By women’s author and teacher Miranda Gray.

Read also the introductory article.

Our way of life has a direct impact on the energies of our cycle archetypes – our inner Maiden, Mother, Enchantress and Crone. With the current pandemic crisis, our way of life has suddenly changed – and this means that the energies of our menstrual cycle phases will also change in response to our lifestyle change and the added stresses we are experiencing. So, for mental and physical wellbeing, we need to listen to our body and to our archetypes and find new ways to embrace them and express them to bring harmony and balance. We may even find that as we listen more to what they need and how we wish to express ourselves we start to live more in alignment with our cyclic nature, and our cycle responds positively!

Below are some simple ideas based on the information in my books ‘Female Energy Awakening’ and ‘The Optimized Woman’. These ideas follow common experiences of each of the archetypes, but your own experiences may be different. Listen to your body – and learn! 😊

So let’s look at what we can do to meet the needs of our Maiden and Mother Archetypes in their phases while we are living restricted lives and in self-isolation, so that we can maintain balance in the phase rather than respond from a stressed ‘fight or flight’ approach when this stress approach is not always needed or beneficial.

Balancing the Mother in self-isolation

The Mother Archetype in ‘fight or flight’ mode tends to define herself by doing lots of things for others, and in this way she can alleviate her fears. This can make her seem very bossy, and very controlling due to fear for the safety of her family and friends.

The unbalanced Mother Archetype will keep herself busy by doing too much for others, taking on more and more responsibility without being aware of her own energy levels and needs, and she has the very strong potential to burn herself out. A short period of super-active Mother Archetype can be an essential for a crisis situation, but if there is a long-term upheaval then the Mother Archetype may not have the energy to continue to keep giving freely in a way that keeps her energised and in balance. Especially in isolation with a family, a Mother has extra demands on her time and energy with occupying children, and perhaps also caring for elderly parents.

For women without partners or who don’t have family at home, the social isolation restrictions can be very hard on their Mother Archetype. It is also important for the Mother Archetype to feel part of a community and to be able to reach out to others to create new relationships and maintain existing ones. Where the intellect is important to the Maiden, feelings and touch are important to the Mother, and the ‘no touch’ restriction can be very challenging.

The energies and gifts of the Mother are emotional awareness, relationships, caring for others, communication, social contact and community, teaching.

To help our Mother archetype to be balanced we can:

• Reach out and offer to help others – IF we don’t already have responsibilities of care – or to take on new caring roles with an understanding that our energies are limited and that it is better to do a few things well than to try to help everyone and not meet their needs.
  
• Join an online group to ‘meet’ new people and to perhaps feel part of a local community that is managing and caring through this crisis. (Don’t join negative communities, otherwise you will be overloaded with a sense of try to hold and support everyone). It’s obvious that the Mother needs to reach out to friends and family, but we may not know the need for community.
  
• Teach or share our knowledge. It doesn’t matter if we are not a professional teacher, helping others to grow by sharing our knowledge is a fulfilling expression of Mother energies.
  
• Start teaching our children if there are no organised online activities or classes. Perhaps ask other parent to get involved and start online classrooms.
  
• Find new and unusual tactile ways to express love and feel loved. If we have a partner or family who are virus-free then we have the opportunity to touch and be touched as an expression of love. But for women living on their own, the restrictions on touch can be very hard. A pet can give us the opportunity to hug, and even a soft toy, or a piece of soft fabric which we wrap tightly around ourselves in a ‘hug’, can give the tactile feedback that our brains need.
  
• Express our practical creativity in cooking – making meals that will go further, using the limited ingredients we have to create something new, making dishes with our children as a way to teach them to cook.
  
• Offer time to others to share their experiences and concerns. In the Mother phase we are emotionally strong, so we can be there for others when they need to talk.
  
• Find a meditation or technique to send healing to the World to feel that we are helping everyone in this crisis. See the Sharing Meditation in the download area of wombblessing.com accessed after registration.

Lean more about balancing the other female archetypes of Maiden, Enchantress and Crone, and read the article ‘Introduction to Covid-19 self-isolation and mental and physical wellbeing in your menstrual cycle’