Part I – The Shadow Mother
Tomorrow, Friday July 1st, both the moon and the sun will be in Cancer, the sign of the Mother archetype, ruler of our inner world and our relationship to needs, dependency and belonging. On the same day, Pluto, ruler of the underworld, the principle of death and rebirth and deep transformation will be stationed exactly opposite the moon in the sign of Capricorn, the Father archetype, ruler of culture, order, and external reality. Uranus and Saturn are squaring both Cancer and Capricorn creating a marvelous, powerhouse of change called a grand square.
This configuration can lead to a need to address incomplete business with your parents, a big upwelling from the unconscious of buried feelings and emotions and a desire for the soul to feel free and liberated from old deals you may have made to survive your childhood. Simply said, there’s some big shit going down with Mom and Dad.
So this week I’m going to cover the Mother with Part 1 of a two part post. I will take a look at The Father in Part 2 on July 14th.
The Mother
I opened up a great book today that I read awhile ago and it really helped me understand and transform an underlying feeling of tired, sluggish, heavy energy I’ve been experiencing the last couple of weeks. Linda Schierse Leonard, in her book Meeting the Madwoman, outlines four distinct “Mad Mother” archetypes – destructive/harmful faces of the feminine archetype. She talks about how when the feminine aspect of the soul’s needs are not met the energy can begin to manifest negatively rather than creatively.
Before we enter into a more detailed look at the shadow sides of our mother’s, it’s important to see that mothers are not in essence manipulative, controlling, withdrawing or passive by nature – these faces of the feminine principle emerge from a need of the soul going without – without expression, connection, warmth, support, and nurturing.
It’s essential to dive into the shadow with compassion leading the way. Blame is boring and totally unproductive. But finding those places where your parents may not have met the needs of your soul is essential to the recovery of your creative self. If the soul is unloved and unwanted, what could be new life emerging into our identity goes underground and becomes angry and resentful – this is a sign that the feminine principle is angry and that the Mad Woman is present.
As Marion Woodman describes the old mother complex like a dragon sitting at the bottom of our psyche saying, don’t do it, don’t even get off the couch, why bother, you’ll never make it, just sit here and have another piece of chocolate and watch the TV. It’s your duty to take care of everyone else’s needs so just forget about what you need and quit complaining. If that sounds like something you are up against in your desire to make changes in your life or feel more freedom in your expression read on.
Here are the four archetypes Linda Schierse Leonard outlines. Notice which one/one’s you feel the most drawn to.
1) The Ice Queen
Her feelings are frozen around her wound, her coldness is a barrier to connection, she withdraws and rejects. She lived in the safety and power of her rationality. She values order, cleanliness, and perfection. She is ambitious. She is critical.
If the child doesn’t live up to the standards of perfection the mother has than she is met with humiliating, shaming and diminishing remarks. She breathes cold air on any good feelings or attempts at closeness.
Where the child looks for warm arms, they find a cold, rigid wall, criticism and aloofness. This child learns to stop reaching out for connection and becomes frigid themselves or dependent on others for that warmth. These children may think they are unlovable, or undeserved of love. Their need for warmth, connection and love may go into hiding.
Healing the Ice Queen
Thaw your frozen feeling with the warmth of compassion and empathy. Understanding the ice formed from unmet needs, bring internal warmth and heat into areas of the body that feel frozen or shut down. Let yourself feel your feelings – they won’t kill you. Let the moving water of your emotions melt the cold areas of your heart.
2) The Sick Mother
This mother has been so unmet and tortured within that she has become incapacitated. These mothers are invalids, helpless in some way, and play this card to bind their children to them. Their sickness is their power. They have so little left within them they need their children to mirror them. They need the attention of their children to feel assured and secure. These children grow up feeling uncertain and guilty, afraid of triggering their mothers’ illness. Children tiptoe around their mother so she doesn’t get upset – children suppress their needs and feelings that might disrupt their mother.
