The Feminine Archetypes: Understanding the Maiden and the Mother and Reclaiming the Lost Aspects of Self.
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Growing up, I was told that to be a woman was to be explicitly feminine (ex-evangelical here!)—and to be feminine was to be only in the image of the Maiden or the Mother.
Each one, at that, stripped of her power, flattened into roles defined in relation to men rather than as a force of her own. It was a message that stood in stark contrast to the fantasy books I read where women were magicians, knights, priestesses and queens. And yet, The feminine I was given in the ‘real-world’ was meant to be self-sacrificing, passive, quiet, meek, fragile—an image shaped to uphold a system.
She was not allowed to be wild, self-honoring, powerful, expressive, or bold like the characters I had come to love and admire.
I was taught that femininity was something to be performed—especially as a woman who never quite fit the version of the feminine I was being given— something to be pleasing and soft, something to be desired but never demanding.
I could be the innocent Maiden, untouched and waiting. I could be the devoted Mother, giving endlessly until nothing remained for myself. But I could never be something uncontainable. I could never be the Crone—wise and whole, needing nothing. I could never be the Warrior, standing in my own strength, not needing to be saved. I could never be the Dark Goddess, unafraid of my own depth and power.
I was told there were only a few ways of being a woman. But I now know that was a lie—designed to keep me small, palatable, and easy.. Maybe you resonate? Maybe you’ve also felt that the framework of the feminine as you’ve been taught it feels limiting or doesn’t fully reflect who you are?
If that's you, you’re in the right place. Because this blog is all about reclaiming what is rightfully yours. It’s about remembering and reconnecting to what we’ve been conditioned to ignore, repress and forget.
For too long, the feminine has been defined by smallness—passivity, purity, obedience, and given meaning only in relationship to men. But the truth is, the feminine was never meant to be caged—it was never meant to be diminished. It was never meant to be tamed.
And neither were you.
The Maiden, The Mother, And The Shadow Forms We’ve Been Limited To
The Maiden: Untouched Potential
The Maiden in her fullness is the archetype of possibility. She is newness, curiosity, adventure. She is a trailblazer. She is the part of us that is wide-eyed, open-hearted, filled with the hunger to explore. She represents beginnings, self-discovery, and an unshaped future full of possibility.
But in a patriarchal narrative, the Maiden is defined not by her power, but by her purity. This is the archetype we have been told is desireable. She is naive, having given her agency over to someone else, waiting for the world (or a man) to shape her, validate her, and define her. She is the damsel, the virgin, and the object of pursuit—desired, waiting to be chosen, but not autonomous. She exists as potential, but never as a realized force.
Reclaiming the Maiden: To reclaim the Maiden is to embrace the adventure of becoming without waiting to be saved. It’s reclaim your agency. It’s to embody curiosity without fragility, openness without submission, and freedom without naivety. It is to be wild and unafraid, willing to explore what could be.
The Mother: Creator and Nurturer
The Mother is not just a literal mother. She is the creator—the one who brings forth life, ideas, art, communities, movements. She is abundance, nourishment, and fierce protection. She embodies deep love that brings her into service through devotion, but also deep power, capable of destruction when needed.
The shadowed version of the Mother— the one we’ve been told is acceptible to embody— is self-sacrificing to the point of erasure. She is told her worth lies in how much she gives. Her body, her time, her energy—nothing belongs to her. She is expected to endure, to serve, to put herself last. If she does anything else, she is considered as selfish.
Reclaiming the Mother: The true Mother archetype knows how to give and how to self-honor. She nurtures without self-destruction. She creates without burnout or depletion. She is fierce, protective, and sovereign in her ability to birth not just life, but new worlds.
The Archetypes We’ve Been Denied And Why We Need Them Back
While the Maiden, Mother, and Crone were handed to us in their shadow forms, there are other archetypes that have been stripped from us entirely. Because they cannot be controlled. These archetypes refuse to serve a narrative of obedience. These archetypes—the ones that are wild, sovereign, untamed—were either demonized or erased, made unreachable by design.
But the truth is, they were never truly lost. They live in our collective consciousness, waiting to be remembered. Waiting to be reclaimed. I know there are a few of you reading this that will feel the intuitive “YES!” when you find the archetype that’s been whispering within you. Pay attention, this is important.
The Warrior: Power Held, Not Taken
The feminine warrior exists, but she has been erased. We are told that a warrior must be masculine, that strength must look like hardness, aggression, and domination, conquest.
We are taught that to fight is to destroy, that to stand firm is to be unyielding, that power must always be taken rather than held. But the true feminine Warrior archetype is strength in service of something greater. She does not fight for ego or conquest, but for what she loves and believes in. She is fierce, protective, wise and strategic. She knows when to rise and when to wait, when to draw the line and when to move beyond it. She knows when to soften, when to remove her armor, and when to root deeply in order to hold the line. She does not seek war, but she does not fear it.
