Into the Heart of the Feminine Quotes

“When the feminine and our vitality become lost to power drives and life becomes a wasteland, the stage is set for the mythic world to give rise to a hero to transform and revitalize the situation. They mythic hero is a metaphor for our struggle to transform our consciousness and bring new life to ourselves.”
― Massimilla Harris, Into the Heart of the Feminine: Facing the Death Mother Archetype to Reclaim Love, Strength, and Vitality

“The great work of our time is to bring the feminine into this culture. And it is not an easy path. How does each one of us contribute? Believe it or not, it’s done in the most personal ways. Take time to listen to your dreams. Write them down. Take time to recognize that there are things going on within you that need to be felt, or said, or lived, or grieved. Pay attention to these things both in yourself and in the people in your life. Pay attention to the authentic self. – Marion Woodman”
― Massimilla Harris, Into the Heart of the Feminine: Facing the Death Mother Archetype to Reclaim Love, Strength, and Vitality

“Marion Woodman shares with us the gnawing sense of fear we may feel when we realize that we are not pleasing people or that they disapprove of us. She says it is as though our very cells were imprinted with a fear of shame, rejection, belittlement, and abandonment. Sensing these things is like seeing Medusa: We close down, becoming numb and overwhelmed with feelings. These, too, are like Medusa’s snakes and must be approached with great care.”
― Massimilla Harris, Into the Heart of the Feminine: Facing the Death Mother Archetype to Reclaim Love, Strength, and Vitality

“reconciliation through trying to understand them and their history and to “forgive” them, rather than hold them responsible for their behavior. We have to admit to ourselves that this instinctual hope is stronger than reason and reality. It is like a hope that never seems to die. It is romantic, consoling, and it is praised by our culture. This hope becomes a misunderstood waiting that appears patient, understanding, and wise. In reality, however, it is toxic, like pure poison, the poison of Medusa.”
― Massimilla Harris, Into the Heart of the Feminine: Facing the Death Mother Archetype to Reclaim Love, Strength, and Vitality

“As we put together our chronicle and highlight antidotes, dramas, and feelings, we need to disclose our story to someone who cares—someone who doesn’t know all the answers but who cares and has experienced his or her own journey through this territory. When we begin this journey, it is very humbling for all of us to admit that “I do not really know what I feel. I do not say what I mean, and, all too often, I do not do what I say.”
― Massimilla Harris, Into the Heart of the Feminine: Facing the Death Mother Archetype to Reclaim Love, Strength, and Vitality

“In a matriarchal society, our relationship to the group is the dominant value. Instead of being taught to succeed, children are taught to think of others first, to cooperate, and to subordinate personal goals to the general welfare. Guilt becomes the haunting terror”
― Massimilla Harris, Into the Heart of the Feminine: Facing the Death Mother Archetype to Reclaim Love, Strength, and Vitality

“The first he calls elementary, and its positive attributes are to nourish and protect, to give warmth and security.”
― Massimilla Harris, Into the Heart of the Feminine: Facing the Death Mother Archetype to Reclaim Love, Strength, and Vitality

“couldn’t just tell her to go to hell and get out of my life. If I did, I felt like I would have no one, and I seemed to continue the hopeless path of trying to please her, make her see my caring for her, get her to acknowledge me or what?”
― Massimilla Harris, Into the Heart of the Feminine: Facing the Death Mother Archetype to Reclaim Love, Strength, and Vitality

“From birth to death, love is not just the focus of human experience but also the life force of the mind, determining our moods, stabilizing our body rhythms, and changing the structures of our brains…Love makes us who we are, and who we can become.” These are the words of the modern brain researchers Lewis, Amini, and Lannon in their book on attachment theory and brain research, A General Theory of Love.”
― Massimilla Harris, Into the Heart of the Feminine: Facing the Death Mother Archetype to Reclaim Love, Strength, and Vitality

“Or we may be caught in a cycle of frustration because we realize we are split from our authentic selves but cannot figure out how to cultivate and nourish our relationship with ourselves.”
― Massimilla Harris, Into the Heart of the Feminine: Facing the Death Mother Archetype to Reclaim Love, Strength, and Vitality

“The father’s role, he says, is to provide the mother with the peace and security she needs to be a good enough mother.”
― Massimilla Harris, Into the Heart of the Feminine: Facing the Death Mother Archetype to Reclaim Love, Strength, and Vitality

“Looking at the great values of the feminine principle—relatedness, presence, an open heart, warmth, patience, and trust—I”
― Massimilla Harris, Into the Heart of the Feminine: Facing the Death Mother Archetype to Reclaim Love, Strength, and Vitality

“In order to bring the feminine into our world, we must begin in a personal way. It is not an easy path, and we will quickly see how readily it conflicts with the patterns of our daily lives. But in order to value the feminine and have it become reborn within us, we must take the time to reconnect with the wholeness of who we are. We have to take the time to listen to our dreams, to write them down, and to reflect on our lives. Honoring the feminine means having the patience and taking the time, like Mary in the Gospel according to Luke, to ponder these things in our hearts. We must recognize that there are many things going on within us that need to be perceived, accepted, felt, said, lived, grieved, and raged over. We need to give these things our attention, concern, and understanding.”
― Massimilla Harris, Into the Heart of the Feminine: Facing the Death Mother Archetype to Reclaim Love, Strength, and Vitality

