I am a rock to my husband, the understudy at work and a chameleon to my children. I am also very angry and very exhausted but at least not feeling guilty about that anymore. Progress I guess…
Anne- I love how you recognize the different roles you / we all play, depending on the context. I also recognized a bit of myself in each and your comment makes me want to tease that out a little more.
Great article! I can see myself in each of these archetypes. What struck me was the amount of time we all must spend in adulthood unlearning everything from our childhood. And until we do, we unintentionally “teach” and normalize these archetypes to our kids.
I subscribed at point #1. Single, reached menopause, and struggling, but I think I'm getting somewhere with ADHD/Giftedness energy management and focus. I keep wanting to fall back in old ways. It's hard to decondition. And hope to soon enough find my way in this do over. I'm determined.
This is incredible! I kid you not. This morning, I woke up inspired by my theme for April, The Productivity Reset, and bleary-eyed in bed, I wrote a long post saying, "We need a new model. Stop trying to fix the current one." Then I opened Substack and came across your post. Chills.
This may sound critical and one wonderful way to be medicine for women, is to honestly use images of women. Is the lead photo AI generated? If not, it would be medicinal to put a credit on the image and respectfully name the source, and the real woman, photographed. If that is not sourced from one photograph, it would be powerful and appreciated to not use an AI generated image of a "woman" uncredited and passably in an article about the power of the human woman. Using AI images of women without acknowledgment is an act of sabotage that creates an inhumane standard for all of us.
You’re right: it would be powerful to use images of real women, properly credited. That’s something I value too.
But what’s also true is that I’m a neurodivergent single parent raising neurodivergent kids, running three businesses and two Substacks. My capacity is limited, and right now, I use AI images as a practical tool to help me keep showing up and sharing work I believe is important.
I’ve also worked in marketing (☠️) so I know how much impact a strong image can have on whether people even stop to read. And to be honest, I see the same handful of stock images recycled everywhere, which doesn’t feel any more human or representative to me.
If there are alternative sources out there, especially ones that aren’t prohibitively expensive or saturated, I’d genuinely love to know about them. I want this work to reflect the values I write about, but I also need to work in ways that protect my time, health, and ability to keep going.
Thanks for opening the conversation and please let me know if there are solutions I should know about!
Hi Kat, I love that you raise this and feel very much the same way both in your response and Rachael‘s response. It’s interesting how new venues become available for us to share our work, so shortcuts that aren’t exactly authentic but at the same time makes it possible. It’s a conundrum, thank you for the resources you presented.
Thank you for your thoughtful reply! Totally respect getting your ideas in writing and out into the world. Takes so much courage.
There's several great resources for free photographs, for creative use royalty-free. When something is public domain or CC0 (Creative Commons Zero) you can use anywhere without credit.
Totally realize it may not be possible to actually name women in photos you get, though that might be nice -- the most harm is done with photo-realistic or hyperrealistic AI-generated representations of women. Will challenge you to continue to be such an awesome example of a powerful woman and not use those. Happy to help connect you to artists, or other images if the above seems challenging. Look forward to seeing your stack continue to grow!
The Rock, The Understudy and The Imposter these days. I agree with what you said about women and work in terms of pay and achievement.
For a brief time, I was D&I lead at my company. Ironically, I was told I could have it as a 'hobby' not a proper KPI. Oh, and there was no budget, I had to ask for every individual expense to be signed off.
As D&I lead I spoke up about what I saw and what other women told me. I spoke up when the men were recognized in the monthly office meetings, but women who worked on the same project were ignored.
I spoke up when all the managers were invited to a meeting and we discovered that a prestigious working party had been selected, all men, without any expressions of interest. They wanted to call it The Six Pack, whichever way you look at it, beer or abs, it excludes women. To be fair, the men selected learned about it in the meetings too, not their fault. But the fact remained, it was all men, and the projects would look good on their CVS.
I spoke up when all the senior women started resigning due to conflicts over pay, duties and hours.
I could go on and on, but I won't.
Loved your piece, have subscribed and looking forward to seeing more.
Especially The Rock but all four archetypes resonate. I could see myself in the description of you and a colleague. I worked alongside someone for 5 years doing the same job. He got all the plaudits. I achieved two thirds of our joint targets. A few days before I left, I received the only recognition I got - a resin star. At the time I thought I wasn’t doing a good enough job. But, in hindsight, it looks very different!
I grew out of the Chameleon years ago I believe. Now slowly extricating myself and rising out of both Imposter and Understudy to freedom.
