The 7 Feminine Archetypes (Which One YOU Currently Are) & How to Tap Into Queen Energy | Mel Wells

Men fall in love when they give to us.

Good reminder, everyone.

They want to give to us. Let them. Underneath every complaint is a desire. When we drop into our heart and actually speak from our desire, then our men want to rise up and make our dreams come true. So instead of like, why don't you take me out on any dates? We never go on dates anymore. Totally wall. They're done. Why don't you do this? Because what does that make our partner feel like? Not good enough. I'm not pleasing her. She's not happy. I don't feel like I'm doing a good job. I'm not good enough. Whereas when we say, oh my gosh, it would just make me feel so yummy and it would make me feel so turned on and cherished. If we went to this new spot or if we took the time to connect this week, could you plan a date for us? He'll say, leave it to me. I'll handle it.

Mel, I'm so excited to have you on the show. Welcome to earn your happy.

Oh my God, I'm so excited to be back. Thank you so much for having me.

I don't think that I've pole danced and been in London, like visited London with many friends and I got to go have lunch with you in London. You were living there at the time.

Yeah. Right?

Yes.

It was like a lifetime ago.

It was a lifetime ago. We were just saying, like, we were two totally different people. Like maybe five different people.

Yeah. Since then, so much has shifted.

So much has shifted. And I have just loved watching you in everything that you're doing with these, especially just your amazing containers that you create for women to really tap into their feminine power and everything that you're doing around that. And today I'm really excited to dive into archetypes and I think that one of the biggest things I would love to know, to start out with, just to share a little bit about yourself, what is it that you're doing? What do you help women with and what got you interested in that?

Yeah. So one of the things that I am here to do in this world is help women remember their magic and tap into their feminine power. So.

Good.

Because so many of us, especially high achieving women, have lost touch with that or they don't know how to reconnect with it. And they. They deeply want it, but they don't know how to access it. And they have these beliefs like if I am soft, if I am receptive, if I am in my feminine, I won't be able to Run my business anymore or I won't be able to. I won't be as powerful. I won't be able to have all the things that I want in life and in my personal experience as someone who has been a high achiever all her life. Eldest daughter, top of the class. Everything I want, I will get it. Like, if I want something, I will manifest it. I will make it happen. Set that goal, make it happen. Like, that's how I was always moving through the world. And when I started learning about feminine energy, I was like, that feels like a warm hug and I want it. But there was so much resistance because I thought, I'm going to lose what I've built if I allow myself to let go, to surrender, to soften. But it was calling me. I felt this, like, deep call to soften, to be in my feminine, to surrender more, to allow more, to receive. Because I was burning out. I was disconnected from my womb, disconnected from my intuition, my body, my sensuality. Because all of my life revolved around my achievements. All of my worth was wrapped up in. In what I was achieving at work and in my career. And I started recognizing I need to soften into my feminine energy because it's impacting my health, my relationships, my friendships. And so when I started really doing this healing work and really learning about feminine energy, I realized that I had this idea of what feminine energy was. And to me, I thought it was being soft, being passive, being a pushover, being, being weak, right? And this is what I thought feminine energy was. And when I discovered Carl Jung's work on archetypes and started learning about the different archetypes of the feminine, I started realizing that the feminine is many different things. There are multitudes that exist within the feminine. And this is why archetypes is such a beautiful language and framework for us to understand that. So there's the maiden. She is receptive, she is curious, she's playful, she's vibrant, she is full of wonder about the world. She can be naive, she can be innocent. She can be the people pleaser in us. There's the mother, the nurturer, the caretaker, the symbol and representative of unconditional love. She can also be the martyr. She can also be the manager. She can also be smothering, controlling in the shadow of that archetype, there's the wild woman. Archetype. The wild woman is free spirit, right? Dances to the beat of her own drum. The digital nomad, Right? In leadership, we see the wild woman as digital nomad, constantly pivoting. There's the lover archetype, magnetic, sensual, in touch with her sexuality, led by her pleasures, her desire. The lover is a really powerful archetype when it comes to love and relationships. There is the wise woman, which is also known as the queen crone or the teacher. The wise woman is the teacher, the passer down of knowledge, the grandmother, the one who is the mentor for many others. There's the Huntress, which is like the warrior spirit, the warrior goddess. The huntress archetype is one that we tap into when we want to get things done, when we want to move forwards with our goals, when we want to kind of demonstrate our activism energy, we stand up for causes that we believe in. This is the Huntress energy. And this is a powerful energy that you can tap into when you are in a season of work and life that you want to push towards those goals. But it's not a season, it's not an archetype that we want to be in long term because the huntress is more of that kind of masculine warrior energy. And so if we're in the huntress all the time, it can impact our relationships negatively. So then there's the Queen. This is the final archetype is the Queen archetype, which I believe is the, the archetype that demonstrates feminine leadership, heart centered leadership, the ability to know your worth, set boundaries, attract things into your world, and really be a visionary for a new way. And so this is a really powerful archetype for female entrepreneurs and leaders and visionaries to help them come into their feminine power instead of being in this kind of hustle burnout cycle.

