Divine Feminine Archetypes with Courtney Hanson

Jennifer Norman:
Hello, beautiful humans. Welcome to The Human Beauty Movement Podcast. My name is Jennifer Norman, founder of The Human Beauty Movement and your host. I created this podcast to have open conversations about all aspects of the human experience. When we're curious, kind, and courageous, we evolve powerfully as individuals and thrive as a human race. I'm so glad that you're joining me for today's show.

Jennifer Norman:
Let me tell you, I always find it so special when women make it their lives work to help other women. In my own personal past, I was not always surrounded by this kind of support. I happened to be very competitive when I was younger, and that prevented me from feeling really close to other women and accepting true friendship or help. So maybe that's why I find it so refreshing. My guest today is a person who has gotten in touch with the divine feminine and helps other women do the same. Courtney Hanson is a best-selling author, Reiki master, somatic healer, and inspirational speaker. She helps women remember their soul's purpose and return home in their bodies. She's here to talk about the power of feminine archetypes and womb healing and all sorts of wonderful topics. Welcome, Courtney, to the show.

Courtney Hanson:
Oh, thank you so much for having me.

Jennifer Norman:
I feel so excited to have this conversation. Now, you identify obviously as a woman. You're a wife. You're a mother of three, apparently a mama to three beautiful fur babies as well. You have to talk about your journey, about your life so far, and how it led you to the current work that you do.

Courtney Hanson:
Yes. So my journey started off very messy, thinking of how I can time lapse this. I had a very traumatic childhood. I was raised by a single dad who was very abusive. He had his own struggles and trauma that he did the best he could with the tools that he had. I had a mom who was absent and not really around and narcissistic and very much into how everything looked and not how we felt as humans and as her children. Growing up, the only coping skill that I learned to have was booze, and so I would turn to alcohol because that made me feel a little bit better. When my mom left my dad, the man that she left him with was very high up in the Mormon church, and he had sexually abused me, which is why my father got full custody of me and why I wasn't allowed to see my mom for a very, very long time.

Courtney Hanson:
Now. I never got to deal with any of this. They had tried talk therapy. They had tried counseling as a kid. Nothing seemed to work, and so it was very. Just brushed under the rug. We would have these conversations, and it would be like, oh, yeah, remember when he did that? It's no big deal. It was very, just not ever addressed.

Courtney Hanson:
And so as I got older, I ended up getting married, having babies, all the things I married a firefighter, had bought the house, had two kids, and when I had my third, I got postpartum depression, and I started drinking because my son was in the NICU for a month. And remember, that is my coping skill. So that is what I started to do when I got home from the hospital without my baby, who was in the hospital, and I started to spiral hard. Now, my husband left and he had to leave for six weeks for a work thing. And so I was by myself. I had this baby who was sick, I had two other kids, and I started to spiral. I later on went and had an affair. I tried to commit suicide.

Courtney Hanson:
I just could not live with myself. And all of my childhood trauma started to resurface as the postpartum got worse and worse and worse. Now, in that hotel room where I tried to drink myself to death, I didn't die, but instead I had this huge spiritual awakening. My grandmother, who was my everything, she raised me till I was twelve, and she probably is the reason that I am where I am today. She came through to me in that hotel room and basically told me I wasn't done and that I needed to pull it together. And so I quit drinking. I have been sober for years now, and I made it my life's purpose in that moment that I was going to get better. I was going to study all things psychology and figure out the why behind everything.

Courtney Hanson:
Now, what happened was I kind of was starting to follow breadcrumbs. So it started with reiki. It always starts with Reiki, I feel like, right, everyone starts with Reiki. And I then got into neuroscience, which got me into trauma therapy. I became so passionate about trauma, which led me to jungian psychology. Now, when I found jungian psychology, what was really amazing was that for the first time in my life, taking the somatic therapy and the Reiki and everything that I did, I could combine these modalities and they all made sense in archetype. I was like, oh, my God, you don't have to be just the mother, maiden and crone, right? You can be the creatrix, you can be the queen. Like, you can embody these different things at different points in your life and at any aspect that you're feeling something or you're trying to call something into your life, you can take on this archetype and you can embody the practices of this archetype, and it just made so much sense to me.

Courtney Hanson:
But the information was not out there in a very tangible way for women to like. It was out there on what they were, but not how to embody them. So that's where my book Within came from, it was during COVID that I wrote it, and I felt like there were so many people who were sitting with their trauma for the first time in their life. There was nothing to keep them busy, and it was just bleeding over. And so I was like, okay, Zoom does not work for everyone. I need to create something that people can do in their living rooms to walk through this trauma, to walk through the pain and everything that they've been through in a very tangible, bite-size way. So Within came to fruition, and it was basically therapy. And all the archetypes combinded to...

Courtney Hanson:
Combinded. I just made up a word! Combined into one that people could work through. They could practice embodiment. They could get in their shadow work. They could start doing the things, but in a very bite sized way, where it didn't feel like this overwhelming data input of all these different people's information. It could just be one thing at a time.

Jennifer Norman:
I remember also when I first learned about Carl Jung and the archetypes, I was like, oh, my God, this is so fascinating. And it's like a little rabbit hole that you want to go down and learn even more about, and you're like, it all makes sense.

Courtney Hanson:
They see me!

Jennifer Norman:
And then tying it in with the somatic healing, the Reiki, the other things that really develop a little bit more meaning out of how we are, why we act a certain way, how we behave, what our reactions are. So interesting. So I would love for you to share a little bit about what you learned in terms of feminine archetypes, if you can go over some of that. I know you mentioned a few of them. The creatrix, the maiden, the crone, et cetera. Can you share a little bit just so that people have, like, a little bite sized idea of what the archetypes are and how they might help people to learn a little bit more about themselves?

Courtney Hanson:
Absolutely. So I think the starting point for everyone is understanding the mother, the maiden, and the crone.

Courtney Hanson:
Right? So the maiden is our pre pubescent. It's before we're a mother, very free and wild. And at any time, you can still go back and embody the maiden if you're feeling that need for freedom. Right. And what's cool about the maiden is when you take it. I'm going to try and make this as simple as possible. When you take it into Greek mythology, the maiden is actually Persephone, which her story is that she was taken from the king of the underworld and she transformed and came back as this queen from being this little innocent girl picking flowers, right. And roaming free.

Courtney Hanson:
And so the moral of the story is that you can transform from any archetype at any time. Right now, we have the main ones that are maiden, younger, mother, midlife, crone, older. With the crone, you also have the wise woman, the sage. It's someone that has that wisdom of just life has lived and can share it. It's not like book smart or anything like that. It's like the medicine woman would be more like midlife. Right? And then when the Creatrix and the other ones that I was explaining come into play is that you have your main three that I just described. But then you have all these sub archetypes that are things that you are trying to manifest and call into your life.

Courtney Hanson:
So let's say that I am working on a big project for business. And I need to channel that sacral energy, that creative sexual energy, that power. Then I'm probably going to tune into the lover or the creatrix, because that's going to channel that area that I need to make that come into a reality.

Jennifer Norman:
Now, I want to pause for a moment because some people might not understand the sacral energy. So when we're talking about chakras, the sacral energy is the womb space. And it's essentially the center of your creative flow, your creative energy, your creative vibe. And the interesting thing is that sexual energy and creativity are very much tied because you are essentially creating your baby, whether it be a physical, real baby, or whether it's a project or something that is brand new to the world. And so it's often represented by the color orange. But, yeah, sacral energy is like channeling in this idea of just bringing something new into the world.

Courtney Hanson:
Yes. And to touch on that, too, as women, we are born to create. We are born into this mother archetype, whether that is. And I'm glad you touched on that, whether that is birthing a project or birthing a business. But we are meant to create. That is our purpose. That is our dharma. So tapping into that womb space and tapping into that sexual energy is so important to make sure that's flowing.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah. And whether you're a man or a woman, we all have masculine and feminine energies. And so it's not necessarily just relative to females, it can be also males tapping into sexual energy, womb space energy, in order to feel and fuel their creative space.

Courtney Hanson:
I was just going to touch on that. You have the main archetypes, and then you have these sub archetypes that you can reach into at any given time according to what is happening in your life.

Jennifer Norman:
Yes. And you know what is so interesting is that a lot of times I'll go and I'll be like, oh, that's me. No, wait a minute. That's me, too. Oh, wait a minute. And I'm like, I can be the maiden, the mother, and the crone at the same time. How is this possible? Am I just mixed up? What is going on here?

Courtney Hanson:
And I think that's where we get that permission slip, right? We as humans, I think, put ourselves in boxes a lot instead of giving ourselves this permission that we are co creating with the universe. Like, we are truly limitless beings that can create and be anything we want. And we can channel these different archetypes all at one time. And that's what's so beautiful about it, is it gives you the space to embody whatever you're currently working on. So I might be, let's say, in my lover archetype. So I might be flirty and fun and in this phase of life, but I might be wanting to call in this queen archetype of being diplomatic and having a business or knowing how to run something and being in that very confident energy of self love and self care. And I think it's really important, too, to touch on that. Each archetype has a shadow side.

