I have spent a lot of time over the last few years healing my relationship around my mother. It was clear to me how much the absence of a loving, supportive, and safe being in my life manifested in how I went through the world, and affected how I related to myself and the way I showed up and behaved in relationships.
I had made a lot of progress over the years, healing what felt like a deep gaping void. I created archetypal mother figures from people I’d met in my life. I deliberately sought out healing interactions with women. And it made a huge difference.
My latest round of work has revolved around my father. I was surprised by what came up. My father wasn’t a negative influence in my life, he just wasn’t there. So there was less resentment towards this absence of a thing.
But what I learned as I started healing wounds around my father, giving myself what I deserved to receive from a father in my childhood, I realized there was a lot I was still missing. And I believe this absence of fatherhood plays a big factor in the anxiety I grapple with on a daily basis.
The way I currently conceive of it, (and this is totally subjective) the feminine is supposed to convey a basic sense of “you are a good person”, “you are worthy of being loved”. They shape the way you interact with yourself. The masculine, meanwhile, conveys “you are safe”, “things will be alright”. A baseline of security in their presence. They can’t, of course, guarantee anything, but there is a sense that come what may, the masculine will do what it can. And that’s all we can ask for.
The feminine helps shape your relationship with yourself. The masculine, with the world around you. I had long felt more at ease in my own inner world than with the broader universe around me, and this fit will with my experience.
When healing my relationship with the masculine, I had very few role models to rely on. With the feminine, I had met strong, compassionate women who I could mold into an archetypal mother. With the masculine, I drew a blank around almost any man that I wanted to emulate. So I created a fictional archetype, I godlike figure of Egyptian origin, half man, half bull, (which is my last name in Hebrew) who represented all that I wanted from masculinity.
In our journey of healing, I value a lot when entire facets are brought to my attention that I didn’t even realize I was missing. There I was trying to grapple with anxiety, that I forgot about such a thing called joy! And there I was, healing the feminine, that I left the masculine behind.
I invite myself, my clients, and anyone reading this, to explore what it feels like to benefit from both archetypes. To create both masculine and feminine figures in your mind, and let them positively heal you with their presence and influence your daily life for the better. This could be a specific person, a group of people, a fictional or mythical character. It could be a color. Find right feels right for you, and give it to yourself.
Here is a guided meditation that can help support you in this journey:
