Artemis

 So, I've been working on the goddesses idea, here is what I have so far.

The 7 goddesses of Every Woman are:

the three independent ones:

Artemis - strong, powerful, takes action

Athena - Business

Hestia - Home, inner life

The three in relationships:

Hera - wife, identity based on husband

Demeter - mother, identity based on kids

Persephone - daughter, drifts through life, good girl / taken to Hades, later Queen of Hades (grows up)

The one with both:

Aphrodite - likes to be in relationships but she chooses who to love

So, I feel like I am an Artemis girl - she's a nature-loving tomboy. She sort of has adhd, or aspergers - doesn't care what people think, is black-and-white, has a destructive temper, does what she wants. When things are good, I feel like I can do anything. Her love interests are more like a sibling relationship. 

She also has 13 dogs, and takes 7 at a time hunting with her.

If I put emotion names on the dogs, then she is the one who deals with emotions - trains/controls them, includes them - not ignores them, is strong enough and smart enough to get them working together.

Before the goddess idea, I just thought of myself as being overwhelmed by emotions.

With the Atremis idea, she is the one who deals with emotions. When things are going well, life is under control. When I ignore my cues, the dogs go wild and Artemis's destructive temper comes out as she struggles with them. Artemis struggles for a long long time, and the dogs get more and more out of control as I continue to ignore them.

That's when good girl Persephone takes over - she disengages, she drifts. Hecate comes in to take the dogs. Eventually, Persephone's connection to life fades away, Hecate walks her down to Hades, and she becomes a prisoner in the dark. This is the coping skill that I fall back to every time the dogs get to be too much.

So that was the way things used to be. I didn't know I had cues, and when I learned about them then I didn't see them. 

Now that I have the goddess visual, I can change the pattern. 

I can be strong, I can work with Artemis instead of leaving her to fight a losing battle by herself.