These children are afraid of what feels fragile inside their mothers and come to believe their needs and feelings are too much. These children often become caretakers of their own mothers and their own needs for dependency and support go into hiding. The mothers needs are felt as devouring the desires and creative impulse of the children’s souls – hence you begin to believe your needs are too much and will burden others as well.
Healing the Sick Mother
These children are captured in the caretaking role and feel overly responsible to others needs and give their energy away to others readily. Learn how to say no. Integrate the vitality and health of the vital feminine principle – She is an energy of great creativity and does not need to be feared. Learn how to access our intuition and trust it to guide you. Learn to shift your focus of attention for others needs to your own. Your needs are not too much, they’ve just been ignored for a long time and have grown into something that feels big. Address your needs in small steps and eventually what feels devouring and overwhelming will start to feel more manageable.
3) The Saint/The Too Nice Mother
This mother is giving and loving, attentive and generous. They’ll do anything for you. But the message that comes through her behavior is that you need to be “good,” and you should override your own needs for the needs of others. This is the martyr. These mothers expect their children to follow her lead and learn the art of self-sacrifice and to sacrifice your needs for her needs just as she has done for you. You owe her.
This Mad Mother manifests as an exhausted response to life, a feeling of heavy obligation and a sense of life wearing you down. If you should be nice, nurturing, obedient, and supportive than you are taught to repress your feelings, especially the disruptive and angry ones.
Generally these mothers repress their anger, their power, their assertiveness and their desires. Often, their children, are left carrying their anger for them fighting for justice or internalizing the anger as self-hatred or blame.
Healing the Too Nice Mother
Feel your anger. Let the red fire of your power and selfhood course through your body. Feel this natural heat of life and honor your right to be. Run that heat through the outer edges of your aura, set your boundaries. Learn how to liberate your kundalini energy. It’s safe to be yourself, to put your needs first, and to be powerful. See yourself in your power. Draw a picture of your most powerful self and love her. Learn to say No.
4) The Dragon Lady
She has unpredictable, explosive emotional outbursts, both tears and rage, that intimidate her children. You are afraid to ask for what you need because you don’t know how she’ll react. You learn that needs are unsafe and overwhelming. Her emotional state controls the household and you. You feel hostage to her shifting tides. The Dragon Lady must be right, she screams and shouts to get her way. The Dragon Lady takes up the whole room.
Children of this mother may feel small, insignificant and fearful. “Shame and humiliation are two of her major strategies, and she knows how to make her children feel guilty.” Nobody wants to cross this mother. She is an expert at making her children feel helpless. You can never win. Often these mothers are jealous of their daughters’ uniqueness and daughters are busy defending themselves against her criticism. In her fear of being hurt again, she attacks first. Rage governs her life and dominates yours.
Healing the Dragon Lady
If this is your shadow mother your self-expression may have gone into hiding. Write a letter to your mother and say all the things you always wanted to say but were afraid to say and then burn it (don’t send it). Notice where you feel intimated by life and bring love, compassion and encouragement to those areas within you. You also may notice where you are intimating others – where in your helplessness you are trying to use power-over others. Learn to be with your helpless feelings and love yourself in that state.
I found myself drawn to the Too Nice Mother and a pattern of self-sacrifice that I have felt slave to over the last few weeks. Any chance of accessing my own desires, my own anger, or making space for my own creative endeavors has been blocked internally by fear of hurting others, of not being nice and of the old mother convincing me that others needs are more important than my own. I let myself travel into that aspect of the Mother and I found a child who wanted space for her own needs – a child who wanted to need without any expectations or strings attached. I also found a lot of anger and grief.
Notice which Mad Mother you are drawn to. What model of femininity were you shown by your mother? Go towards your anger, your depression, your stuckness, your frustration, your chaos, your rebel, your fear and look for what has hold of you? Ask for an image of the Mad Mother or the child with unmet needs? Have an active dialogue with that image, what wants to happen in your relationship to that Mad Woman? What need is at the heart of the your frustration? Sit with that need and see if you can bring to that little one the safety, attention and reception that she longs for.
Read Part II – The Unconscious Father
Image: Painting by Laura Tabet in a process painting class with Heather Bleasdell