“…Especially to be examined are those long-held tenets which make life too safe, which over-protect, which make women walk with a scurry instead of a stride….

If we stay overly long with the protective mother within our own psyches, we find ourselves impeding all challenges to ourselves and therefore blocking further development. While I do not in any way advise that a woman ought to throw herself into torturous or abusive situations, I do mean she must set for herself something in life that she is willing to reach for and therefore take risk for. It is through this process that she sharpens her intuitive powers. 

Most of us will not let the too-good mother die just because it is time. Although this too-good mother may not allow our most vivd energies to surface, it is so nice to be with her, so comfortable, why leave? Often we hear voices within our minds which encourage us to hold back, to stay safe. 

…what occurs when one compresses a vivid energy and allows it no life? Like the magic porridge pot in the wrong hands, it grows, and grows, and grrrrows, until it explodes! spilling all of its goodness onto the ground. So, we must be able to see that for the intuitive psyche to be invigorated, the nice hovering protecter must recede. Or perhaps more accurately, we eventually find ourselves pushed out of that nice cozy tête-á-tête, not because we planned it that way, not because we were completely ready—no one is ever completely ready—but because there is something waiting for us at the edge of the woods, and it is our fate to meet it. 

In her guts a woman knows there is a deadliness in being the too-sweet self for too long. ” | Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves