The Heart-Led Woman - May's Archetype

April was, quite literally, wild! If The Wild Woman did her thing.....and I hope she did (even if it was uncomfortable and messy and not quite what you expected) she now leads you into May holding something you didn't have before... and that is just a little bit more of yourself. A little more honesty around who you truly are. A little less willingness to perform the version of you that keeps society comfortable, whilst constantly denying the parts of you that actually make you come alive.

Because... well, fuck society and it's narrow expectations! We're finally wild and awake and utterly alive because of it. We DARE it to try and gaslight us back into shrinking. We DARE it to try and put us back in the tiny boxes it holds for women like us.

Hear us as we cackle in the face of playing small!

That's the Wild Woman's gift... And now she's evolving into someone new.

Welcome to the Heart-Led Woman. May's archetype in the Women of the Wheel

Who Is She?

The word heart tends to conjure something soft and yielding and endlessly patient. Take two seconds to think of the 'perfect' model of a woman - the perfect mother, wife, daughter, friend, employee, always giving, always nurturing, always saying yes and holding the entire world together (with a smile on her face at all times)....yep - you know her! And while The Heart-Led Woman holds this tenderness - real, fierce, bone deep tenderness...she is not passive. She is not the woman who loves so much she loses herself in it, endlessly pouring from an ever empty cup. Nor does she withhold the beauty of her heart because the world has told her it is not safe to express her love.

She has the Wild Woman's fire running all the way through her. She has learned, through everything life has thrown at her, to aim it a little differently. Not outward in resentment, or inward in suppression, but straight through the centre of herself, through her heart, into everything she touches and everyone she chooses to love, with utter discernment.

She is here to remind you what happens when a woman stops leading from fear and expectation and starts leading from truth and self-respect instead.

What Does She Represent?

The Heart Led Woman is the archetype of courageous, intentional love. And before you assume that means romantic love, let me be clear...she is so much more than that. This is the love of showing up completely for your own life. Of letting what matters to you actually matter, out loud, without dimming it for anyone else's comfort. Of choosing yourself not from selfishness but from a deep and unshakeable understanding that if you abandon your own heart you cannot truly offer it to anyone else.

She represents the moment you stop asking permission to feel things fully. The moment you stop managing your love, your grief, your desire, your joy from a safe and careful distance and instead let them move through you the way all feelings are meant to - completely, honestly, without apology. She is the discernment that runs like an undercurrent through everything that allows you to accept that this love cannot come from a heart that's hollow. You cannot simply give and give at any cost. That this love lands on you and your life first - and with the abundant overflow, consciously lands on those that matter, too.

She is what April's Wild Woman prepared you for. Everything you have excavated and reclaimed, the Heart Led Woman asks you to actually use.

What Is She Asking Of You This May?

She is asking where your heart has been too closed, or too open. Not because you are cold or unfeeling or unworthy of love - quite the opposite. She is asking because she knows that women close their hearts or bleed them dry for very good reasons. Because staying open got too costly somewhere along the way. Or, because you were taught that a 'good woman' endlessly gives. Because you loved something or someone and it didn't go the way you needed it to, or because you worry without your endless devotion you'll no longer be lovable.......and the very reasonable response either way was to protect yourself from any of these things happening again.

She is not asking you to bypass that protection. She is asking you to get curious about it. To sit with the places in your life where you are showing up at half capacity and ask yourself honestly — what am I keeping myself safe from here? What would it actually mean to show up to this completely? Or, on the flip side, where are you giving way too much away? Where are you pouring so much of yourself out because you believed this would make you worthy and it needs to be reclaimed? Can I embrace discernment enough to trust myself to love out loud, but at my own choice and control...and to know I'll be OK whatever comes from it?

This is the shadow work of May. Quieter than April. More tender, perhaps. The shadow of the Heart Led Woman is the closed heart and the too-open heart, the withheld love and the over-given love, the vulnerability that never quite made it out of your chest and into your real life to say yes....or no. And she is ready, gently and fiercely and with everything she has, to help you master it.

After everything April asked of you....you are more than ready for her!

If you want a weekly companion through this work, Monday Medicine is a free shadow work prompt and sacred feminine practice delivered to your inbox every Monday morning, moving through each archetype as she arrives. Join us below ⬇️ May is waiting, and she has something extraordinary to show you...