Artemis. Jean Shinoda Bolen

She had only a year left to finish the academic preparation, after which she wanted to begin a practice. Now the idea of having a baby intruded and she felt that, if she gave in to it, it would mean sacrificing her career. When we explored what putting her hands on the statue of the mother bear could mean, she had a strong sense that, by doing so, she was making a promise. With the promise made, the bear could let her go.

      After this discussion with me, Christine went home and told her husband about the dream and its meaning to her. In their talk, they decided that, once she finished her last year of school, their goal would be for her to become pregnant. They would share childcare responsibilities and support each other's work. With Christine's husband backing up her promise to mother bear, her intrusive, obsessive thoughts went away. The mother bear let go the grip she had on Christine's psyche once she felt an inner certainty that she would honor the mother bear in herself.

      Bears and Women

      “Undressing the Bear” is a chapter in Terry Tempest Williams' An Unspoken Hunger: Stories from the Field (1995). In it, Williams tells bear stories, relates dreams of bears, and shares anecdotes that point to a connection between women and bears. She writes:

       We are creatures of paradox, women and bears, two animals that are enormously unpredictable, hence our mystery. Perhaps the fear of bears and the fear of women lies in our refusal to be tamed, the impulses we arouse and the forces we represent.

      Among the stories in this particular chapter, there is a description of a bear dream from a bookseller friend of Terry's who tells of sharing it with a male customer:

       “I dreamt I was in Yellowstone. A grizzly, upright, was walking toward me. Frightened at first, I began to pull away, when suddenly a mantle of calm came over me. I walked toward the bear and we embraced.” The man across the counter listened, and then said matter-of-factly, “Get over it.”

      Terry mused: “Why? Why should we give up the dream of embracing the bear? For me, it has everything to do with undressing, exposing, and embracing the Feminine.” She explains:

       I see the Feminine defined as a reconnection to the Self, a commitment to the wildness within—our instincts, our capacity to create and destroy; our hunger for connection as well as sovereignty, interdependence and independence, at once. We are taught not to trust our own experience.

      It is interesting that the ferocious protective power of the bear is an attribute of Artemis and not of the Greek mother goddesses, who were powerless to protect themselves or their children from male predators and abusive partners. In fact, in Greek mythology and in the history of the Western civilization that owes so much to the Greeks, women have neither been empowered nor equal to men, however Olympian their social status. Gaia, the personification of earth who birthed all life on the planet, is abused by her husband, Uranus, after he grows increasingly resentful of her fertility. When he prevents anything further from being born, she is in great pain, until her son, Cronos, emasculates his father and consigns him to the deepest and darkest part of the underworld, replacing him as the chief god. Rhea, the mother of the Olympians, stands by helplessly as her husband, Cronos, fearing that he will have a son who will do to him what he did to his own father, swallows her first five children as soon as they are born. Finally, in her sixth pregnancy, Rhea wraps a stone in swaddling clothes and tricks him into believing he has swallowed Zeus, who grows to manhood and, with allies, overthrows his father. Demeter, the mother of Persephone, can not prevent her daughter's abduction and rape.

      Good human mothers mirror their children, respond to their happy or sad emotions, and realize that their children's feelings matter. They see their individuality, their strengths, and their sensitivities. Between a healthy mother and child, there is a reciprocity and response that fosters the growth of emotional intelligence.

      This is not what mother bears do. Girls in the mold of Atalanta are often very independent, but not very good at intimacy with friends or partners. The forging of emotional bonds becomes challenging to them and to those who love them. Intimacy grows through mirroring, reciprocity, empathy, compassion, and thoughtfulness. Atalanta the adult may be a woman who did not learn how to look after the feelings of others and who may not know her own emotional needs or feelings. She can not learn this from bear mother/Mother Nature or the Artemis archetype. This she can only learn from other human beings.

      Chapter Three

      Atalanta and Meleager

      In marked contrast to the rejection and rage of Arcadia's king at Atalanta's birth, Meleager's birth is greeted with jubilation and celebration by all. In fact, Meleager's first accomplishment is to be born a boy. But the expectations placed upon Meleager from the moment of his birth also have consequences. As a first-born son with good lineage, position, and wealth, he enters a world of privilege and is expected to carry on the family tradition.

      Assumptions about who a newborn will grow up to be are made by parents, extended family, religions, social classes, and cultures. These assumptions can be changed or challenged if there is social mobility, universal education, and democracy in the historical time and place in which the child is born. Most people in the world today do not have the opportunity to make their own choices based on their innate predispositions or talents, or for love of what they do, or love for a particular person. And while this is especially true for daughters raised in places and families where patriarchal and fundamentalist religious attitudes limit them, it also has an effect on sons that often is not appreciated. Boys may be greatly valued over daughters, they may be more likely to be educated and have more social freedom, yet they too must conform to societal norms. Physical punishment or shame enforces acceptable behavior in boys as well as girls.

      Psychological Abandonment

      Atalanta is physically abandoned and expected to die. The harsh reality is that many unwanted girls face a similar fate today. However, boys are often not free to grow up to be the men they want to be either, especially if they are princes—metaphorically or actually. Meleager, like Prince Charles and now Prince William of England, is expected to take on the role to which he is born, as are many of the sons of political or business leaders today. If that role isn't a good psychological fit, it can result in an emotionally abandoned child whose own dreams do not matter in the psyche of the man. This may also be true for the sons of immigrants who enjoy great opportunities and so must fulfill high expectations. And it may be true for the son whose purpose is to be the successful athlete that his father aspired to be. When sons who are drawn to create art, play music, or make things with their hands are born into families where intellectual and financial achievement is what matters, they often find themselves abandoning interests dear to them in order to be accepted and valued.

      I developed the concept of the “abandoned child” when I wrote Ring of Power (1992). This inner child is an archetype when a son or daughter is expected to be an extension of a parent's needs, ambitions, or unfulfilled life. It arises when a child is not seen as an individual who comes into the world to live a unique life of his or her own. It is illustrated by the story of a three-generation dysfunctional family in Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle, the four operas that comprise Der Ring des Nibelungen: Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Sieg fried, and Gotterdammerung, and it appears in the lives of people who have similar family dynamics. In this powerful archetypal story set to magnificent music, Wotan is the counterpart of Zeus. He makes decisions about his children, prescribes their roles, and values them as tools through which they may acquire the ring of power after which he lusts.

      In today's world, the ring of power can symbolize money, fame, political power, prestige, defeating a rival or triumphing over an enemy, or furthering an ambition for power and acceptance beyond wealth. This was the case for Joseph Kennedy, founding father of a family that was seen, for a time, as the equivalent of an American royal family.

      Kennedy's sons were groomed to become presidents of the United States. By doing so, they would acquire power and respectability beyond that enjoyed by those who looked down upon their