I discovered that storytellers have been telling the Divided Woman's story for 6,000 years- we are still telling it. And yet, we don't know her- even though we see her every single day.
In talks and at lectures, when I describe the Divided Woman, I usually get the exact same response every. single. time. The woman or women I am speaking to, give me half-hearted attention, because they're tired of being sold some story about how they can improve their lives by using an archetype. But I'm not selling a woo-woo version of Goddesses for women to identify with. No, I am illuminating an archetypal pattern that has the potential to free women from internal and external forces that keep us disempowered, isolated, and striving for acceptance.
Suddenly the woman I'm speaking to, is giving me her attention. I explain that she was put on a track at the young age of 7 or 8 years old. And as a result, she was either set on the path to ideal womanhood, as Maiden in Search of Relationship (MISOR). Or she was sent into girly purgatory as Magical, Isolated, Powerful, & Endangered (MIPE) where she would always be alone, often trying to claw her way back to being accepted for who she is, whether she fits the ideal or not. When she doesn't fit it, she sees herself as a failure. At this point in our few minutes together, she is often welling up as if someone has finally seen her struggle, as though someone has insight into her life.
Up until the moment that I define the TWO possibilities for her, she had personalized her failure. It wasn't that the ideal of being a MISOR was bad, it was that she wanted to join her MISOR ideals with her MIPE capacities, and that was not going to fly with family, culture, bosses, and husbands. She saw her inability to reconcile her personal ambitions and desires with the cultural ideals as her own unique experience. When she realizes that it is a track, a role she was given- I get a stare, often tears. She didn't recognize that the archetypal world had impeded on her personal experience. Sometimes when I'm done, those women are angry. Sometimes they are angry at me for pointing it out- telling me I'm wrong. Other times they become angry at the systems that kept them in this binary.
My response is the same every time. The way forward- towards sovereignty- is not to rage against the system. The path for women to succeed beyond the Divided Woman is to TELL HER STORY, and in doing so enable EVERY WOMAN to learn the truth about her potential. She is not banished to a marriage OR to a tower. She has the opportunity to become a Queen. One who has absolute sovereignty over her own life.