Courtney Hanson:
So we have to be careful and acknowledge, too, when we're working with archetypes. And that's one thing that I touch on in my book, is, what is the shadow side? And you might be embodying all the sides of the queen archetype that are the shadow side. You might be in the jealousy, you might have rage, you might have these things that you can really look at and work on healing and bringing over to the other side of that archetypal structure.

Jennifer Norman:
The book is called Within. I encourage everybody to go take a look at it now. I feel like on the journey of growing, evolving, being a child and becoming a woman, going through all of the phases of life, it's almost like we've lived a thousand lives, and at any given point, you can identify with any number or any specific ones of these archetypes, and it's helpful. It's almost like a little bit of a roadmap, little pieces of yourself that you can say, yeah, these are the energies. This is what I call it. I understand it a little bit more. It's not necessarily to box you in and make you feel guilty, like, oh, this is my archetype. I'm not allowed to deviate from this.

Jennifer Norman:
If I'm a mother, then I cannot be a crone or I cannot be a maiden. That's not really what this is about. It's essentially helping you to understand a little bit more of yourself, because some people do really need to have a little bit more of a logical imprint, I think, in order to gain a bit more understanding about what's going on, to gain a little bit of clarity and to define what's going on inside them, and also to be able to manifest. A lot of times, we're spiritual beings having a human experience. Part of that manifestation is being able to make logic and order and meaning out of it. Those are masculine traits, but combined with the feminine is very powerful. So you can take your spiritual essence, a bit of that chaos that we all kind of come to earth with, and then harness it and then say, okay, this is how I'm going to embrace it and how I'm going to move forward and draw it into the physical so that I can actually create the path in this human form, in this physical nature that I'm in now, and make it something that we can see, smell, touch, feel, taste, all of those things. And that's beautiful.

Jennifer Norman:
Otherwise, sometimes it's hard to be able to say, well, where do I go? What do I do? How do I act? Why are these things happening to me? How do I manage? And I think that having a book that taps into psychology, that taps into some of these archetypes as women is super, super helpful.

Courtney Hanson:
Yeah.

Jennifer Norman:
So, next question. I would love to talk about the shadow side a little bit more, because I, for a long time, was like, I don't like to think about the negative. I don't like to think about the dark stuff. I'd rather focus my attention to the light. I'd rather be positive. But that's not necessarily the whole picture. And we might not be doing ourselves justice, or we might be doing ourselves a bit of disservice if we don't acknowledge the dark side or the shadow side or the things that trip us up when we are behaving in a certain way. And so can we talk a little bit about womb healing and the shadow side?

Courtney Hanson:
Yes, absolutely. So I think every human on the planet should be doing shadow work. Shadow work. It's not good or bad, it just is. Right? Our shadow is essentially. So we have three layers. We have the conscious, we have the subconscious, and then we have the unconscious. Now, there's two layers to shadow work, where you can access the subconscious, which is really more behaviors, patterns that we have that we don't like.

Courtney Hanson:
Right. And then we have the unconscious, which is stuff that we do that we're not even aware that we're doing. And we keep having these patterns in life and these things happen and this self sabotaging behavior, and we're like, why am I doing this again? It's unconscious. Now, what shadow work does is it integrates all of the things that you've been running or hiding from yourself and brings them into light. And I love this metaphor that we're always searching for the light and always searching for all these positive things. But what if you're in this vast, dark ocean and you don't see light anywhere because you are the lighthouse? That's how I like to think of shadow work, is that it is taking that light and bringing it up so that what was under the bed that looks like a big, scary monster on the wall is really just a little teddy bear that's casting this huge shadow that feels very overwhelming. Right? And so when we can take shadow work into, like I said, bite sized pieces that are obtainable and don't cause fear, we come to this form of self love that we're not just loving the parts of ourself that are convenient, we're loving ourselves as a whole. And that's a huge part of womb healing, too. Right?

Courtney Hanson:
Like getting rid of that guilt and shame that we carry from our past. And we can't change something until we become aware of it. And I think that's where shadow work comes in. And we start to steer away from the toxic positivity, because affirmations are great. Being positive is great. Being light is great. But we're also abandoning parts of ourselves by not having that full integration, that shadow work gifts us.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah, I think that a lot of people are like, oh, you shouldn't be so angry, or, why are you so upset? But sometimes you really just have to have those emotions. You have to give yourself permission to feel all of those feelings. It's part of being human. And if you cut those things off, it's almost as if it's really just stifling and stuffing it under the rug and not necessarily letting you feel and perhaps release a lot of the things that you might want to or need to release in order to really feel better. What are some of the best ways to get into shadow work? If somebody's never heard of it before and this is the first time they're hearing it, and they're like, if I'm unconscious of it, how am I supposed to even begin to know what to do?