Freedom!
I gotta say .. I got super enthused reading because my own most recent post - a poem and clarion call to women - touches on the patterns you describe here! [ check it out when you have a moment over coffee or while waiting for a latte. It’s titled “They Call You to Remember” ]😃
I felt such a huge YES! Yes! Yes! while reading this! You two rock!
I JUST recognized something in myself. I know in my bones that it's my purpose to serve women in freeing themselves from societal chains, claiming their sovereignty, and creating life the way they want it. I also know that I have great wisdom, training, and life experience in blazing this trail. BUT... I realized I'm carrying a bit of ALL of these patterns STILL, after decades of work. The Rock, fiercely independent, never asking for help, doing it all on my own. The Understudy "the women living 'normal' lives with partners and kids are the ones with real struggles and value.... " The chameleon... ha! My tone, demeanor, even the use of curse words is practically fluid. And The Imposter... she's the one who keeps collecting certifications, keeps paying for business training, still doesn't trust that she's enough.
Thank you for this amazing article!
Would you love to be a guest on Everyday Magic Live? I'm crafting a sacred space for ancestral health, happiness, and freedo,m and your wisdom and message would be priceless there!
This is so needed of a conversation. Thank you for highlighting this need to give ourselves our medicine first, then grow our capacity to help others, THEN go out and help the world. I'd inadvertently did that, but before that, I was trying to jump to help the world. (P.s. That didn't work!😆�🫶�)
Powerful reminder about how we have been 'conditioned' from birth. Thanks for highlighting your amazing opportunity for us to find ourselves and be ourselves 🙏 ❤️
I am a rock to my husband, the understudy at work and a chameleon to my children. I am also very angry and very exhausted but at least not feeling guilty about that anymore. Progress I guess…
Anne- I love how you recognize the different roles you / we all play, depending on the context. I also recognized a bit of myself in each and your comment makes me want to tease that out a little more.
Great article! I can see myself in each of these archetypes. What struck me was the amount of time we all must spend in adulthood unlearning everything from our childhood. And until we do, we unintentionally “teach” and normalize these archetypes to our kids.
I subscribed at point #1. Single, reached menopause, and struggling, but I think I'm getting somewhere with ADHD/Giftedness energy management and focus. I keep wanting to fall back in old ways. It's hard to decondition. And hope to soon enough find my way in this do over. I'm determined.
Now I'll finish reading 🙂
Hello Zara, thank you and good to have you here!
Rachel 💚🌿
This is incredible! I kid you not. This morning, I woke up inspired by my theme for April, The Productivity Reset, and bleary-eyed in bed, I wrote a long post saying, "We need a new model. Stop trying to fix the current one." Then I opened Substack and came across your post. Chills.
This is so powerful! I just wrote a piece on archetypes. I love them! This is a good reminder about the system.
This may sound critical and one wonderful way to be medicine for women, is to honestly use images of women. Is the lead photo AI generated? If not, it would be medicinal to put a credit on the image and respectfully name the source, and the real woman, photographed. If that is not sourced from one photograph, it would be powerful and appreciated to not use an AI generated image of a "woman" uncredited and passably in an article about the power of the human woman. Using AI images of women without acknowledgment is an act of sabotage that creates an inhumane standard for all of us.
Hi Kat, thanks for raising this.
You’re right: it would be powerful to use images of real women, properly credited. That’s something I value too.
But what’s also true is that I’m a neurodivergent single parent raising neurodivergent kids, running three businesses and two Substacks. My capacity is limited, and right now, I use AI images as a practical tool to help me keep showing up and sharing work I believe is important.
I’ve also worked in marketing (☠️) so I know how much impact a strong image can have on whether people even stop to read. And to be honest, I see the same handful of stock images recycled everywhere, which doesn’t feel any more human or representative to me.
If there are alternative sources out there, especially ones that aren’t prohibitively expensive or saturated, I’d genuinely love to know about them. I want this work to reflect the values I write about, but I also need to work in ways that protect my time, health, and ability to keep going.
Thanks for opening the conversation and please let me know if there are solutions I should know about!
Hi Kat, I love that you raise this and feel very much the same way both in your response and Rachael‘s response. It’s interesting how new venues become available for us to share our work, so shortcuts that aren’t exactly authentic but at the same time makes it possible. It’s a conundrum, thank you for the resources you presented.
Thank you for your thoughtful reply! Totally respect getting your ideas in writing and out into the world. Takes so much courage.
