The Mother Female Archetype

The word mother is pretty charged.

It can bring up uncomfortable feelings about your own mother if you have a challenging relationship with her, guilt for not being a “good enough” mother or for not having human babies of your own, or the feeling of unconditional love.

Whether you like it or not, all women are mothers in some capacity and we all have mothers.

The Mother is one of the four main female archetypes along with the Maiden, Enchantress and Crone. The Mother at her core represents care giving, fully embodying her creativity and unconditional love.

This archetype is one of the most loved in society, history and novels. Every person can relate to the Mother archetype because no matter what our relationship is to our mother, we all have mothers. Of course, within this archetype is the “good” mother who represents unconditional love and the shadow side, which is the Dark Mother who represents the wicked step-mother archetype.

We can’t talk about Mothers without talking about babies— another charged word.

While every woman is a mother in some capacity, not all mothers have human babies of course. Since we are biologically designed to procreate (whether you like it or not), women’s bodies go through a grieving process if you don’t have a baby whether this decision is conscious or not. The body mourns what it didn’t create as it was biologically “designed” to do.

I’ve seen this occur in women who suffer through perimenopause and have various hormone imbalances like shorter menstrual cycles, heavy periods, PMS, fibroids, etc. as well as women who suffer through the transition into menopause.

The best way to validate your body if you don’t end up having kids is by asking it how does it feel about not having a baby? Then you can validate it and saying to it that you’re sorry it didn’t fulfill its mission to have babies, but you know it would have been a wonderful mother. Tell your body that you’re sorry for not having children but that you love and honor your body anyway. I also highly recommend journaling about this and nurturing your body like a mother would when you’re feeling down or sick. It¡s never too late to mother yourself!

So if you’ve had children, there is a certain level of mothering energy you know how to use which is fulfilling because you’ve been a mother in the way that it was biologically intended, no matter how challenging that is or was.

If you haven’t had children on the other hand, it can become easy to “mother” people, situations or problems in our way that can get messy because they haven’t been fulfilled as a mother in the biological sense. This can look like “mothering” their partner and friends inappropriately, meddling in other people’s problems as a way to feel fulfilled as a mother, or mothering their students.

See why the word “mother” is so charged with emotions?

The feminist movements over the past few decades and the rise in birth control use and methods available have given women the freedom to pursue their dreams and careers beyond having children. The problem is women were never taught how to be fulfilled if you decide not to have babies and how to take care of your body when it goes through that grieving process if you haven’t had kids and are beyond your childbearing years. The body feels a sense of death because no baby was born out of her eggs.

The good news is that even if you don’t have children, women can still be fulfilled as a Mother by creating things beyond babies. This is another way to own your creativity. Some examples of “babies” that are not human are: books, pets, creative projects and hobbies, garden, home, businesses, cooking, paintings, music, dance, travel, etc.

Mother Archetype Characteristics

Keywords: Love, creativity, healer, care giver, nurturer, persistent

Moon phase: Full moon

Season: Summer

Menstrual cycle: Pregnancy

Goddesses: Virgin Mary, Isis, Hathor, Lakshmi, Parvati, Ceres, Hera, Gaia

When in balance: She feels fulfilled, has healthy boundaries in her relationships, has a strong sense of self beyond being a mother, fully owns her creativity, knows when to help heal and when to give others space to heal themselves, and knows how to take care of herself first before helping others.

When out of balance: feels unfulfilled as a Mother, doesn’t have healthy boundaries and therefore over gives, feels depleted, has trouble connecting to her true self beyond being a Mother, meddles in other people’s problems and drama too much, has trouble creating in a healthy way, results to martyrdom.

Other Mother archetypes: Queen, Mother Bear, Fairy godmother, evil step mother, devouring Mother, Mother Earth

If you would like help healing your Mother archetype, you can book my Healing the Mother Healing Program. To learn more, click here.

Read my blog post about the Maiden, Enchantress and Crone archetypes.

Check out my blog post Working with your menstrual cycle for improved creativity and productivity here.