Counseling & Coaching
A protected space for you alone or with your partner. We work on whatever weighs on you right now in the fertility journey: decisions, exhaustion, communication, and more. With heart, presence, and a touch of humor.
Learn moreTo the Heart of the Crisis
Persephone is here for you if you're living with unfulfilled longing for a child and know the feeling that your story has slipped away from you.
Here you'll find orientation and tools to write it yourself anyway. Page by page.
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what's rarely said out loud
Involuntary childlessness isn't just a question about a child. It's a life crisis: complex, and often invisible.
Reproductive crises take many forms — medical, through adoption, or something else entirely. What they share is what happens inside: emotional, relational, and existential exhaustion and loneliness.
When your body doesn't do what you expect of it. When decisions feel like a labyrinth. When the relationship suffers, without anyone being at fault. When you no longer know who you are, if not a parent. That's a life crisis that deserves to be seen.
Around 17% of people of reproductive age are affected — and more than 75% of them receive no targeted psychosocial support. Because there's hardly any to be found.
I don't know when it's allowed — or necessary — to stop.
I smile at family gatherings and say everything's fine.
We talk about protocols. Not about how we feel.
Some days I just function. Others, I don't.
If you recognize yourself in any of these sentences, you're in the right place. Persephone doesn't promise a happy ending. But it does offer a space where you can find your footing again.
What Persephone offers
Choose what fits you right now.
Or let a no-obligation conversation help you find your way among Persephone's offerings.
Workshops & Individual Training
Knowledge and tools to understand your reproductive crisis and regain your sense of agency. Room here for topics like coping strategies, mental load, and communication as a couple.
Learn moreSupport Group
Peer support and exchange in a protected setting. At the moderated meetings for people facing involuntary childlessness, you can find relief and draw strength from the community.
Learn moreThe Persephone Approach
A crisis is also a threshold. Persephone accompanies the passage.
The myth of Persephone tells of a descent into the underworld — and of the ability to return to daylight with what was found there. Not untouched. But more mature. Clearer. Stronger.
Reproductive crises arrive uninvited, right in the middle of a planned life, right in the middle of confidence. One moment you're still in the sunlit meadow, the next in a dark world you never chose.
That challenges us to fundamentally rethink our ideas of family, partnership, body, and future. It's a process. And it deserves companionship that takes it seriously. That's exactly what Persephone is here for.
Couple-focused and inclusive
Involuntary childlessness isn't a women's issue. It's a couple's and a human issue. Persephone's offerings think in terms of partnership and speak to men just as much as women.
Psychosocial and relational
Reproductive crises don't just affect the body: they touch psyche, relationship, identity, and sense of meaning all at once. Persephone accompanies exactly these dimensions.
Open-ended
Persephone makes no promise of a longed-for child and doesn't aim at a predetermined outcome. Instead, it aims to help you shape your path as your own, wherever it leads.
Scientific and humanistic
What Persephone offers is grounded in current research and starts from the assumption that you already bring the competence to shape your own path. Knowledge as a tool in service of your orientation.
The Founder: Marina Bletsas, Dr. Phil.
From the inside. And from expertise.
My original profession taught me how communication shapes realities. My psychosocial training teaches me what people need in crises. My own fertility crisis showed me what no textbook does.
Since 2021 I've been accompanying people with unfulfilled longing for a child in my support group. Now I offer well-founded companionship as someone who knows the path.
Learn more
These articles are currently only available in German.
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The Persephone e-Letter
brings you new blog articles, upcoming meetings, workshop dates, and Marina's personal perspective on what really moves people through reproductive crises — regularly.
So you don't have to go looking for what might be relevant to you.
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