Many women face today what I encountered all those years ago when I chose to support the mother in me who knew what her children required and set out to discover how to make it so. To our horror we meet what feels like an impossible dilemma, one we somehow assumed wouldn’t find us for we generally see ourselves as quite capable beings. It comes as a thundering crash into our world of assumptions.
When a woman is faced with the need to continue to do what is hers to do to support and stabilize her family, as well as earn a living because her motherwork isn’t valued and therefore she cannot sustain her needs, she will find herself at a crossroads.
How is this going to be possible?
The idea of it slams into our reality like a freight train running off the tracks.
How will we manage? Where will we get the energy we need to meet what is expected from us? Who will help us? This is the moment we encounter the fact that mothering has no face in the economic system we exist within. The power that supports all life and from whence all life comes is invisible in the world made by man.
Mothering is Not a Vocation
A woman recently asked me, “How did you do it?” I replied simply that I’d given up all my entitlements.
In November 1931, Emma Jung presented research at the Psychological Club of Zurich in which she stated this about woman: “Even though she may think otherwise consciously, the idea that what is masculine is in itself more valuable than what is feminine is born in her blood. This does much to enhance the power of the animus.”
What is the animus?
The animus is the masculine element in woman. It is the masculine spirit of the unconscious mind in the female sex. I’ve heard myself say time and time again to other women that the patriarchy is in our own heads. Well, this is that. And more. The animus is an archetype and archetypes are the the architects of human life. We are born into them as human history. They live in the collective unconscious where all souls are connected and play out as forms in the psyche. I like to think they are actors playing us until we wake up to the script and decide we will rewrite the story. I’ve also learned that if this story is living me then I have something to develop in order to move beyond it.
Animus possession for a woman requires an inner conversation as difficult as any she will ever have with a man. The crossroads I faced as a young mother was my initiation into that conversation. I could either burn myself out with rage at the societal institutions that were oppressing me or I could turn within to investigate how I might do things differently.
I decided to turn within. What I discovered laid the path for me and I continue to walk upon it to this day.
I met my own feminine nature and she laid the path for me!
How did this happen?
My animus lit the path the feminine laid.
When a woman is possessed by the animus, and we all are until we wake up to its presence in our own lives, she gives her voice over to the masculine and remains hidden from herself. It is this voice that does all the talking when a woman first comes to me for counsel. And what’s worse is that I witness how she uses the animus to work against herself and then tries to defend or justify her reasoning for doing so while pummeling her own feminine nature. It is a deep and damaging distortion.
In it’s negative form the animus cuts woman off from her own feminine wisdom.
Birthing the feminine within requires getting to know the animus and learning to use his clear discrimination as an inner guide because he is designed to take woman into her own feminine soul. This is the work of modern woman now. She must discern her true feminine values.
For me, mothering mattered. I cared more about answering to the soul’s of my children than to the requirements of society. What I needed to build was my own well of self-esteem. This demanded I overcome a dreaded sense of inner inertia that would have me give up when faced with a world built to oppress me. It would have been a mistake to forfeit mothering to gain social mobility. Ask any mother faced with returning to work because her maternity benefits have expired, and her newborn is only a few months old, and she will tell you what I’m pointing at. For it is at this moment a decision must be made based on the false premise that mothering doesn’t matter.
Do we rise to the occasion of the feminine within? Or do we succumb to the man-made world that denies feminine values?
Mothering is not a vocation. It is the ability to respond to life and what is required to live. The numinous ground of the unconscious in man or woman is the Land of Mother. All live, move, and have being in Mother. To mother is to have the opportunity to love ourselves and our children in responsibility. A society built on denying Mother will fall. And the future of the human heart is to flow life forward. The obstructions preventing love from flowing naturally are many and unique to every encounter but the short version of insight is thus: fear of giving too much. This resistance deforms the pattern of giving that is natural to the mothering heart. Following the desire to give more to ourselves and to our children leads to the shore where more is available.
The feminine within woman wants to give woman the way beyond supposed limitations. To this end, the degree to which we love the men in our lives is reflective of the love we are capable of bestowing upon the masculine within.
A woman’s failure to know her own animus will keep her from escaping the old order of patriarchy.
Learning to discriminate between the inner masculine and the outer man is a massive undertaking. It is the call of womanhood. It is often painful for modern woman to realize we are not dealing with issues of discontent caused by a force outside of ourselves but rather through an immature quality existing within us.
So what? Be courageous. Leave men alone and turn toward the inner conversation. For when it has been matured, the animus becomes the true spirit of woman’s creative power.
—
This Post is republished on Medium.
—
Photo credit: iStock