Courtney Hanson:
Yeah, I love that there are so many different books out there that are based just on shadow work. I have shadow work in my book, but probably the simplest way is if you're listening today and you're like, ok, I'm ready. Let's do this. Let's dive in. You can seriously just hop on Google and type in shadow prompts for whatever you're going through, and it'll give you journal prompt entries that you can start to flow. And like I said, you want to start small, so you're not like, at first. And I always say the best way to get into shadow work is to turn on some soft music, not worry about the grammar, not worry about the sentences or what you're writing, and let your brain get into that automatic writing. Because when the brain and the hands start just flowing and you're not thinking about what's coming out, then we start to access the subconscious mind, which is the next layer down, and that is step one.

Courtney Hanson:
And so finding maybe a few things that really resonate for you, maybe right now you're going through a breakup, or you're going through a growth area of your life, or you are in the middle of building a business, whatever that is that you feel that you are running from. Type in shadow prompts four and see what comes up. And that is probably the most accessible way to begin. That's simple and doesn't feel scary.

Jennifer Norman:
I did my own version of shadow work in learning how to free write. It was amazing. I thought, yeah, how could this possibly help? I couldn't understand how just writing my emotions down would be anything more than reinforcing what those feelings were. It was amazing to me that, yeah, it actually was a release. It actually made me feel like I don't have an emotional connection to that feeling anymore. It doesn't hurt. The pain isn't as significant anymore. There's something to this.

Jennifer Norman:
As far as womb healing goes, I'm thinking about when people talk about intergenerational and multigenerational healing. Is that similar to what you say when you talk about womb healing, or is it something different?

Courtney Hanson:
There are several different layers to womb healing. There's that relationship for women, having a relationship with your yoni and not carrying the guilt and shame and healing that womb space. Right. There's actual, the physiological aspect to it. So if you've had a miscarriage or something has happened or an abortion, or you've struggled or had a trauma to the womb space, cancer, something traumatic has happened to your womb space, then physiological womb healing.

Jennifer Norman:
Right.

Courtney Hanson:
Then we have epigenetics, which is what you're talking about with the ancestral trauma and things like that, because we have an imprint of, when we are in our mother's womb, of all of her trauma that she went through. She has an imprint of the trauma that her mother went through when she was in her womb.

Jennifer Norman:
Right.

Courtney Hanson:
And it gets passed down through our cells. And so we are literally carrying the generational trauma before we even have a fighting chance. And so with that, there is womb healing that we can do with epigenetics on healing that ancestral wound.

Jennifer Norman:
And so how would you say that somebody could approach doing womb healing? Would it be similar to doing shadow work, or would it be something completely different?

Courtney Hanson:
No, it's much more physiological. So a really great exercise to get started with womb healing is a simple abdomen massage. So, like, just tapping into presence of your body. We're so busy in today's society. We live in such a hustle culture of running here, running there, building this, doing that. Right? We don't take time to stop even, like, mindful eating. Like, the amount of times I've asked someone, when do you sit down and just focus on nothing more than your food? Like, no phone, no person, just sitting with yourself and noticing what the food feels like in your body. Nine times out of ten, it's a never so true right.

Courtney Hanson:
And so mindfulness and awareness is step one with womb healing. It's taking time to be with your body. And so laying flat, taking time to just close down the eyes, place your hands over your womb, and just start to kind of feel your belly. And notice when you apply pressure, are there any tender spots between where your rib cage meets and your hips? Are you feeling any spots that are sensitive? And if so, what does it feel like? Is it tense? Is it on the right or left side? So the left side is our feminine side of our body. The right side is the masculine side of our body. So a lot of times when we hold these wounds physiologically, let's say you have a mother wound, it might sometimes be on your left hip, it might be on your left shoulder. Same thing. So when we're tapping our body, paying attention, okay, is it left? Is it right? Is it, like, how can I tap into this? And give my womb love and honor it and pay attention to what it's telling me.

Courtney Hanson:
A lot of times we'll have intuitive things that come up for us of, like, ooh, that doesn't feel safe. The closer I get to my yoni, that feels really suffocating. If I'm by my solar plexus, which is between your rib cage, right. And then making a journal entry of just afterwards, like, what came up for you? How did you feel? And that's step one, is like, getting to know and be safe with you and your own body.