So, so this is so interesting to me because obviously I've been through my own journey with it of, you know, being super attached to achievement and addicted to achievement. And while simultaneously it's not that I didn't want to feel feminine or soft or any of those things, it's that I literally, like you said, didn't feel like I could get the job done or be powerful enough for my team or I had to appear a certain way in certain businesses that I was in or when I was in network marketing, it was right down to like even like show up this way, dress a certain way. And I had a who whole paradigm of beliefs that I had to shift. So with the archetypes, how do we even start to use those? Are we supposed to be all of them? Is this something that could add to our list of shoulds or how can we use them? So it is powerful, but not something that we're just trying to do.

Now, again, great question, because the last thing that we want is to add to our list another thing of shoulds. The first thing is just as I speak through the different archetypes, like, just like, where did you recognize yourself and where did you recognize shadow aspects of yourself? Where did you feel distant? Where did you feel disconnected? Or like, oh, I don't feel like I can reach that archetype because we have all of them within us. Right. And I think the goal, if there was a goal with this work, is just to create healthy relationships with all of them. Right. And so to your point, what you were speaking about, we have really been, all of us raised in a culture where it's getting done by the men. The leaders in our space, in all of the spaces have been men. And so it's been a masculine way of doing things, which has been taught to us, if you want to be successful in the world, do things in this way, which is achievement, accomplishment, goal setting. It's all about measuring, tracking. It's, you know, here's the thing, get it done. Productivity, right? If we want to really be in our feminine, what we have to realize is when women come into their feminine power, it doesn't make them less powerful, it makes them more powerful. Right at the moment, we've got a lot of women in their masculine thinking that this is how. How powerful they can be, not realizing that when they tap into their feminine, it actually makes them more powerful, not less. Right? So feminine superpowers, intuition, empathy, emotions, desire, you know, how deeply we can love our magnetism. These are all feminine superpowers. And we can tap into them in our love life, we can tap into them in our business, and it makes us more. More magnetic leaders, more powerful leaders.

Let's dive into that because, you know, this is Earn your happy. So I love the woo, but I love business. So let's talk about anybody listening who knows right now that they are leaving a lot on the table, not only for themselves personally, but also in a way that maybe they want to be leading their teams differently or they know their business could be thriving a lot more if they just added certain things, but they're not sure how to bring that forward into who they've been. Like they're about to go be someone different or what does that look like? Are they going to just show up different one day to other people? Or how do we actually integrate that into our business?

Yeah, it's a great question. I think it's different for each individual, and I think it all starts with you deciding to unravel the conditioning that has led you to feel like a block around this. So, like, the first thing is like, okay, what is my resistance? What is my block specifically? What are my fears? And really, as you start to go on that healing journey, it's the inner work that then turns into what you put out into the world. So I think anyone that's like, okay, how do I show up differently? You're almost approaching it from a sense of what do I need to do? Which again, is the masculine. It's like, what do I need to do? But the real work is who do I need to be? How do I need to shift my way of being and the energy that I'm in? And so the healing work gets to happen first. And the healing work then shifts the way that you show up in your business.

So if I were to come to one of your retreats right now, what would I expect? Like, what would I be in for?

Yeah. So the retreats that we run in Costa Rica, we do seven days and every day we tap into a different feminine archetype. How do you do that? So day one is the maiden. So the maiden also represents our inner child. So we do a lot of inner child healing work.

That's amazing. That's been huge for me.

Yeah. So we talk about inner child work. We do that healing work. We do talk about people pleasing. Another aspect of the maiden can be like wanting someone or something to come along and change something or like rescue.

Had a lot of maiden. A lot of maiden time.

Yeah. Okay, let's be going down maiden. Okay. So damsel in distress energy can be like wanting to be saved, wanting to be chosen, waiting for something to happen in order for life to begin.

Is that where most people. Do you think are. Is that where most women come in?

