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Full Description

Nurturing is innate to those who have the mother, companion, or the servant as part of their sacred contract. Giving, selflessness, and caring drive these archetypes. Pouring oneself into service is a beautiful offering to the world, and it often results in personal hardship for the nurturers.

Nurturers, by nature, are best at remembering what other people need and tend to neglect self-care. Burnout is common for nurturers. They also struggle when others reject their help. Without someone to help, they can wander aimlessly. Because they need to be needed, they may offer their support in inappropriate ways and places. These struggles trigger a healing crisis that calls the nurturer to reassess her life and how much she gives.

Each nurturer archetype has her own journey to mother, companion, and serve herself. However, the path does not end there. Healing culminates in the ability to connect with a higher calling and purpose. This course outlines the journey from a focus on others to focus on self to embracing a life of nurturing on purpose. Stacey describes each of the unique divine callings of the mother, companion, and servant.

All three of these archetypes care for others in their particular way. Throughout this course, Stacey details the power dynamics and motivation of each archetype so you learn the difference between them. The mother, companion, and servant all love to give, but they have specific ways and certain people they help.

What Is Included

In this online class, “The Nurturers: Mother, Companion, Servant,” Stacey Couch gives an in-depth definition of the light and the shadow of the mother, companion and servant archetypes. Stacey precisely describes the main themes of each archetype so you can recognize and tell them apart. Through story and myth, you receive concrete examples of each archetype’s expression, teaching you to identify these archetypes in yourself and others.

You receive a course workbook which includes journal questions and summaries of key points. This deepens your knowledge and understanding of which archetypes you are working with at any given time.

Stacey draws from fairytale, mythology, movie, and TV, as well as spiritual teachings old and new. The good news is that you don’t need to read or watch it all. Stacey synthesizes, extracts, and adds to the content, making it easily accessible. For those of you who want to study more, an extensive list of references is provided.

This course opens the door to these archetype’s vast universe. By outlining the key themes and showing how they play out, Stacey makes the material accessible and engaging.

The Mother

The mother archetype is the giver of life. The Divine Mother gave birth to the stars, the planets, the suns, the moons, and our world. She is the protector and nurturer of the cosmic life force. This work involves separating your personal experience of your mom as a good or bad mom from the impersonal mother archetype.

The mother in the light is both attentive and autonomous, flowing between these two states appropriately at the right time. The mother in the shadow takes her attentiveness to the extreme and becomes the devouring or overbearing mother. Another example of the shadow is the abandoning mother, who has an unhealthy preference for autonomy. In this course, we look at six strategies of mothering and how they relate to the light and shadow sides.

In the shadow, the mother is plagued with overwhelming guilt. An innate fear of losing her child doesn’t help.

The cycles of life and death bind the mother archetype. Once she can synchronize with these rhythms, she becomes the unconditionally loving mother in the light. She can embody the Divine Mother and tend to her children’s physical, emotional, and spiritual needs.

The Companion

The companion is the friend, the sidekick, the right arm, and the wingman. We all have friends and, thus, we all experience the companion archetype. However, some people have the companion as a ruling force and a significant driver in their sacred contract.

The companion is one of a pair meant to complement each other. In the light, the companion takes turns supporting and leading with the person she companions. In the shadow, she gets caught in comparison and believes that she is less than the person she assists. She gets stuck in the role of follower.

The shadow companion can manifest literally when the companion appears smaller, less attractive, less fashionable, and even less witty or smart than who she supports. She will discount her own creative ability and think the person she supports is the one with all the ideas.

Loyalty and betrayal are major themes with the companion archetype. She struggles with asking for recognition, which causes distrust, and she can feel betrayed when she is not recognized for her contributions.

The companion – like man’s best friend, the dog – is infinitely loyal. She doggedly pursues her leader with such fidelity that the recipient of her attention has no choice but to soften their heart. The companion engenders trust and relationship. 

The Servant (also the Caregiver)

The servant archetype is also known as the caregiver. These terms are interchangeable. The servant in the light embodies service as a spiritual path, but to fully know this archetype, you must also look at the roots.

The shadow servant carries myths about service that interfere with the archetype’s light side. Service is often considered menial work with low pay and low status. The servant is part of social class systems and one of her challenges is to transcend these hierarchies. In this course, we look at multiple examples of the servant in class systems to see the universality of this pattern.

The servant would rather give than receive. This a position of power for her. However, when she gives too much, she drains herself dry.  The servant experiences empathy fatigue when she grows weary of feeling the suffering and neediness around her. By learning how to receive in the spirit of reciprocity, the servant finds balance.

The Divine favors the servant in the light. Her hospitality puts her in the flow of sacred service. She moves from service to people, to an experience, to a calling, and then, ultimately, service to the Divine. This course gives resources to bring the servant archetype into the light of sacred service while honoring her humble roots.

Course Outline:

This four-part pre-recorded audio course covers the following:

Introduction to the Definition of Archetypes (for beginners)

Session 1: The Mother Archetype

• Separating the personal mother from the cosmic mother
• Definition of the maternal instinct
• The mother in the light and shadow
• Six mothering strategies and how they relate to the light and shadow
• Demeter and Hariti’s stories as a map of the mother’s journey
• How fear of losing the child controls the mother
• The mother’s ties to guilt
• Examples of the mother in movies and shows
• The cycles of motherhood
• The Divine Mother

Session 2: The Companion

• Definition of the companion
• The companion and comparison
• The appearance and intelligence of the companion
• Struggles and gifts of creativity
• The companion as conscience
• The need for recognition
• Loyalty and betrayal
• The Irish tale of Turien showing the companion’s journey
• Softening a hardened heart
• Companioning the self

Session 3: The Servant

• Six myths of the shadow servant
• The power of giving
• The Law of Conservation of Energy
• Empathy fatigue and compassion fatigue
• The need to be of use
• Payment and treatment
• Hierarchy and class systems
• Hospitality and the favor of the gods
• What do you serve?
• Service to the Divine

Session 4: Discerning Between the Nurturers

• How the mother, companion, and servant are similar
• Power dynamics of each archetype
• Differences between what and who they serve
• Examples of each within a single story
• Summary of Caroline Myss’s three-column model
• Walking each archetype through the three columns

What are Archetypes?
Archetypes are universal patterns of power that coordinate how we think and feel. All we have to do is say “angel” or “hermit”, and instantly, others know what kind of person we are talking about. This is indicative of the amount of power that each archetype contains. The Greek origin of the word “archetype” comes from the words archē, meaning “beginning or original” and typos, meaning “pattern, model or type”. Thus, an archetype is the original or first pattern from which all others are made. On the other hand, each survivor has a light, positive side that unlocks the power of our soul. Learning to co-create with the light side of the survivor archetypes is the key to living an authentic, empowered life.