23
" Our society fails to appreciate the woman who quietly responds to life with intense interest and with love for people, ideas, and things. Yet these characteristics are as deeply and truly creative as are the characteristics of those who seek to lead, to act, and to achieve. We have a bias against feminine values. Not only are we too busy to adequately nurture our children, but we are also unable to truly nourish our own creativity, our personhood, our ability to take a stand for life, and our capacities to love and live from the heart. The feminine qualities of receptivity, nurturing in silence, relatedness, patience, and secrecy (whether in a man or in a woman) are absolutely necessary to offset our society’s increasing institutionalization and pressures that leave us too busy to live. We cannot be good enough parents to our children, ourselves, or to the matters of our own heart until we confront the Death Mother’s power in ourselves and in our culture. Determination makes the difference. We must be determined to get over our culture’s impatient, quick fix, and get-on-with-it attitude that feeds the Death Mother. We must never give up and never let so-called reasons—Death Mother excuses such as time, money, health, an overpacked schedule, too many obligations, fears about hurting others or being selfish—stop us. "
― Massimilla Harris , Into the Heart of the Feminine: Facing the Death Mother Archetype to Reclaim Love, Strength, and Vitality
29
" Eros evokes self-integration, subjectivity, and the concern for individuals, and it is rooted in the material universe and the earthly feminine qualities, such as accepting, yielding, experiencing, and being receptive. "
― Massimilla Harris , Into the Heart of the Feminine: Facing the Death Mother Archetype to Reclaim Love, Strength, and Vitality
38
" Many of my female analysands painfully confess that they no longer have an idea of what it is to be feminine. Over twenty-five years ago, the Jungian analyst June Singer, in an article titled “The Sadness of the Successful Woman,” said that she believed that such women are suffering from a particular form of depression: They are mourning for their lost femininity. She also considered this an archetypal problem because it affects all of us—women, men, and children. Singer points out that our patriarchal society places its highest value on the archetype of personal identity. The emphasis on fame in our culture epitomizes this idea. From preschool, to sports, to jobs, to careers, to where and how we live, identity in our culture is based on personal achievements. The terror that goes hand-in-hand with our idolatry of identity grips us when we do not achieve what we want to, plan to, or should accomplish. We must then face the shame of failure, of not being good enough, or of not being who we thought we were. No wonder losing a job, getting divorced, becoming seriously ill, or—even on a smaller scale—having our kid’s team lose a game can fill us (or our kids) with shame. Shame haunts the identity-oriented person. "
― Massimilla Harris , Into the Heart of the Feminine: Facing the Death Mother Archetype to Reclaim Love, Strength, and Vitality
39
" We have put the value of love—of life, self, and others—in combative opposition to the value of personal empowerment. In actuality, these two values should be more like the Eastern concepts of Yang and Yin, which are not combative. Rather, they complement each other as opposites while retaining their own identities, reaching toward a universal harmony. Love needs empowerment to have strength and substance, and empowerment needs love in order to have value, purpose, and meaning. "
― Massimilla Harris , Into the Heart of the Feminine: Facing the Death Mother Archetype to Reclaim Love, Strength, and Vitality