Are culture, Raise. Raise women? Yeah, we have a lot of maiden energy. And I mean, if you think about our generation, we were raised on Disney movies, which is very damsel in distress, very wait for the man to come along. And at the same time, most of us have been raised by women who have told us, don't ever rely on a man too much. Right. Be independent. So we've. We've been kind of. We've been raised in this kind of interesting time. And what we're going through in our generation is something that our mothers, grandmothers never had to experience. Right. Because we want to be in our feminine. But we've been raised to be so independent and not need to ever rely on a man that it's like, well, we're being in our masculine. It's worked so well for us.

So day one, we look at the maiden and how do you. You know, because obviously I think a lot of people coming to that and I think just listening because I know it's the story that I've heard about the women in my life. It's a story about my mother, my grandmother. Like, that's a lot of what has been, what I've been raised with. How do you start to have the realization. But it feels really big right now, or the realization that that's what you've been living in. How do you even start to break those patterns within this work of archetypes? How do we break that maiden pattern?

Yeah, well, so in order to lean out of one archetype, right, we have to recognize, let's say someone recognizes, okay, I have been really in my maiden. And that's like the archetype that really resonates the most. She's super dominant. She's like ruling my life.

That's going to be my new mantra. I've been in my maiden. So excuse me.

It's time for the maiden to grow up and it's time to evolve beyond the maiden into one of the other archetypes. Right? Or it's time for one of our other archetypes to take more of a leading role in our life. And for many people that looks like the queen stepping into our power, stepping into our.

Can we jump from maiden to queen?

Because I'd love to skip all in between.

Can we? Okay, great.

There's no order. You know, a lot of some people are in very much in the queen and they really want to come back to connecting with their maiden again. Right. There's no rule with this. So then we would look at with this, with this one individual, okay. Like what are the different ways that you can start to embody more of the values and traits of the queen? So like instilling more boundaries in your life, right? Stepping into like using your voice, looking at where you've been, people pleasing. Right. And so everyone's journey with this is different. The, the next one obviously is the mother. We do a lot of healing the mother wound work. We look at mothering our inner child, mothering ourselves, and how detrimental the mother archetype can be in romantic relationships. Right. This is something that I see a lot in my very high achieving clients, especially women who are mothers. They start to unconsciously mother their partner. And what happens when we do that is our partner starts behaving more and more like a child, because we are in the mother and so they become the child, right? And so we want our men to behave like kings, but if we're treating them like children, they're not going to do that, right? So the archetype work can be really powerful because it really, the way that we show up influences the way that others mirror back to us as well.

That is so interesting. It's like the idea of you teach people how to treat you and how you're showing up with everything is going to show up in other people. So, you know, we, we think that all the time that we can't change people. But you kind of can if you change yourself.

Well, this is the powerful thing about feminine energy, right? A lot of people that want to get into the feminine energy world and work, they go, what do I need to do? And that's like the masculine way of approaching it. Give me a list of things to do, Mel.

Just send me something after this.

Send me a checklist of stings to do and I'll do them and then I'll be in my feminine, right?

I'm gonna be so feminine after I do more.

It's gonna be great. So it's the opposite, right? It's about an energetic shift, right? And something really simple that I teach my clients in love is instead of being in that, in that space of the masculine pursuit of like, I'm coming to you, like I'm gonna, I'm gonna get the job done, I'm gonna get you to do what I want. Because this is what I has made us successful in our business, right? Is pursuit and the chasing down of goals. When it comes to romantic, your romantic life, your relationships, the opposite is true. When you lean back, when you are in your own energy, when you are in your own magnetism. And I like to say, when you are the honeypot, the bees will come to you, right? So this is something that you can do, but it's not about doing, it's about the way that you're being. And in your business, this looks like instead of looking for clients, instead of hunting for clients, you become the magnet, right? You are in your radiance, you are in your magnetism. You are living your best life, loving on yourself. I'm the frickin honeypot. And then the clients come to you, right?

That is so true. I mean, that has literally been my journey. So I want to know about you right now. Let's talk about Mel. In the last year, which I know you've had a lot a Lot of new things as well going on. But I also feel like. I sense you are a total magnet right now. Is that. Are you feeling that way in your life?

Oh, my goodness. Are you feeling out?

What are you feeling?

I feel as though I've been going through a rebirth this year. I was just saying to Lindsay, like, my business and who I am now as a new mom, I mean, I'm sure you hear it from every single mom, like, goes on their own journey with, like, okay, like, how does my business feel and look now that I'm a mama and, like, what are my priorities?

How is my capacity working?

