Many of you have heard me say, “We get it backwards. We think that the men carry the power and the women carry the love. But when we are at our best the men show up with pure love (they are the ones that say we will serve until during the time of disasters) and women carry their power (they are the one that say you have chopped enough wood, its time to stop). I’m not sure who said this originally but I agree. I think we are living in a time when men have forgotten to carry their love and women have forgotten to carry their power.
While at the gym this morning I was listening to Caroline Myss’s The Language of Archetypes on audio books. One of the things that caught my attention was said, “The Masculine archetype is predatorial.” She went on to say that the shadow side of this archetype is the conquer and the light side is the protector.
I got to thinking about how these two things are playing out in our world today. How the shadow side of the masculine is out of control. This is the shadow patriarchal forces in play. We like to think of patriarchal forces as being all bad but archetypes have a light and a shadow. There are times when the light side of even the patriarchal forces served. It may look more matristic, informed by but not ruled by the feminine. It may be that the men carried their love and the women carried the power but the men were the head of the family.
I witnessed this in my grandparents relationship. Lots of people would have said our family was a matriarchy. I’m starting to question this. I see my grandmother as the matriarch of our family but I also witnessed her yield to my grandfather. I think their relationship was more complex than I was able to hold. I think they held the both/and. I think this is where spirit lives.
Quanita