She does not need to prove herself, because she knows her own power. Reclaiming the Warrior means understanding that protection is not about isolation or destruction—it is about standing firm in what matters be it self-soverienty or defense of others. The warrior knows that protection is a sacred act, and that strength does not need to be justified, tamed, or softened—it simply is.
To Reclaim:
The Dark Goddess: The Devourer, The Shadow Walker
The Dark Goddess is the force of transformation, the necessary unraveling that makes way for what is to come. She is destruction, but not for the sake of ruin—she is the fire that clears the overgrowth and the decay that nourishes new life. She is Kali, Lilith, Medusa—the ones called monsters because they refused to be controlled, because they did not shrink, because they did not seek permission.
She is the catalyst for change— raw, chaotic, and untamed— unafraid to disrupt comfort for the sake of transformation.
We are taught to fear her. To fear destruction, darkness, unravelling and rage. To fear the lessons that come without our permission. To fear her power that exists without apology. She is not here to guide you gently—she is here to destroy what needs to die so something new can emerge.
To reclaim the Dark Goddess is to reclaim the right to let go, of control, illusions, attachments, and the fear of destruction as something inherently negative. The Dark Goddess teaches us that destruction is not the end—it is a necessary part of transformation. Sometimes the truth is shocking, affronting and painful. She knows that, and she invites us to honor endings as sacred. To burn what no longer serves. To step fully into one’s power—not as something to be explained or excused, but as something inherent, undeniable, and whole.
The Mystic: The One Who Knows
The Mystic is the bridge between worlds, the one who sees beyond the visible and trusts what cannot be measured. She does not seek knowledge—she experiences it. She moves through life attuned to symbols, dreams, and the unseen forces that shape reality. Truth arrives to her in whispers, in synchronicities, in the deep knowing that defies logic. She speaks in emotion and energy, following intuition as her only map.
The Mystic does not need proof. She does not seek validation. Hers is a path of surrender, of dissolving the illusion of control, of opening herself to the great unknown— the divine. She is not here to explain the mystery—she is here to embody it.
Once, she was the priestess, the oracle, the seer—but in a world that feared her knowing, she was hunted as the witch, the heretic, the madwoman. Her gifts were dismissed, her intuition ridiculed, her knowledge silenced—but she cannot be killed.
To reclaim the Mystic is to stop seeking answers and to start listening. It is to trust oneself even when words fail you. To lean into the unknown—not to conquer it, but to be in relationship with it. To surrender certainty in favor of deeper truth. The Mystic teaches us that wisdom is not learned or earned—it is felt, lived, and experienced
The Crone: The Wise Woman, The Death Walker— And Why She Was Erased
Women are not allowed to age in our society. We are expected to fight it, hide it, resist it at all costs. Because a woman who ages is dangerous in a culture that worships youth. She is dangerous because she no longer seeks approval. Because she no longer exists for the gaze of others. Because she knows herself, and self-knowledge is power.
A woman who knows herself cannot be manipulated. She cannot be controlled. She does not live for external validation, for desirability, for usefulness to others. She lives for truth— the kind of truth that feels like blood and earth. She is the one who sees through the illusions—the ones we were told to believe, the ones we have clung to for too long, the ones that kept us afraid of our own power. She is the owl in the night.
The crone has already walked the path, she has lived through the deaths and rebirths, she has held grief in her hands and learned to alchemize it into wisdom. She does not rush, she does not chase, she does not demand. She waits—because she knows that true knowing cannot be given, only earned.
The Crone is the guide at the threshold, the keeper of initiation. She does not force you forward, but she holds the lantern at the edge of the unknown. She will not save you from transformation—but she will teach you how to survive it. She does not teach in words, but in presence, in silence, in the deep knowing that settles into your bones after you have lost everything you thought you were and discovered what remains.
To reclaim the Crone is to reclaim a life beyond illusion. It is to release the need to be palatable, to be chosen, to be understood. It is to stand in your knowing and let it be enough. To embrace endings as sacred, rather than something to be feared. To recognize that detachment is not disconnection—it is freedom.
The Return toWholeness
While we may have been given a version of the womanhood that feels limited—one that keeps us small, self-sacrificing, and defined by how we serve others—the truth is, we are so much more. Being a woman is not a single role or a fixed path; it is expansive and layered.
And we get to reclaim it.
Reclaiming these archetypes starts with awareness—recognizing where we have been forced into roles that don’t reflect the full truth of who we are. It means noticing where we’ve been conditioned to shrink, to mold ourselves into what is expected, to believe that our worth is tied only to how much we give or how easily we fit into the framework we’ve been handed.
From there, we step into choice—the choice to embody all of who we are, not just the parts that are convenient for others. We get to hold the curiosity of the Maiden without being dismissed as naive or giving our power away to others. We get to create as the Mother without losing ourselves in sacrifice. We get to own the wisdom of the Crone without being cast aside. We get to stand in our strength as the Warrior, our transformation as the Dark Goddess, and our deep knowing as the Mystic.
Reclamation is a process. It is unlearning, expanding, and taking back what was always ours.
Remember: You are not small. You never were.
Loving you in the process,
Taren
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