Lilith and Eve. Shadow of a Good Woman
The writing I reference in the podcast is first from “The Book of Lilith” by Barbara Black Koltuv
And the second was an essay by Bethany Webster called the “Illusion of the Benevolent Patriarchy”
INNER INFRASTRUCTURE FOR BIG LOVE
I’ve really come full circle on being in connection in the last few years.
My upbringing was extremely codependent. By the time I was in my 30’s this dynamic in my relationships was making me very sick.
I didn’t originally find healing from codependency to be psychologically labor intensive.
At first, I thought all I needed to do was take responsibility for my own participation. Change my own behaviors. Because magically, things improved heaps without a lot of inner excavation.
But it didn’t get fully resolved until I began to truly take responsibility for my own power. This is a whole can of worms to detangle and really where this piece of writing starts.
I haven’t set out to write about healing from codependency persè.
I actually want to say a few things about love.
One of the stops on the way to healing from codependency is healthy narcissism.
I shouldn’t need to say I am not talking about a personality disorder, but I will just in case anyone is confused by that word.
We know from the myth of Narcissus, that we all need to have a healthy amount of narcissism to be able to see ourselves clearly. To be able to withstand the Death Mother when she comes for our truest expression.
This was really hard for me. I grew up as an adoptee, inside the myth of the “unwanted child”, in a highly Christianized home, that prized self deprecation and “humility”.
My adoptive Mother is a perennial “Good Woman” and will never be anything but that.
My father valued how things looked externally, so much more than internally. So good woman stereotypes were always reinforced.
This has meant, that my road to greater health, setting boundaries, speaking my truth, and saying hard things in a “kind” way, were all stretches for me.
It was very easy for people to use the “Good Woman” archetype against me. All they had to do was suggest that I wasn’t “good” and I would collapse.
Mind you, I never had a problem getting angry and yelling my truth. Though I did shame myself something fierce afterwards.
It was actually holding the truth in my body and speaking without getting drunk on anger, that was my edge.
All this to say that the last few years, as my work with codependency and my inner “good woman archetype”, has unwound more and more, I began to work within the nuance between being “nice” and being “kind”.
(If you aren’t sure what that is, I can discuss in the comments. For now, I’ll assume we are all on the same page.)
This was somewhat messy as I began to tell the truth often, and wanted to do so with kindness even when I didn’t always feel the grace or conversely the strength inside to deliver on that desire.
Things got super touchy in here.
I saw the parts of our culture that are blunt and really unloving in their delivery. The energy of the Death Mother. I could find her in me, and wanted to weed her out because I know how much damage a “punisher” can do.
Then there are the other parts of our culture that prize fawning. In an attempt at false, superficial connection, so much so that the truth gets totally diluted by the time its delivered.
I knew I didn’t want to land in either of these locations.
When I started this project, I was surprised by how often I was falsely, or superficially “nice”.
Where it was a default.
Where my “niceness” had hooks in it.
Where I used it to “get” something. Or to not “get” something.
And, I was also, just as often surprised by how cutting the truth could be when it wasn’t delivered well and how genuinely, and authentically off it felt for me to move that way.
As a teen, I would have definitely fallen more on the strong truth teller side of the equation, than the “nice girl”. I’ve always inwardly identified more with strength more than softness. Even when as an adult that was intentionally outwardly dampened on my journey with the “Good Woman”.
So much of my apparent softness from 24-34 years old was really a product of a distorted need for connection and not knowing how to get it. It wasn’t because I was naturally soft. (Aside from with my children. I’ve always found softness simple with them)
What I’ve learned though, from playing in these realms is how much love and connection is important to me.
How love, kindness, and deep connection, are genuinely things my authentic self values above anything else.
And now that I’ve healed so many of my own warped dynamics, and have the inner infrastructure to really hold love, it is genuine when I am displaying it. It’s not fawning.
This was a long way of saying, that to me, BIG LOVE is my highest value.
I know many of you heard me mention a troll the other day. He tried to shame me, and use me stating a boundary as proof I wasn’t loving.
Before doing any of this work, that would have knocked me out. I would have been scrambling to excuse myself, or I would have gotten angry. It might have spun me out for days to suggest I wasn’t loving because being “loving” is part of the armor “Good Women” cloak themselves in. So it would have essentially been like him negating my existence.
He probably said what he did, because it’s worked for him before. I see this play out all the time with people who identify as “good”.
Now I know that my boundaries are part of what allows me to live with an open heart. So his words had zero effect on me. I was even able to remain open hearted while I closed with him.
It’s funny for this scrappy little woman, who has always wanted to be tough, to find so much power in genuine softness.
To be unaffected by the Death Mother in this place where so frequently she hunts us.
After Tanner died, I realized that I really do live stretched across a galactic sized love. That my heart is so big it spans multiple dimensions.
And when it comes down to it, all I really want to do is live in the current of this BIG LOVE, and share it with others.
As I was meditating on this today, I realized how these are all elements of the upcoming Venus Cycle. Leo is about courage, full expression, and BIG HEARTED LOVE. The cycle began with The Sun and Venus conjunct Black Moon Lilith, (the Death Mother) which so often lives in the shadows of the “Good Woman Archetype”. And is almost always part of why we censor ourselves and stay small.
