resisting the power of the bear
Thursday 14 August 2008 | I like a cookie
The heroine-choicemaker, unlike her male counterpart, can be threatened by the overpowering pull of maternal instinct. A woman may become pregnant at an inopportune time or in adverse circumstances, if she cannot resist Aphrodite and/or Demeter. When this happens, she may be diverted from a chosen path—the choice-maker as a captive of her instinct.
For example, a woman graduate student I knew almost lost sight of her own goals as she felt herself caught up by the urge to become pregnant. She was married and working toward a doctoral degree when she became obsessed with the idea of having a baby. During this time, she had a dream. In it, a large female bear held the woman’s arm between her teeth and wouldn’t let go. The woman tried unsuccessfully to get free herself. Then she appealed to some men for help, but they were of no use.
In the dream she wandered until she came on a statue of a mother bear and her cubs—reminiscent of a Bufano statue at the San Francisco Medical Center. When she put her hand on the statue, the bear let her go.
When she thought about the dream, she felt the bear symbolized the maternal instinct. Real bears are superb mothers, nurturing and fiercely protective of their vulnerable young. Then when it is time for the now-grown cubs to be on their own, the bear mother toughly insists that her reluctant cubs leave her and go out into the world to fend for themselves. This symbol of maternity had gotten a grip on the dreamer, and would not let her go until she touched an image of a maternal bear.
To the dreamer, the message of the dream was clear. If she could promise to hold on to the intent to have a child when she finished her degree (only two years longer), then maybe her obsession to get pregnant now would go away. And sure enough, after she and her husband had decided to have a child, and she had made an inner commitment to get pregnant as soon as she finished the degree, the obsession disappeared. Once again she could concentrate on her studies, uninterrupted by thoughts about pregnancy. She knew that if she were ever to have both career and family, she had to resist the power of the bear long enough to get her doctoral degree.
Archetypes exist outside of time, unconcerned with the realities of a woman’s life or her needs. When goddesses exert an influence, the woman as heroine must say yes, or no, or “not now” to the demands. If she does not exercise conscious choice, then an instinctual or an archetypal pattern will take over. A woman needs to “resist the power of the bear” and yet honor its importance to her, if she is caught in the grip of the maternal instinct.
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