There's several great resources for free photographs, for creative use royalty-free. When something is public domain or CC0 (Creative Commons Zero) you can use anywhere without credit.
-openverse.org (600+ million images)
-pixabay.com
-search.creativecommons.org
-Flickr with certain filter settings
-pexels.com
Totally realize it may not be possible to actually name women in photos you get, though that might be nice -- the most harm is done with photo-realistic or hyperrealistic AI-generated representations of women. Will challenge you to continue to be such an awesome example of a powerful woman and not use those. Happy to help connect you to artists, or other images if the above seems challenging. Look forward to seeing your stack continue to grow!
The Rock, The Understudy and The Imposter these days. I agree with what you said about women and work in terms of pay and achievement.
For a brief time, I was D&I lead at my company. Ironically, I was told I could have it as a 'hobby' not a proper KPI. Oh, and there was no budget, I had to ask for every individual expense to be signed off.
As D&I lead I spoke up about what I saw and what other women told me. I spoke up when the men were recognized in the monthly office meetings, but women who worked on the same project were ignored.
I spoke up when all the managers were invited to a meeting and we discovered that a prestigious working party had been selected, all men, without any expressions of interest. They wanted to call it The Six Pack, whichever way you look at it, beer or abs, it excludes women. To be fair, the men selected learned about it in the meetings too, not their fault. But the fact remained, it was all men, and the projects would look good on their CVS.
I spoke up when all the senior women started resigning due to conflicts over pay, duties and hours.
I could go on and on, but I won't.
Loved your piece, have subscribed and looking forward to seeing more.
Especially The Rock but all four archetypes resonate. I could see myself in the description of you and a colleague. I worked alongside someone for 5 years doing the same job. He got all the plaudits. I achieved two thirds of our joint targets. A few days before I left, I received the only recognition I got - a resin star. At the time I thought I wasn’t doing a good enough job. But, in hindsight, it looks very different!
Rachel and Naz:
I just fell in love with you.
I grew out of the Chameleon years ago I believe. Now slowly extricating myself and rising out of both Imposter and Understudy to freedom.
Freedom!
I gotta say .. I got super enthused reading because my own most recent post - a poem and clarion call to women - touches on the patterns you describe here! [ check it out when you have a moment over coffee or while waiting for a latte. It’s titled “They Call You to Remember” ]😃
I felt such a huge YES! Yes! Yes! while reading this! You two rock!
Absolutely, women ARE the medicine.
Subscribed. 💜💜🦋🦋
I JUST recognized something in myself. I know in my bones that it's my purpose to serve women in freeing themselves from societal chains, claiming their sovereignty, and creating life the way they want it. I also know that I have great wisdom, training, and life experience in blazing this trail. BUT... I realized I'm carrying a bit of ALL of these patterns STILL, after decades of work. The Rock, fiercely independent, never asking for help, doing it all on my own. The Understudy "the women living 'normal' lives with partners and kids are the ones with real struggles and value.... " The chameleon... ha! My tone, demeanor, even the use of curse words is practically fluid. And The Imposter... she's the one who keeps collecting certifications, keeps paying for business training, still doesn't trust that she's enough.
Thank you for this amazing article!
Would you love to be a guest on Everyday Magic Live? I'm crafting a sacred space for ancestral health, happiness, and freedo,m and your wisdom and message would be priceless there!
Thank you Lauren 💚
And YESSS would love to be a guest!! 💃💃💃
Yay! We’re on food for the next few weeks but I may do some in between episodes…. Let’s chat on possible topics. I’ll DM you! Fun!
This is so needed of a conversation. Thank you for highlighting this need to give ourselves our medicine first, then grow our capacity to help others, THEN go out and help the world. I'd inadvertently did that, but before that, I was trying to jump to help the world. (P.s. That didn't work!😆�🫶�)
Powerful reminder about how we have been 'conditioned' from birth. Thanks for highlighting your amazing opportunity for us to find ourselves and be ourselves 🙏 ❤️
Good stuff. I’m an Imposter and the last piece of the puzzle fell into place a year ago when I was diagnosed with ADHD at age 58.
I love this so much, thank you so much for showing up in the world with your gifts and magic!
Wow. So powerful, and so true.
I identify most with the understudy and the chameleon, and can put almost every woman I know into one of the four archetypes.
Great piece. I’ve been 3 of the 4 at different times. Exhaustion is an understatement. Thanks for telling like it is.
Oh, yes, it is just like it is.