The Maiden Archetype
Making Peace with Your Maiden
The Maiden is one of the seven female archetypes. Archetypes, in a nutshell, are representative of aspects of the human psyche that have been embodied in our consciousness. This occurs not just in our current lifetimes but has been a reality in our past incarnations and throughout our ancestral lineages. Each woman wears the mantle of the maiden archetype not just during her maidenhood but throughout her life.
Like all other archetypes, the maiden possesses a special energy – you may call it a superpower – that we must harness and integrate into our personalities to live a full human existence and that is what we are here to do, to live fully and unapologetically. In order to be ourselves, we need to make peace with the maiden and welcome her back into the fold.
The maiden is wild and uninhibited. She represents the inner spring period of our lives when we first come upon our womanhood. The maiden stage begins with the onset of our menarche (menstrual cycle) and lasts until we become mothers (note – mother does not just mean to birth children. I will speak more on that next week), or roughly between the ages of 25 -30.
Maidenhood is a beautiful period in our lives. We reside in hope, optimism, dynamism and expression. Maidens live life fully because they have not had the opportunity to fear it yet. Unfortunately, there will come a time during our maiden period when we will know heartbreak and learn to ignore our intuition. We may be told that we are not good enough by others and internalize that. We begin to feel that we are lacking and not the perfect, divine creatures we are meant to be.
The maiden tests boundaries. As the maiden, we are trusting and open. We are looking to find our place in this world, separate and independent of our families of origin for eventually, and for whatever reasons, we will create soul families of our own.
The maiden seeks to know herself and is trying desperately to discover who she is. The maiden learns during this period that she still has much to learn. She will forge her own way, independently. She will knock down barriers and be unapologetically herself because she doesn’t know how to be anything else.
Of course, that self will evolve throughout the stages of a maiden’s life. The maiden is just uncovering the depth of who she is and may not be ready to step into her power fully. That’s okay, the wisdom of other phases in a woman’s life will allow her to return to the maiden’s strong and uninhibited energy, able to fully realize herself.
The maiden loves to play. She is filled with joy and possibilities. The Maiden has not been beaten down by life. She has her life in front of her and she lives it. The maiden experiments with different pathways until she finds the ones that suit her. She may experiment sexually. She may go into college with one major and leave with a degree in another. Being a maiden means to discover oneself.
The maiden’s vulnerabilities lie in the internal focus. A maiden can sometimes be self-absorbed. She may also overestimate her abilities much to her own detriment. She may get overwhelmed by all the possibilities life has laid out before her. I remember when I was a maiden and getting ready to enter college, I could not decide which path to take. After I graduated, I floundered around, flittering from job to job until I became a mother and had to get serious about providing for my son. I used to regret those mistakes.
I know I am not alone. Sometimes, we regret some of the things we did as the maiden. We must learn to integrate her into our more actualized selves. We must love her and make peace with her. She has made mistakes. We all do – that does not stop once we leave the maiden archetype. To embrace the maiden is to embrace our youthful selves and tell them it gets better. To deny the maiden is to deny an important part of ourselves.
How can you reconnect to your maiden? Think about who you were as a teen or young adult. What were the things that interested you – music? Films? Crushes? You may want to look at old photos. I know when I do, sometimes, I look upon them harshly. I want to tell that girl not to make some of the mistakes she did, but I realize I would not be the woman I am today had she not made those mistakes. Are they really mistakes even? With a mindset shift, we can see that even mistakes are necessary experiences for they teach us something important about ourselves, our lives or the world.
Try not to look back at the maiden unfairly. Love her for who she was and who she can be in your fully actualized self. Making peace with the maiden is making peace with your youth and truly understanding what impact those experiences had to forge the woman you are later in your life.
As a wise woman now, I just want to hug the maiden in me and tell her it gets better. The insecurities, the fear will subside or shift into something different. The anxieties will change, but she will be better equipped to handle them because she’s made missteps and learned from them. The maiden is in us. She never leaves us. We can access her any time we wish.
Maybe we buy a youthful outfit that makes us feel sexy. Maybe we put on that red lipstick or blue eyeshadow that society tells us we are too old for. Perhaps, we dye our hair purple or pink. Maybe we invite more play in our day to day. We can do this in many ways through games, love affairs and many more activities.
Make space for the maiden in your life no matter where you are at. She has much to teach you and much to learn from you. You’ll be happier when you allow her into your heart and forgive her for the missteps she made. No, that you made. Actualization or integration of all female archetypes, which we will continue to delve into over the next seven weeks, will make you whole. Return to wholeness and re-integrate the maiden no matter where you are on your journey.
The maiden is waiting to be loved, to be recognized, to be acknowledged and, most of all to be accepted, seen and understood. She has much to teach us because she had a lot to learn. That learning never stops so finding compassion for our maiden archetype should not be difficult. Just let it flow.
Embrace your maiden archetype. Don’t wait. The maiden is waiting for you.
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