Jennifer Norman:
You just brought up something so powerful. Because a lot of women, as they're transitioning from maiden into motherhood, they've had a baby. Their body is changing. There's a sense of loss. There can be, shall I say, a sense of loss or a sense like, I don't have the same body that I had before. There starts to be. Perhaps there's an exacerbation of self loathing. They're like, I don't even want to touch my abdomen because I don't like this part of my body.

Jennifer Norman:
I want to cover it up at all costs. There is a lot of shame or a lot of feeling like, this is not a space that I really am proud of at this moment. And so I can certainly relate to that. I feel like people tend to pine for what was in their youth and some regret or some feelings of just like, of loss, frankly.

Courtney Hanson:
Absolutely.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah. When you're thinking about those things, getting back to that place of compassion and love, any amount of change is going to be one door closing, one door opening, something new to look forward to. And a lot of the work that I do on the human beauty movement is getting okay with aging. It's getting okay with the woman that you're becoming of the life and all of the experience that you're accumulating all of the things that really embody your time here on earth and remembering to love yourself. All along that path, all along that journey, I know that for far too long, I spent many, many days just not liking the person who I was looking at my physicality and feeling and wishing that I was somebody else, hoping that I would find somebody else in the mirror that was not me. And it took a really long time in order to get to a place where I got to be okay with myself. And a lot of that was stemming from this type of work. It's really just taking the time to get to know yourself.

Jennifer Norman:
I think that Courtney is a great example. When she was younger, she had all this trauma and probably didn't have very much time to get to know who she was. This pause and this very mindful step of saying, you know what? I really wish to figure myself out, because I don't think that I'm going to be able to go on much longer in happiness or being drunk in a bathroom someplace or not there for my family. And there's so much that life can offer us if we allow it. And there's so much beauty in the world if we just so desire to see it, but we're not going to see it unless we see it in ourselves first. And so I truly believe that it starts from loving ourselves, caring for ourselves first, and recognizing that even with all the flaws and all the changes and the things that we see in the mirror, there's beauty in every single stage of it, and there's love to be had and respect and dignity in every single stage of that. And so, yeah, a book like within can help you see different archetypes and how you might translate your journey in certain of these places and also identify those areas that might need a little bit of light to shine on. Self awareness that might be unconscious, that might have just been you operating almost on autopilot, and you're not even realizing that you're looping.

Jennifer Norman:
You're making these same patterns over and over again, and you're wondering why. It's because your energy is calling them back to you. And unless you get rid of them, unless you shed that, you're just going to keep calling those energies back to you. Now, Courtney has so much wisdom, and she also has a lot of tools that she has prepared for people to really start into this process of healing and self awareness. And so, Courtney, can you tell us about that?

Courtney Hanson:
Yes. So a great way to start to realize our behavior patterns is to make just a simple timeline of from when the problem started in your life, right? So if you're like, oh, my life was great until I was 25, and then it went downhill, and it's just I get all the bad luck now, and I'm trying to do lucky girl syndrome, or I'm trying to do this and I'm trying to do that, nothing's working right. So start at that age, and if you don't have an age and it's more in childhood, you can close your eyes and imagine yourself as a little girl or boy and whatever age that is, start there and create a timeline of big things that you can remember in your life. Big moments, first things that come to mind. Don't overthink this and go until present time. And when you go back and you look at that timeline in your adulthood, you will see the patterns start to accumulate of maybe it's every four months you have a breakup or every four months you lose a job, or there will be patterns that will come forth on the big moments to you. And this is going to be very personal because it's not a one size fits all, but it's a great starting point on being aware of your own patterns and behaviors that continue to pop up in life that are keeping you blocked from that ultimate self love and from coming into really where you need to start with embodiment, right? Is it that you're calling in the lover that you want more love and spontaneity and fun and freedom? Right? Or are you calling in the queen where you need that structure and that healing or whatever those things are that you are calling in in your life? It gives you a roadmap on where to start if it feels really overwhelming.

Jennifer Norman:
Oh my gosh, that sounds so yes, yes. I will make sure that everybody has your information in the show. Notes Courtney, thank you so much for joining The Human Beauty Movement Podcast today. It was a wonderful discussion.

Courtney Hanson:
Thank you for having me.

Jennifer Norman:
Thank you for listening to The Human Beauty Movement Podcast. Be sure to follow, rate and review us wherever you stream podcasts. The Human Beauty Movemen is a community-based platform that cultivates the beauty of humankind. Check out our workshops, find us on social media, and share our inspiration with all the beautiful humans in your life. Learn more at thehumanbeautymovement.com thank you so much for being a beautiful human.