Much better now was definitely, like, in the me and my bestie say, like, in the scrambled eggs postpartum of, like, who am I? What am I doing? Like, something that it's really helped me do is, like, deepen into, like, what is meaningful work for me. And for me, that's always been love and relationships. So, like, for me, like, when I coach women on business and strategy, it only goes so far as it can do when that person is embodied, when that person is actually in their embodiment of their feminine energy. Right. If they're just, like, implementing the strategies, the tools, the tactics, to me, I start to feel like, oh, this isn't my purpose. So, like, for me now, like, really helping women with their feminine as it pertains to love and leadership is. Is what's really lighting me up about my business. Yeah. Because for a sec after I became a mom, I was like, this is the most meaningful thing in the world to me. And my business started to feel almost, like, flat in comparison. Yeah. You know, totally. It's.

It's so crazy how we go through so many different phases in our life, and some are long and some are short, and it's just recognizing them. So for you, what are you working, like, what are you working on right now? Which one for you are you in the most and why?

What was the transition in the archetypes? Yes. Well, right now I would say I'm in the mother archetype, because I'm with my baby every single day. And I think something that I'm actively working on every day is being in my lover, with my relationship.

I was just going to say, how are you balancing that? Because everything that I hear is, like, that's all consuming for the first however long for each person. So what does that look like for you?

Well, for me, it looks like remembering that I wouldn't be a mother if it wasn't for this deep love and intimacy and so for that to be put on the back burner, for that to take place on the bottom of the list is not in integrity and does not feel. It's definitely not what I want. It's definitely not. We want to have many more babies as well, so I think it's.

So you're going to have to get back into the lover.

Oh, oh, we're in the lover. Yeah.

But it's.

It's. I would say that when you are a mama, you. You. It's so all consuming. Right. And especially if you're breastfeeding like I am, you are being intimate all day with your baby. Right. So then a lot of people can experience. Well, I'm touched out. Like, I don't want to be intimate at the end of the day after all of that. Right. And so it's making sure that you have. For me, it's making sure that I have that independence still. And that time, that is just for me. For me to pour into myself so that then I can show up as the lover in my relationship, too. Yeah.

What.

How.

How is your relationship? How are you. How are you actively making that a priority right now? What does that look like, tangibly for people?

Okay, so tangibly. I think one of the biggest things that helps is, like, because we both work from home, so, like, kind of.

That's a whole other layer.

We could do a whole podcast about that. So connection through small moments of physical touch and physical connection throughout the day, making the effort to. When you or your partner walks into the room and you've not been with them, you go up to them and give them a kiss. Right. When you have a baby, the instinct is immediately, go to the baby. Right. And so, yes, go to the baby, but then go to your partner. Right. So that is something that has really been an anchor for us. And we also have. Oh, my God, that's so crazy. I just realized as I'm about to say this that I actually remember you talking about this too. We do daily walks. Twice a day.

Totally. And twice you're. Twice a day.

We do twice a day. Yeah. Because we have a dog, so. And we have a dog who has a lot of energy, so she needs a lot of working out. Yes. So every morning and every evening, we all go on a walk, and that is the time where we have phones away. We try not to talk about work and the to do list. And we try and just connect and we try and show up for those walks every day, twice a day for each other. And that's like, really really good anchor for us.

Do you guys dream together? Are you. What does that look like for you?

Yeah, I mean, we don't really have like meetings as such where we sit and do that together.

Walks will kind of just bring it out all the time.

Walks bring it out all the time. You're right. Yeah, exactly.

So when you're doing that, do you like, what does that dream look like? Are you willing to share like what your 5 year or 2 year or even 1 year? Like what would be something that you guys are both desiring together?

This. Well, we're actually building a house here in Austin at the moment.

That's exciting.

It's going to be our first house that we've owned together. And we're getting married officially. Oh my God. Congratulations. We actually already got married legally, but this is the big wedding happening in Costa Rica. So those two things are like the big dreams that we're dreaming right now. And both of us share the same dream of a big family. So we've always known that we are here to be mom and dad to many souls. And so we're on that journey. We're in our, in our mommy, daddy season.

Okay, so with those dreams, that is like the ultimate test of going back into practicing all these different archetypes, I'm sure. Because with home building, are you in it yet?

Like in the building?

In the build?

Yes. Okay.

So there's all of these different places in our life that throw us out. What are the moments, what are the feelings when you know you're out? And what are some practices we can instill into recognizing how we can get back in? And what does that look like throughout the day for you?

