I’m starting my second day at the hat shop. I get to ride the motorcycle about 20 miles into town, through the mountains and the ranch land. I really love it here in Montana. I can’t believe how much I like it. How quickly I’m getting a taste of what it's like to just have a slow life here. I need a slow life.

I made some fans yesterday in the old woodworking shop my grandma has on her property. Her ex-husband was a fine Japanese woodworker. He made gorgeous furniture in his day. He passed about 12 years ago, and the shop has sat empty.

Anima sounds like anus

When The Man was around, we dreamed about him helping my grandma turn the shop into an actual residence. We never told her this. We just debated if he might have been able to do it for less because we were gonna live on the property in the RV. There’s this part of me that just loves the life of following a man. Maybe it’s the part of me that wants to be saved. Maybe it’s the one that wants to be cherished. I generally want a partner in crime. I love the idea of being like, yup, what do you need, let’s go do that together. I have this desire to make sacrifices for a man. For our life together.

But, maybe it’s just Jung’s anima—the feminine desire to seek union with the masculine.

Jungian psychology might say that this dynamic echoes an early longing for fatherly protection or guidance, or for the reassurance that you don’t have to carry it all alone. I would say both of those things are true in me. So much so that I don’t know if this is healthy or not, meaning it’s still a deep need of my inner child. She needs something here, often so much so that my adult self can’t make a decision without her crying. She is still longing for The Man to come back around.

How do you heal the part of you that was raised by the wounded masculine? I mean my father transitioned to a woman…if that’s not wounded masculine, I don’t know what is. I can’t even remember where or when or what my father did or did not. But I definitely didn’t have a masculine that stayed.

Healing the wounded masculine means tending to the animus—the inner masculine archetype that shapes how a woman thinks, acts, asserts, protects, and relates to the external masculine. Archetypal frameworks for healing have been really helpful for me. I’m aware of all these different parts. I need a nuance to them that allows me to split them and dive deep. If you can’t put awareness on it, you can’t change it.

When the animus is wounded or undeveloped, it can show up in ways like:

• Harsh self-criticism or perfectionism (ask me if I’m really that fat)

• Difficulty trusting men or idealizing/saving them

• Feeling ungrounded, unstructured, or overly dependent on relationships

• A compulsive need to be in control or, conversely, to be saved

• Struggling to take action on inner visions

• Seeking validation for one's intelligence or ideas externally

Most of my wounding has to do with relationships (and therefore the relationship to myself). It’s why one of the best ways for me to heal has just been to do stuff with people, get triggered, and then sift through the sediment left behind. I don’t usually know the wound is there until I get a poke at it. I’m pretty good at even tricking myself that I’m more fine than I am.

Healing my anus

I know that the work for the rest of the year for me is to heal my inner child. There’s something about inner child work that I absolutely hate. It’s like, I’m an adult, why do I have to talk to myself like a child? But I think that’s the point. It shouldn’t be hard to give your child love and care. If you can’t do it for yourself, how do you expect to do it for another? And, we know inner child work actually works.

Lately, I’ve just been putting a hand on my chest and saying, “I love you, you’re safe”. Whenever I feel like something in me is clouding my ability to be clear and discerning. I take that as my inner child popping up to say, Wait, wait, please, don’t forget I need things.

I’m of the opinion that most therapists are quite bad, and because of that, we need these tools to be a basic part of living in a society with other people. We should be able to do healing on our own in our communities. It shouldn’t be rocket science to connect with your inner child. And, it shouldn’t be gatekept information about how to heal it. I’ve paid thousands of dollars to learn the kind of information I should simply have had explained to me by a parent.

I believe that the more psychology information that hits the mainstream, the better we are at building healthy communities from the start. Ones with rites of passage for youth. Ones where elders are at the center of wisdom. Ones where parents have wells of support to go to, so they’re not alone raising kids.

Inner child work is the hardest work for me because I’m resistant. My teenager calls it anus becuase if its funny maybe it doesn’t have to be so serious. I have to remind myself that on the other side of resistance is change, and usually, release.

Some things I’m focused on today:

1. Speaking to my own inner child like the healed masculine would:

• Focused and discerning

• Protective and directed

• Spiritually connected and full of insight

• Creative and generative (not just reactive)

• Loyal to the soul’s unfolding

Jung suggested that women must “marry” their animus. Not project him onto external men (The Man wasn’t perfect), but integrate him as an inner partner.

2. Imagine my inner animus (the wounded masculine in me):

• Sit in silence and invite the animus to appear—he may come as a figure, a voice, or a presence.

• Speak to him. Ask what he needs. What his wounds are. Where did he learned to act this way?

• Let the answers come from deep within—often surprising, complex, or symbolic.

• This isn’t fantasy; it’s a conscious relationship with your inner world.

3. Create more structure (my feminine loves structure):

The animus is what gives form to the inner world. When a woman has many ideas or dreams but no execution, the animus may be underdeveloped. This is the easiest one to see, because we see women scared to act on their dreams, stalling them, or just not doing it at all. It’s scary to put yourself out in the world. The masculine does it EASY.

• Set structures that support your creativity (making every day).

• Build things. Finish what you start.

• Learn to discern between intuition and impulse.

This is how the animus becomes a servant to your soul, not a tyrant to your mind.

So, can I offer the same energy of sacrifice and cherish to my own life path?

I’ll have to. It’s really the only answer.

Love,
Valerie