“But our mothers are our first contact with the world of the feminine and the world of our emotions, which are closely related.”
― Massimilla Harris, Into the Heart of the Feminine: Facing the Death Mother Archetype to Reclaim Love, Strength, and Vitality

“complexes, which result from the wounds that shaped us, also hold a promise. Jung considered complexes to be the “royal road” to our unconscious and the architect of symptoms, dreams, and a transformed life. A myth like this one will show us what has been wounded, how the wound occurred, and the suffering such a wound inflicts. And we will then see what must be healed within ourselves by dying and being transformed and, finally, what new potentials we must live.”
― Massimilla Harris, Into the Heart of the Feminine: Facing the Death Mother Archetype to Reclaim Love, Strength, and Vitality

“All I have is a voice To undo the folded lie The romantic lie in the brain In the lie of authority Whose buildings grope the sky… We must love one another or die – W. H. Auden”
― Massimilla Harris, Into the Heart of the Feminine: Facing the Death Mother Archetype to Reclaim Love, Strength, and Vitality

“nurture our children, but we are also unable to truly nourish our own creativity,”
― Massimilla Harris, Into the Heart of the Feminine: Facing the Death Mother Archetype to Reclaim Love, Strength, and Vitality

“him. We too have to walk backward into our memories, feelings, and old patterns and reflect upon them so we can build up the strength we need.”
― Massimilla Harris, Into the Heart of the Feminine: Facing the Death Mother Archetype to Reclaim Love, Strength, and Vitality

“We will have to work on our dreams, look at the patterns in our lives, and examine our feeling reactions to people and life through journaling and developing more awareness of what is going on in our bodies.”
― Massimilla Harris, Into the Heart of the Feminine: Facing the Death Mother Archetype to Reclaim Love, Strength, and Vitality

“Bud’s book Sacred Selfishness: A Guide to Living a Life of Substance and our book Like Gold Through Fire: Understanding the Transforming Power of Suffering are also helpful guides for this part of the journey.”
― Massimilla Harris, Into the Heart of the Feminine: Facing the Death Mother Archetype to Reclaim Love, Strength, and Vitality

“And we must reconnect with our emotions, then and now, because our emotions link us to the life we lived or are living and tell us how we experienced or are experiencing it.”
― Massimilla Harris, Into the Heart of the Feminine: Facing the Death Mother Archetype to Reclaim Love, Strength, and Vitality

“If we fear confrontation, disapproval, disappointing someone, or freeze when we are not pleasing people, we know the Medusa/Death Mother is present.”
― Massimilla Harris, Into the Heart of the Feminine: Facing the Death Mother Archetype to Reclaim Love, Strength, and Vitality

“The first step is to recognize our denial of this wound and the depth of the wound’s place in our soul. Second, we must accept the reality of our lives, giving up denial and illusions, so that we can heal our pain and live in the truth of our own reality and potentials. The third step is to strengthen ourselves before confronting our Medusa and to realize that this is a labor of love. Fourth, following the path of Perseus, we will do our healing and our inner work, going deep inside ourselves as a labor of love. The fifth step is seeing the transformation take place as we die to our old, false life and are born into a new life. If we do not take this crucial fifth step, we might get stuck contemplating how bad our old life was and how unhappy and frustrated we are today.”
― Massimilla Harris, Into the Heart of the Feminine: Facing the Death Mother Archetype to Reclaim Love, Strength, and Vitality

“well. We must bring acceptance, endurance, devotion, and emotional engagement into the journey.”
― Massimilla Harris, Into the Heart of the Feminine: Facing the Death Mother Archetype to Reclaim Love, Strength, and Vitality

“creative. But he could never sustain his success because his Death Mother complex made him severely self-critical. His attacks of self-reproach produced severe anxiety, which resulted in his obsessively overthinking everything he did, and left him paralyzed in the way he related to people.”
― Massimilla Harris, Into the Heart of the Feminine: Facing the Death Mother Archetype to Reclaim Love, Strength, and Vitality

“It took us a long time and a lot of healing to awaken the Perseus within her and thus to start the quest for transformation.”
― Massimilla Harris, Into the Heart of the Feminine: Facing the Death Mother Archetype to Reclaim Love, Strength, and Vitality

“In truth, this part of ourselves, the animus, needs to have a prominent seat at the table in our personality, but it doesn’t need to be at the head of the table.”
― Massimilla Harris, Into the Heart of the Feminine: Facing the Death Mother Archetype to Reclaim Love, Strength, and Vitality

“When a woman’s animus develops in a healthy way over her lifetime, it helps her have the inner strength to find healing, to support her own voice, to move into the world with purpose and direction, and to develop her intellectual and spiritual capacities. When a man’s anima develops in a healthy way, it helps him become open to his feelings; to be in tune with his inner values; to feel “animated” and energized in his life; and, through reflecting on his experiences, to know his inner depths and develop his spiritual capacities.”
― Massimilla Harris, Into the Heart of the Feminine: Facing the Death Mother Archetype to Reclaim Love, Strength, and Vitality

“common denominator in our society. We saw in June Singer’s article “The Sadness of the Successful Woman,”
― Massimilla Harris, Into the Heart of the Feminine: Facing the Death Mother Archetype to Reclaim Love, Strength, and Vitality

“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage. – Anaïs Nin”
― Massimilla Harris, Into the Heart of the Feminine: Facing the Death Mother Archetype to Reclaim Love, Strength, and Vitality