I agree with your understanding of the two types, or maybe two levels of resilience. (Is there a third stage? Is this another trinity?) The next thought goes back to an observation you made. Many people in helping professions have been abused. And I think many do understand the depths of the trauma. And many professionals are externally okay - they are functioning well in society. But they are wearing masks and armor.
Maybe therapy is a type of "Me too" profession. The therapist is evolving along with their clients...hopefully. Maybe opening little by little and staying a few steps ahead so they can blaze a new trail through the swamp. Maybe therapists are more successful when they are in the swamp, too, but they know the high spots, the dry spots, the pathway out...Maybe their job is to discover and mark the pathways.
Of course, some therapists may try to treat those who are lost as a way of not dealing with their own selves hidden beneath the armor...
I don't think the choice is maiden or bitch. We are maiden - mother - crone - we have to be one, just based on age and experience. Any one of these can be the bitch. I made a flower essence once teaches us how to be a strong woman without being the bitch. That led me to think about strength and anger and the ways we use it. If we lead and are going to a good place, we are strong. If we just make everyone else miserable, that's my definition of the bitch.
I do love dogs, though, and have a hard time describing a nasty personality as the bitch. I think the word came from the defensive mother wolf - frightening!!
Maiden - mother - crone, though - one of my favorite trinities. The maiden is exuberant and maybe uncontrolled. She is young and naive and gullible. This is a happy time, when not damaged. The maiden reminds us of possibilities. But as we grow, we need to go from possibilities to decisions. We need to produce something. The mother is powerful. The mother can create human life with her body. The mother has the strength, endurance and power and flexibility and instinctual trust to birth a baby. The mother knows how to straddle two worlds while doing it, while allowing another human to be part of her then to separate from her. Mothers can make milk with their own bodies. We can feed the world. We instinctually know how to feed and nourish and nurture. (Maybe this is the wild me!?!) And now the crone. The crone knows how the story comes out. She has lived it or she has listened or observed others who have been through it. The wisdom of the crone is frighening.
Remember the quote - something to the effect that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it? The crone won't allow that to happen...unless she is silenced. Unless she is forced out of daily life, away from daily contact.
There is so much power in mother and crone, that maiden is the safest stage of womanhood, and so I am back to my conjecture that modern society can only continue on its current path if women remain child-like. We have jobs, where we are paid, at best, .75% of what a man with the same education, some experience will get. Because our jobs aren't real. We aren't real unless we are defined by a man. Single women are not included in many social gathering unless it is by other single women.
Being middle-aged and overweight, I am invisible. People simply do not see me, which is comfortable - but I don't think I want to be this. But I am comfortable here...and so I am trapped in my own cycle!
Riding my merry-go-round...
Sending you love as I pass...Clare!
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