space for it. She said: Yes. This needed to happen. I know it's terrifying. I know it hurts. But you cannot become who you're meant to be without this death.

Psychologically, what I was going through is what's called 'identity death' or 'ego death.' The self-concept I'd built—capable, independent, in control—was incompatible with the reality of my situation, and that part had come online to survive other situations, but when your self-concept can't accommodate your lived experience, something has to break.

Carl Jung wrote about this as the process of individuation—the death of the persona, the false self you constructed to survive, so that the authentic self can emerge. It's terrifying because you don't know who you'll be on the other side.

Kali's destruction is not random. It's not cruel. It's precise. She destroys exactly what needs to die so that something new can be born.

And what's being born is the mother. The version of me who can hold both strength and vulnerability. Who can be fierce and also let herself be held. Who can lead and also receive. Who can teach and also ask for help.

I'm still in that birth. I'm still on the maiden-to-mother threshold. Seven months out from the fall, I'm integrating, I'm healing, I'm learning what it means to be this new version of myself.

Developmental psychology also talks about this in the transition from maiden to mother—it's one of the most profound identity shifts a person can go through. You're not just adding a new role, you're fundamentally reorganizing your sense of self, your priorities, your relationship to power and vulnerability.

The maiden is sovereign through independence. The mother is sovereign through interdependence.

Kali walked me through the death. And she's walking with me through the birth."

"So where am I now? Seven months after the fall?

I have full range of motion in my hands. I'm out of compression gloves months ahead of schedule. I wear my scars proudly—they're part of my story, part of my body, part of who I am now.

And physically, I exceeded every medical expectation. And I know there's something magic in that. Isis's reassembly. My body remembering wholeness.

Emotionally, spiritually, psychologically—I'm still integrating. Still processing. Still figuring out what it means to have died and been reborn in such a profound way.

And I'm learning what mother energy feels like in my body. I'm learning how to hold space for others, to teach from the threshold, while also letting myself be held. I'm learning that vulnerability is not weakness, that asking for help is not failure, that community is essential.

My partner and I—we're stronger. We've been through something most couples will never go through. He saved my life. Literally. And I saved his by holding on. And I had to let him care for me in ways I'd never let anyone care for me before. That changes a relationship. It deepens it.

And I'm stepping more fully into my role as priestess. Isis and Lilith told me before the fall: “You already are.” And the fall cemented that. I'm not just working with the goddesses—I'm channeling them, I'm teaching their medicine, I'm holding space for other people's initiations because I've walked through my own.

This fall was the biggest initiation of my life. And I would not wish it on anyone. It was horrific. It was traumatic. It was the most painful thing I've ever experienced.

And it was necessary. It was Kali's gift. It was the death I needed to become who I'm meant to be.

So if you're in an initiation right now—if you're in the death, if you're in the shattering, if you're in the pain—I want you to know: you will survive this. You will reassemble. You will be reborn.

And you don't have to do it alone. Let people hold you. Let your community show up. Let the goddesses walk with you.

Because initiations choose us. We don't choose them. But we do get to choose how we move through them. We get to choose whether we let them break us or remake us.

I chose to be remade.

And I'm still being remade. Seven months out, and I'm still in the spiral. Still learning. Still becoming.

That's the work. That's the path. That's the initiation.

Thank you for witnessing my story. Thank you for learning through listening to it. And thank you to everyone who held me through it—you know who you are, and I am so grateful.

Take care of yourself. Breathe. Drink water. You're okay.

Everything we explore here lives in practice. There’s a link in the episode description for our free website resources, where you'll find our Ritual Grimoire, Embodiment Library, and online workshops diving deeper into the work.

If this work is serving you and you want to support the podcast, I have a Patreon where you get monthly new moon rituals, the ability to list your business in our Coven Shop, and more. Link in bio. Your support helps me keep creating this content and building the coven.

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Trust the spiral.

This podcast offers spiritual and psychological education and priestess wisdom. This is not therapy, counseling, or mental health treatment. If you need mental health support, please contact a licensed provider. In a mental health emergency in the US call 988.”

This material is protected by copyright, Casey Dunne.

From Priestess Initiations: The Goddess Coven: S1 Ep.10 The Fall-An Initiation of Old, Dec 31, 2025