First real day of sunshine and I am thinking about the way in which we survive cycle after cycle, the downward spiral into winter and the way in which the myth of persephone in the underworld plays itself out in our lives over and over and over again.  Born as we are, in a cyclical world, none of us can avoid the reality of life, death and separation from our loved ones.  Demeter lamented as  her daughter Persephone was taken from her by Hades the god of the underworld, in a story of abduction, reconciliation and regeneration.  In the Persephone myth, there is the foretelling of spring, renewal and reunification.  For the alienated child and family, none of this normal and natural renewal is allowed to occur and so the world becomes frozen in time as the child disappears, deep into the underworld, where the family they have rejected cannot…