Hello everyone. Welcome to the Sex, Love and SuperPowers podcast show. I am your host, Tatiana Berindei. I am delighted to have with us, once again, Ms. Amy Jo Goddard. We are going to be exploring sexual archetypes today. I’m very excited for this conversation. I have personally experienced some very powerful work with her in this arena. Which is why I wanted to have her back on the show to talk about it. I’m really looking forward to our conversation today. Let me tell you a little bit about her before we dive in. Hailing from military dad and recovering Catholic, proudly Sandra Dee mom. Amy Jo Goddard had no other choice but to become a sex educator just to help her family survive. Actually, they don’t really take sex advice from her, but thousands of others have. Amy Jo is author of Women on Fire: Nine Elements to Wake Up Your Erotic Energy, Personal Power and Sexual Intelligence. And co-author of the bestselling classic, Lesbian Sex Secrets for Men. She earned her master’s degree in human sexuality education at New York University. And has been teaching and speaking about feminism and sexuality for over two decades. Including her TEDx talk, Owning your Sexual Power. Welcome back to the show, Amy Jo.
Thank you. So good to be here again.
Yeah, and I’m sure it will be a slightly different answer this time. Will you tell us what your superpowers are?
Oh gosh, I didn’t prep for this. I forgot-
That’s okay.
You ask this question.
That’s all right. You just flow it. What are they in this moment?
I think … what are they in this moment? I think in this moment, they’re putting pieces together that can feel disparate. I think looking at … being able to see the whole of a thing and the many different components that make a thing what it is. And to help people connect dots and make connections, so that they can actually understand what’s going on. I think I’m good at doing that.
I think I’m good at doing that in people, as well. That’s certainly a big piece of the work that I do. I think I’m really being able to see the person before me. And the many parts and the many places that they’re coming from. Why they may have created something in their life that they’ve created or have particular patterns. Helping them to break that down. I think that’s a superpower.
I love that so much. I feel like it relates actually so perfectly to the topic for today about archetypes.
It does, I guess.
What I was kind of seeding as you were describing that. It’s like we can get so stuck in this like one- or two-dimensional version of ourselves. Relating to only a couple aspects of ourselves. Really, we are these multidimensional beings. There’s all of these parts and pieces that are wanting to be seen. Sometimes desperately crying out for attention in ways that we don’t maybe understand or aren’t able to interpret. I love that.
I think that the archetype fits so beautifully into that. In being able to see those. It’s like, “Hey, I see this part over here and you’re so multifaceted in all of these different ways. It’s not just these one or two ways you’ve been relating to yourself.”
Yeah. I remember when I was first doing the archetype work, being interviewed for … I think it was for a podcast or something. The interviewer asking me, “Well, which one are you?” I was like, “Well, I’m a lot of them. I have a lot of these archetypes in me.” I think that’s the power of archetypes, is that they allow us to see these different aspects of self and these different journeys of the self.
Archetypes, they all have their story. They all have their hero’s journey. They all have their story. We love to watch them on the big screen. There’s many archetypes that show up on the big screen on a regular basis that we’re very familiar with. Even if that concept isn’t familiar to us. I think a lot of times it’s sort of a foreign concept and people were like, “Well, I don’t get it. What do you mean? How would this relate to me?”
That’s what I love to dig in with people. Is to look at what are those parts of themselves that they feel like they’re averting because I don’t want to be that. Which generally means there is that part of you that wants to be seen, as you said. Or what are the parts that you really are living out? What are those archetypal stories, those myths, those patterns that you are living out in your life. These archetypes, many of them have been around for so, so long. They’re so familiar to us that we almost don’t see them.
Let’s give some examples so people have something a little bit more concrete to grasp. Maybe if they’re not familiar with archetypes or never really worked with them before.
Yeah. I mean, a lot of people do amazing archetypal work. I’ve studied Caroline Myss and some of the folks that have talked about archetypes in a powerful way.
For me, I wanted to start to … really to specifically look at what I call sexual archetypes. These archetypes that have these particular sexual stories or patterns in them. Of course, the trifecta that we all are familiar with is the virgin, the mother, and the whore or the prostitute. Those are three very … we’re very, very familiar with those three archetypes. Often, the virgin and the whore have been very pitted against one another. I think we can look at the mother in so many different ways depending on what lens we’re looking at her through. I like to look at the mother through more of the sexual lens. Like, so what is it that happens with the mother sexually?
Which I love that you do that. Because there’s this thing that happens. Especially in our culture, where it’s like once you become a mom … even though obviously, it took sex to get you there.
Right.
For most people, it took sex to get you there.
Remember?
It’s like all of a sudden you are no longer a sexual being because now-
Yeah. That’s the shadow side of the sexual … when we’re looking through a sexual lens of the mother. It’s the invisibility. Every archetype has a light, a positive quality, or a commitment. Then each one of them has a more of a shadow side, or a side we don’t see, or a more destructive quality.
For the mother, I see that as invisibility. Sometimes that comes from the outside, where she’s not expected to be sexual anymore. Then sometimes it’s coming from herself, where she’s denying and forsaking herself and her own sexuality for her role as mother. Sometimes we take on that belief that we can’t be more than one thing. It’s like, “Oh, I can’t be a sexual being now, I have children.” It’s like you said, I mean it’s like ludicrous. Like hello, what’s more sexual than birthing a child through your vagina to the world?
Totally.
That’s pretty damn sexual, if you ask me.
Yeah. When I was a birth worker, That’s something we talked about a lot, about the women who are able to sort of harness that energy. Even the environment that you create for birth is very similar to an environment that you would want to make love with someone. To have like this really intimate, beautiful sexual experience. Oftentimes it’s like the low lights, the candles, the soft music, the incense. Like all of those kinds of things. Like that’s a perfect environment to birth the child. Because it’s the same energy that got the baby in there is what’s going to get the baby out.
Absolutely. I mean, imagine … like of course babies cry as soon as they come out when they’re in a hospital. It’s like they’re coming out to bright lights, all these people in these weird suits looking at them. With masks on their faces and equipment everywhere. Which I’m sure they feel the energy of, as well. That’s a very, very different experience than coming into the world in a softly lit cozy room or in a tub into water. Far less stark contrast.
Of course, this is like the space that I’m in right now, as I’m preparing for my own birth. I can very easily go in there. But I really want to explore some of the other archetypes with you. We do have to take a quick break. Will you just give our listeners some direction of where they can go to find more of your brilliance and experience more of your work?
Yeah. The hub is just amyjogoddard.com. You can definitely find me on the socials, on Facebook under Amy Jo Goddard, and also on Twitter. You can find me on Instagram is Sexual Empowerment.
Awesome. Definitely go check her out, amyjogoddard.com. She’s a wealth of information and a wonderful, wonderful lady. We’re going to dive deeper when we get back. So, stay tuned.
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Music Credit: All instruments played by Amanda Turk. Engineered and produced by Tatiana Berindei and Daniel Plane reelcello.com
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