off on her own to explore the neighborhood—as different as
Persephone and Artemis.
FAMILY ENVIRONMENT AND GODDESSES
The expectations of the child’s family support some goddesses
and suppress others. If parents expect daughters to be “sugar and
spice and everything nice” or “Mother’s little helper,” then they are
rewarding and reinforcing Persephone and Demeter qualities. A
daughter who knows what she wants and expects to have the same
privileges and opportunities as her brother might be called “willful”
when she is only being her persistent Artemis self, or she may be
told to “act like a girl” when she’s only being her one-of-the-boys
Athena self. Moreover, these days a little girl may find herself in a
reverse approval-disapproval pattern: she may be discouraged from
staying at home and playing “Mommy” or “house” (which she may
want to do). Instead, she is signed up for soccer and early education
(on which her parents may want her to thrive).
The child’s inherent goddess pattern interacts with family expect-
ations. If the family disapproves of the specific goddess, however,
a girl doesn’t stop feeling the way she does, although she may learn
not to act naturally and her self-esteem suffers. If “her goddess”
finds favor with her family, there may also be drawbacks. For ex-
ample, a girl who tends to follow the lead of others because she is
most like Persephone may have difficulties in knowing what she
wants after years of being rewarded for pleasing others. And the
budding Athena who skips grades has her intellectual abilities rein-
forced at the expense of friendships with peers. When inherent pat-
tern and family “conspire” to make a woman conform to one god-
dess, her development becomes one-sided.
If her family rewards and encourages a girl to develop what comes
naturally, she feels good about herself as she goes about doing what
matters to her. The opposite happens to the girl whose goddess
pattern meets family disapproval. Opposition doesn’t change the
inherent pattern, it just makes the girl feel bad about herself for
having the traits and interests she has. And it makes her feel inau-
thentic if she pretends to be other than she is.
Activating the Goddesses