Something that I've been really enjoying is allowing my man to lead and allowing myself to just follow his lead. And this is like the work of polarity in relationships. So allowing the masculine to take the lead, allowing the feminine to follow, which when we are high achieving, ambitious women, easier said than done, right? And so something that I've been catching myself do is when I want to just like take care of something when I want to just got something. When I want to just go ahead and make a decision, I like slow down and I'm like, babe, I would love if you would just handle this for us. And he loves it and I love it and it's great. It makes our relationship flow. When I try and manage too many things, when I try and kind of be the leader in our family and our relationship and my business, I start to feel like I'm doing Too much, and I don't feel connected anymore to my soft feminine energy that I want to be in. And so not just allowing him and asking him to lead, but actually trusting that he can and not intervening.

You know, can you share a few of the things that you see a lot of either come in through your retreats or come in online when people reach out to you, what are some of the main things that you see women come to you with that you're like, right away, you're like, oh, I know exactly why this is happening.

Oh, well, a really common one with mothers is overgiving. Being in this pattern of I love so much and I care so much that I give and I give and I give, and then I feel underappreciated, and then I feel like I feel resentful. Right. They feel resentful of their partners, their friends, because everyone has been taking, but they don't realize everyone's been taking because you've been over giving. And so what helps that woman heal is recognizing, okay, I'm in this shadow of the mother archetype here, which is the martyr. And what's actually the medicine for her is to allow herself to mother herself instead of mothering everyone else around her. Yeah, that was a huge example.

That's a huge lesson that I had to learn. And it's the feeling like nobody. I just remember so frequently when I would feel that way, just like, giving and giving, feeling that way within, like, friendships and family, but never allow, like, I would never allow them to help me.

Right. Yeah. So it's. It's this kind of. This mindset of I can't receive.

Yes.

But it feels uncomfortable for me to receive without having to instantly give something back or having to, like, you know, I was having this conversation with a client the other day. She was like, I feel so uncomfortable, like, accepting gifts from my friends or like, receiving something from a partner. And what we kind of explored was when you don't know how to receive, it actually feels really terrible for the person that's trying to give to you. But when you if you actually, like, allow yourself to not just receive, but, like, actually be. Be so grateful and really allow them to see your enjoyment of that thing that they're giving you. It gives back to them.

Yes.

So you so badly want to give back to them, you are giving in the way that you receive.

I love that. I remember thinking, I never feel close to these people, and I don't think. I don't know if they feel close to me or not. And it was because when we don't allow people to give to us, there's no connection there either. Or to show up vulnerably or to be that person who actually needs something.

Yeah.

We have to allow people to do that in order for any relationship to actually feel close.

And especially men. Men fall in love when they give to us.

They don't reminder everyone they want to give to us.

Let them. Let them give to us. Right. If you are constantly giving to them and constantly doing for them, they're just going to become lazy.

I am going to write a really long needs list and send it to my husband tonight. Can I text it or does this have to be in person?

I'm just kidding. So here's what you want to do. Instead of speaking from, you know, this is good for anyone in relationship. Instead of speaking from, like, here's my need or here's my complaint. Even underneath every complaint is a desire. When we drop into our hearts and actually speak from our desire, then our men want to rise up and make our dreams come true.

But when we speak, give me one example. If you can think of an example for anybody who can't put that together. Going from like a need to a desire.

Okay. Okay. So instead of, like, why don't you take me out on any dates? We never go on dates anymore. Totally wall. Like, why don't you do this? We used to do this. Now we don't. So and so husband takes her on these many dates, like, that's the last thing we want to do. Because what does that make our partner feel like? Not good enough. I'm not pleasing her. She's not happy. I don't feel like I'm doing a good job. I'm not good enough. Shame, guilt. Whereas when we say, oh, my gosh, it would just make me feel so yummy and it would make me feel so turned on and cherished. If we went to this, like, new spot or if we took the time to connect this week, like, could you plan a date for us? He'll say, leave it to me. I'll handle it.

So good.

Right?

I could literally talk to you all day. And if I wanted to know more. If we want to know more because we're all eating out of your hand right now. I need to. I'm like, tell me how to be more feminine. Does this require new outfits? Tell me, where can we go to learn more from you?

Yeah, just come find me on Instagram. Hang out with me on Instagram. It's Iammel Wells, and I love that.

You'Re just always facilitating different things for people to go and actually experience it in person with you because you guys, you're not feeling well, you're probably feeling a lot of energy from her but in person is even more magical.

So thank you.

I'm so grateful for you. Thank you for just all of the work that you do in the world and one of the biggest things that we can do for our guest is to go obviously follow her her and share your biggest takeaway from this. We would love if you shared it on stories and we also have some bonus content for you that we're not going to tell you on this one. But she shares how to get into your queen energy immediately. So if you want to go learn that from Mel, all you have to do is go down into the show notes and click that link and you're going to get the bonus content. Until next time earn your happy. But everyone.