Discovering Five Archetypes for Self-Tending

Another encouraging conversation with Diana

Sep 20, 2023

A warm welcome to all of the new subscribers to What the Day Holds.

In this newsletter I write about my experience of learning to tend myself as I care for my husband who has Parkinson’s Disease, including the present moment intimacies and tender beauty.

It is wonderful to have you here!

How is Your Heart?

I am sitting outside under a warm September sun and am feeling discombobulated. I keep trying to edit my Substack words to no sense of moving into more clarity. It all feels awkward and unreachable. Yuck! At least I created space to say that.

Oh my. The wordiness of an uncertain heart. The same heart that was racing again last night, destination still unknown. In an email I sent to a friend recently, I wrote:

How is your heart?

Mine seems to be racing at night these days. Where is it going? How do I catch it?

I need her here, to stay and be with me. We need her here, Gregory and I.

I have so much to tell you dear reader, but sometimes the words are fussy, or my heart is uncertain how to let them out.

So, as I have done before, I am writing a conversation with Diana to help me get them onto the page.

Ahava: Hi Diana

Diana: Hi Ahava

A: How are you?

D: This sun, and this inner quiet. All is well.

A: You have inner quiet?

D: So do you. You have just been covering it with a panic to get the post done.

A: Oh have I?

D: Oh yes, in my opinion.

A: I like your opinion.

D: I am glad. So relax and listen here for a while. Talk to me about what you want to say.

A: Well, I have been so excited to share the archetypes. Pretty simple. But it has gotten more complicated. I am feeling like I need to share a prelude, some kind of explanation, a theory. Really, I don’t know.

D: Why don’t you tell them about how you discovered them. How you were paying attention to your needs, which is something you do regularly, as a part of your self-care.

A: Yup I sure do.

D: And how do you pay attention?

A: I listen to my body, heart, mind. I tune in. Like right now, I am sitting here and the sun, wow, it feels so warm and lovely on my skin. My feet are up on the rattan ottoman and I am typing this conversation and I love it. So there’s a lot of joy and pleasure here. Gregory is listening to a talk on his tablet so he doesn’t need me right now. I have no where to go but be here.

D: This all sounds beautiful.

A: But it doesn't a Substack post make?

D: Why not?

A: Okay Di, I need your help, not a new post.

D: That’s not what I mean. Here you are, writing about being in a place of pleasure and ease, that’s kind of novel for a caregiver. Just sharing how you do that. Which archetype would you say you are in right now?

A: Oooh, good question. Hmmm… Muse.

D: Why?

A: Because I am letting myself play here, talking to you and dreaming into what I want to say in the post. It’s a place of creative exploration; there is nothing I could do wrong here. Whereas when I was editing, it was all feeling wrong. I said it on top of this page. “I keep trying to edit my Substack words to no sense of moving into more clarity. It all feels awkward and unreachable.”

D: So by exiting the “editing” and entering into “exploration,” you have shifted your mood and your feelings. You have relaxed and become aware of the pleasure and nourishment that are right here.

A: Oh wow, is this what I did, Di?

D: I don’t know, what do you think?

A: Yes, it’s often what I do, how I practice “shifting,” from one way of perceiving to another.

D: The way I see it, moving into exploration invited you to become present, in the moment, to your embodied attention.

A: As I listen to you, I am aware of breathing. Yoga this morning invited me to do the same. Moving my body in that slow deliberate way is so healing.

D: Which archetype is that?

A: Oh, ummm, I want to say Lover, because it is how I love myself and my body, by giving it some time to unravel and open and release.

D: That sounds beautiful.

A: It was, is. Lover doesn't have to mean sexual. It can be energetic or sensual or spiritual.

D: This is a fabulous revealing, as you keep opening up the the archetypes here. And now where are you?

A: Well, this feeling, talking to you and considering the archetypes, it’s so nourishing. Listening to the breeze, feeling the warm air around me as I sit here on the deck, seeing the shadow of the hummingbird on the bench seat as it hovers above and beside the feeder. It is all so lovely.

D: You are being present here. Whereas when you were editing, you were “in your head.”

A: Yes that’s what I felt.

D: Perhaps you can do this with the other archetypes.

A: Okay, so I have just gotten a call from a friend who has asked me to come and receive a bag she has packed for me. I have no idea what is in there, but I feel like a child about to receive a gift, and it’s not even my birthday, but it is Rosh Hashana, the birthday of the Jewish Year. So that would be the Child archetype.

D: And who is this friend?

A: She is the one with whom I meditated yesterday. Every week we get together with another woman and we sit in silence for a half hour in the garden. This would be the Mystic archetype. This friend also edited the blog I wrote recently for the new community garden, which was about grief. And now we are at the Mourner archetype.

D: Et voila, you have covered them all. Of course there is more to say, but you have done it. Now go get that gift!!

A: Okay Di. Thanks! Talk soon.

The Five Archetypes

I have been exploring five “characters” which represent different aspects of my experience which are asking for attention. They help me get clearer about what I need and to discern how I can meet those needs when I am tending myself.

To illustrate these archetypes, I share some photos below. The double image was a discovery I stumbled upon in iMovie as I was editing some videos of me dancing in our living room. What makes it so relevant and meaningful to this process of caregiving is that it acknowledges the relationship with myself.