The Descent. The Return.
Becoming Whole
Five paintings. Nine Years.
One woman's descent and return.
This is not a series about archetypes.
It is a series about what happens when you finally stop performing your life — and begin to live it.
nine years in the making
the discovery
In October 2016, I was diagnosed with breast cancer.
But the truth is, something in me had been dying long before that.
I was a global corporate executive. A provider. A strategist. A woman who could outwork and outperform almost anyone — except the version of herself she had locked away in the name of success.
Cancer cracked it open.
What followed was not a detour. It was the work — the leaving of corporate life, the unraveling, the searching, the hurricane, the flood, the loss of everything, the basement in Minnesota, the studio, the morning practice, the paintings.
Becoming Whole is the story of that journey — told through five large-scale mixed media paintings, grounded in the psychological framework of Toni Wolff's four feminine archetypes, and expanded by a fifth of my own: the Individuated Woman.
The woman who holds all of them.
The Four Feminine Archetypes
Toni Wolff was a Jungian analyst and contemporary of Carl Jung who identified four primary feminine archetypes — four distinct orientations through which women engage with life, self, and others.
The Mother — who holds, nurtures, and creates space for others to become.
The Amazon — who acts, defines, and moves forward without waiting for permission.
The Hetaira — who meets another fully, who sees and is seen, without losing herself in the contact.
The Medial Woman — who senses what lies beneath the surface, who listens before she speaks.
Each archetype carries both a light expression and a shadow. Each one, unintegrated, becomes a limitation. Together — held consciously, moved among fluidly — they become wholeness.
I added a fifth: the Individuated Woman. She is not a separate archetype. She is what emerges when the others are no longer experienced as separate.
The Paintings.
Five paintings. Five archetypes. One through-line: what it means to stop performing your life and begin to live it.
mother
The Mother holds, nurtures, and makes space for others to become. At her fullest, she gives from abundance. In shadow, she gives until there is nothing left of herself.
For most of my life, I confused love with provision. I believed my worth was in what I could produce — the salary, the stability, the orchestrated family vacations that stood in for presence. I was the one who paid for everything and attended nothing. When I finally stopped, I had to ask a question I had never allowed myself: if I wasn't providing, what good was I?
From the poem —
I turn inward.
And I hear it — a child's voice. Mine.
She needs a mother. Is this where I fit?
Dear me — I'm sorry. I love you. Please forgive me.
It is spring again.
Who learned — finally — that loving them well
meant also loving herself.
Whole.
amazon
The Amazon defines herself on her own terms and acts without waiting for permission. At her fullest, she is decisive, capable, and free. In shadow, she isolates herself behind armor, and wonders why nobody can reach her.
I was eight years old the first time I understood that being loved was not something I could count on. So I built the armor. I became the one who delivered results, who held the financial weight, who never needed anything from anyone. When the 360 review came after my promotion, I read the pages carefully. They would follow me into battle. But they didn't like me. I had no idea.
From the poem —
The armor doesn't come off all at once.
But it makes a hell of a crash.
I'm addicted to anger. To the power. To the fight.
And now it's gone.
And I quiet down.
Like a baby who has found its mother.
I don't know.
I need help.
I am desperately lonely.
hetaira
The Hetaira meets another fully — she sees and is seen, without losing herself in the contact. At her fullest, she is present and genuinely mutual. In shadow, connection becomes dependency. Being seen replaces knowing oneself.
I grew up on Disney films and romance novels, trained in the art of how love was supposed to be. And when reality didn't match the dream, the Amazon stepped in. I'll just do it myself. Not because I was strong. But because I didn't know how to be a healthy Hetaira. So I swung between two shadows. Neither one whole.
After the flood, after everything was gone, I was crying. Sean held me. And he said: Go do what you love. Paint. I've got you. I've got us. And we will be okay.
I didn't know how to receive that. I still don't, fully. But I am learning.
From the poem —
This is not the love I grew up believing counted.
But this —
this quiet, unglamorous, daily showing up —
this is the love that holds.
I am not there yet.
But I am closer than I ever thought I would be
medial woman
The Medial Woman senses what lies beneath the surface. She sees what is not immediately visible. She listens before she speaks. In shadow, the inner world grows so consuming that the person standing right in front of her disappears into the noise of her own interpretation.
I heard Jesus in my heart as a child. Clearly. I told my friends. They called me a Jesus freak. So I stuffed it away for decades. When I left corporate life, the door cracked open — and I went a little wild. Everything became a sign. I was gobbling it all up because it had been forbidden for so long.
The light came through spiritual direction. A container. A practice. The searching got quieter and deeper. What shifted wasn't that I found God. What shifted was that I stopped believing God had abandoned me. Am I worthy? You have always been.
From the poem —
There it is.
Quiet. Sitting. Waiting.
Light. Me.
Stripped of fear.
Stripped of all that is not Love.
There it was. There I was.
You do not find it.
You become still enough to notice
it was never lost.
individuated woman
The Individuated Woman is not a fifth archetype. She is what emerges when the others are no longer experienced as separate — when the holding and the acting and the relating and the perceiving can all exist in the same person, without any one of them claiming to be the only truth.
She moves among them. Not consciously choosing. Arising as needed. Always returning to center.
This series is the culmination of nine years of work — from a cancer diagnosis in 2016 to these paintings. Speaking from the healed place doesn't mean the wound has no memory. It means you can visit it without being consumed by it.
From the poem —
I am not one thing.
I am not finished.
I am not arriving.
I am here —
present to what is,
open to what comes,
rooted in what holds.
And that —
that is enough.
*****
“Speaking from the healed place doesn’t mean the wound has no memory. It means you can visit it without being consumed by it”
Read the full story
Each painting has a full post on Substack — the archetype, the personal story, the painting reveal, and a poem. Three posts per painting. Fifteen pieces of writing in all.
If something in this work has moved you — the full story is waiting.
wholeness isn’t a finished state.
It's the ability to remain present as different parts of yourself come forward.
To hold all of it — loosely, honestly, with as much grace as you can manage on any given day.
This is what becoming whole looks like.
This activity is made possible through a grant from the Central Minnesota Arts Board, thanks to funds provided by the McKnight Foundation.continue exploring
