I ‘met’ Amy Palko a few weeks ago: we are both participating in Nona Jordan’s Get Right with Money e-course. I was immediately attractd to Amy’s softness and authenticity, and after a while, realised that I had read her e-book back in December. I’d been moved to tears by some of the essays in that book. But I didn’t realise that Amy was THAT Amy until recently!
I’m fascinated by the work she does around the Divine Feminine and how she incorporates Jungian archetypes into her work. I like the idea of healing the hurt parts of ourselves using archetypes and images of powerful goddesses, whether you believe in them or just use them symbolically. So I was delighted when Amy agreed to do an interview with me!Here it is:Have you always been interested in Mother/Goddess work or did it come as a result of your soul searching?
I became interested in the goddesses when I was stretched to breaking point during my academic studies. I was coming to the end of my phd and I just felt completely shattered. I was looking for something, anything, that would help me to come back into a state of wholeness, that would stop me from feeling so fragmented. I started reading goddess stories and the work of Jungian analysts such as Jean Shinoda Bolen & Robert A Johnson, as well as classics such as Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ Women Who Run With the Wolves, and felt something really profound click into place. Suddenly I had a framework for understanding my life – and not only that, I could use these stories from mythic past to make sense of contemporary living on a grander scale. This shift in perspective brought everything into focus.
Tell us more about your desire to connect, and reconnect others, with the cycles of nature.
Well, at the end of 2010 I decided that I wanted to really bring my understanding of the goddesses to bear on my everyday life. So, I started to explore the lunar cycles, because traditionally, the cycles of the moon have always been sacred to the expression of the divine feminine. Over the next 12 months, I investigated various different cultural interpretations of the lunar cycles, writing my own response to them and crafting journal questions for each. I’ve been sending out these moon guides every new moon to my Bloom by Moon subscribers ever since.
For me, these cycles provide a structure for exploring the self through an element that is visible in our skies every evening. A constant reminder of our connection to our embodied femininity.
Share a day in your life with us: how do you balance your business, motherhood, being a wife?
Ooh, well, my day starts with the goddess. Every day, first thing, I select a goddess card from the deck that I use most (Kris Waldherr’s Goddess Inspiration Oracle), and I write a bit about how I see that goddess energy being expressed for my Goddess Guidance group. Following that, I try to hula hoop for about an hour. I love hooping, as I feel it not only helps me to keep fit, but it also really activates the three lower chakras, the root, the sacral and the solar plexis. Not only that, but the movement of the hoop is very like a spiral, so I feel my energy centring and strengthening – it’s a very powerful practice!After that I’ll check in with the kids and see where they’re at. I home-educate my 3 children, but they’re all at the stage where they prefer independent study to me hovering over them. But I like to set certain goals, parameters etc. and make sure that they have any resources that they need.
Then it’s time to catch up on blog post/newsletter writing, email inbox wrangling, and other business admin. My afternoons are generally client calls which will either be Archetype Code sessions, where I help men and women to explore the archetypes that are playing throughout their lives, or they’ll be sessions for my Goddess Guidance premium members. Later on, I’ll be taking my kids to their various classes (music, drama, swimming, tennis, choir etc.). Then it’s home again to whip up a gluten-free dinner before curling up on the sofa with a movie or a contemporary romance novel.
That’s kind of an average day. Mondays are generally a bit different, as that’s the day when I provide a mini reading for everyone in the Goddess Guidance group, which takes up most of my day. And at the moment, I’m teaching a short course on 19th century British Gothic at a local university on Tuesdays & Wednesdays, which has totally thrown my schedule – lol!
But I think the real key to balancing all the aspects of my life is to recognise that my kids, my business, my marriage, my well-being are not competing priorities – they are all gifts. They are all facets of my life that make my world a brighter place to be. When we recognise all the blessings in our life, it shifts from being a struggle to find balance to enjoying the variety that each day brings.
What one piece of advice would you give your younger self?
That it’s ok to choose ease for yourself.
I got married the day after my 19th birthday and we had our first child 8 months later. I returned to university to work on my undergrad degree when our daughter was 8 weeks old. The following year I had our second baby, and then I got pregnant with our third. By the time I graduated, I had birthed 3 children, had various pregnancy-related health difficulties and had moved house 4 times, all during the time it took me to complete my degree.
I remember my dad saying to me around about this time that he’d always thought I’d choose an easy life for myself, and that he’d been surprised at how hard I made everything for myself. And I remember being quite taken aback and a little offended. You see, I related choosing ease to being lazy. I had convinced myself that challenge, difficulty, struggle and sacrifice were all worthy. Ease, gentleness, softness, mercy were not aspects I ever allowed myself.
I’m 33 now, and I’m glad to say that ease has revolutionised my life. Of course, I don’t regret all that I achieved when I was younger, but I now see I could have been a *lot* more compassionate, forgiving and accepting of myself. I am a driven person in many respects. I feel as though I’m here to live life in a big and full way. So, what I’d want to tell my younger self is that I can live this big, full life while surrendering into softness, that sometimes the easy way offers more riches than the hard road, and that letting the soft animal of your body love what it loves changes everything.
Moving from Stability: Understanding the Pelvis in Posture (Online workshop)
Light Up Your Life
No comments yet.