I Judge Our Community, Not Her

On July 27th, while updating copy on my website I got a message that read:

"Hello everyone.

With great sadness I need to tell you: Carolyn took her life yesterday."

That's all I read and I could feel the shock flood through my body. I froze and said, instinctively
"oh my god", paused and allowed it to register a little more and then said more definitively "oh my god".

I was in shock. Days later I am still in shock.

Not because she and I were personally close, but I have spent six months in her space virtually for hours soaking up every drop I could of her — and just like that *snap* I added two more words to my copy... "Dr. Carolyn Elliott" to "the late Dr. Carolyn Elliott."

Since the news announced publicly, I have seen nothing but how influential her life was for so many past students, people who have read her book, etc. honoring her with a "love and light" flavor of things. While that is beautiful, I can't help but look past that.

I am look at the human as a whole. The vast majority of shares have been on her mind, her emotions but what I'm called to share on is the physical body, the vessel that her teachings and gifts came through.

She was a mother to two young children. My estimate is two babies in the past 6 years.

While that tracks for typical child-spacing there are other items in her deeply magickal life that also are worth noting that contribute to physiologic health and well being.

She and her husband went through a divorce in 2025 (within the first two years of her son's life). It is my understanding that she may have been practicing extended breastfeeding and typically that can affect sleeping patterns - even if not breastfeeding sleep with babies and toddlers can be rough.

She went on to rekindle a relationship with a man from her past that ended in deep heartbreak. These are two love losses within a short year, and if Carolyn is anything privately like she is publicly she loves HARD and full send.

She was moving house, going through co-parenting pick-ups and drop offs and before her most recent breakup she shared she was out of money (this could have been over-dramatized for the sake of a explaining a shift in her business, but nonetheless she disclosed it).

I feel like I need to back up a little at this point.

In 2024/2025 my friend had sent me a podcast on magick and I loved every episode. After each one I felt like I needed more, I need to know more!

I found Carolyn's book in the summer of 2025. I was fascinated and listened to it on audio for road trips, and thumbed through the actual book on occasion and finally got on the internet because "surely she has a program for facilitators..."

Sure enough, she had a coaching certification program - I couldn't scroll fast enough to get through the content. That's when I saw that the course was based on her content, but it was being taught by two of her students, not her.

This was a huge buzzkill and I vividly remember telling myself that if she ever taught it, I would sign up for it. I joined the mailing list, and went on with my life (semi relieved because I swore off courses for 2025.)

Then I got a newsletter on Dec. 22 2025 from Carolyn naming that she would be teaching the next coaching container. My heart raced and I filled out the application.

By the time the payment plan was completed, it was my most expensive container to date and this brought up a lot for me - mentally, physically, - A LOT of SHADOW!

It wasn't just my shadow I was tracking during this course. Watching her on my computer screen, I saw her yes, as a wise and embodied teacher. I also saw her as a woman and knew what she'd recently been though prior to and during this container. She was hit with some of the biggest stressors a person can experience in life back to back for years (and I'm not even getting into anything that she may have experienced privately like every other human on the planet has experienced)

I saw a woman with dark circles under her eyes. A woman who had a slight delay finding her words and who looked depleted.

The spark from the first few calls while she was in a relationship to the ones months later was a stark difference.

As of this writing, I am only half way through my course content when I got the message that she had taken her own life.

I did not have Carolyn on a pedestal. I saw her as a a fabulously delicious charlatan (as she affectionately called herself) and I adored her. That said, I saw her as a woman, as a mother, as a teacher, etc.

As a mother - my heart breaks for her because she was in so much pain (depletion) that she felt this was the only resolve.

My newsfeed is filled with women who are taking their own lives or taking the lives of their children and again, I go back to the real root - depletion.

Who is nourishing these "strong independent women" who are always there for everyone else?

I have worked with many birth-workers who do not want to offer additional postpartum care (this is another topic for another time) and this further perpetuates the narrative that once a woman has a baby she is invisible, or worse an inconvenience - even by the very women they invited into their most sacred time in their life (the birth of their children).

Our society in North America is not structured for women and children. There is a huge push for child-free spaces and by default this translates to "mother-free" spaces as well.

One of the last assignments that Carolyn gave me was to answer the question

"what do I want people to say about me and my accomplishments when I am dead?"

I did this assignment on July 25th 2026 - unknowingly the last day Carolyn was alive.

Being able to witness the real life answer for her is surreal to say the least.

The fact that her online audience has grown by the thousands just in the past 24 hours of the announcement of her death is again what breaks my heart.

Where are the thousands of comments on the mothers who reach their breaking point and don't have a brilliant book or a devoted following behind them? For them, it's judgment. For Carolyn, it's appreciation — because she was brilliant, because she "ascended," we get to love-and-light past what actually happened and celebrate her gifts to the world instead. Judgment or reverence, it's the same story underneath: a woman depleted past what anyone should carry, and a culture more interested in what she gave us than in what she needed.

My inquiry as purely an outsider is - how many more years could she have enjoyed with her children if she got an ounce of this new found love and appreciation, nourishment, and felt a sense of safety to actually find restful sleep in the months (if not years) leading up to her decision.

I do not judge a mother for the actions she made, especially one who is depleted.

I do however judge our community.

I judge that women (yes, especially the ones as successful and enlightened as Carolyn) are seen as a resource to extract from and hardly ever poured back into and then we sit back as a collective and wonder why women are searching for a way out in such extreme measures.

Carolyn's work as enlightened as she was - was anything but "love and light" so that is why I chose to honor her work, (and the only way I knew of her life) is by calling out the shadow of our society and culture.

The systems that are in place to snuff life out, no matter their socio-economic status.

Since depletion is what gets women to this breaking point, then pouring back into women is the only response that makes sense to me.

This is why I still fund postpartum & bereavement care as a part of my work.

This is why I work with birth-workers, postpartum practitioners, and village wise women; so that they are well resourced so they can continue to show up in their local communities tending to these new mothers - so this level of depletion and the consequences of it become a thing of the past.

Carolyn, I pray that you found the rest that you were always worthy of and the peace that passes all understanding.

-Audrey