S2 EP 11 : Awakening to Self Love - Stepping into your Divine Feminine with Lilli Bewley

Reconnecting with your feminine energy and finding real love after healing.

In this heartfelt episode of The Midlife Awakening, we dive into the world of love, healing, and dating after 40 with Lilli Bewley — a Dating Coach and creator of The Feminine Dating Archetype Quiz.

Lilli’s story is one of profound transformation. After years of following all the “rules” of success — the career, the relationship, the life that looked perfect on paper — she found herself feeling disconnected, unseen, and unfulfilled. Hitting rock bottom became the moment that cracked her open to healing, self-love, and a whole new way of experiencing intimacy.

Today, Lilli helps women rewrite their love stories — not by chasing love, but by awakening to the truth that love is something we become. In this conversation, we explore:
✨ The Feminine Dating Archetypes and how they shape our relationship patterns
✨ What it really means to stop self-abandoning and start embodying self-love
✨ The difference between “knowing” you need self-love and actually living it
✨ How to make dating feel fun again — even after heartbreak, divorce, or years alone
✨ The spiritual side of love: finding wholeness within before attracting it without

This episode is a beautiful reminder that it’s never too late to open your heart again — and that love, in its truest form, begins when we stop betraying ourselves.

💖 Mentioned in This Episode:

• Take the Feminine Dating Archetype Quiz: DatingArchetype.com
  
  
• Connect with Lilli Bewley on Instagram: @lillibewley and Tiktok at https://www.tiktok.com/@lillibewley
  
  
• Explore Lilli’s Love Awakening Blueprint coaching program

🌙 If you loved this episode…

Subscribe to The Midlife Awakening on Substack
to get your free “5 Journal Prompts to Start Your Midlife Awakening” and join the community of women rediscovering themselves in the second half of life.

Transcript

Speaker 2 (00:00.024)
Hey guys, and welcome back to the Midlife Awakening. My name is Odelia and I'm your host. I'm so grateful that you're here. And if you're a regular listener, welcome back. I've missed you. And if you're joining me for the very first time, I'm very glad that you found your way here. This is a podcast about transformation for women who are waking up to who they really are while navigating everything that comes with midlife. When you reach midlife, so much begins to shift. You start with redefining who you are, what you value and what truly matters.

And in that process, some relationships may end, others may completely transform. I know mine certainly have. When you start reconnecting with your authentic self, it can feel unsettling, especially if you've recently gone through a breakup and wonder if you'll ever love again, or you're in a relationship that no longer feels aligned and you know something has to change. If that sounds familiar, this episode is for you. My guest today is Lily Buhli.

A dating coach for Finding Love with over a decade of experience in personal development. Lily went from simply surviving to thriving in love and purpose. And now she helps single, successful women rediscover joy in dating and attract healthy, soul-aligned partnerships. Yes, even after divorce. And yes, in your 30s, 40s and 50s. In our conversation, we talk about healing emotional trauma, breaking free from people-pleasing and self-abandonment.

rebuilding self-trust so that love can feel safe again. Lily also shares her powerful feminine dating archetype quiz, which reveals your unique patterns and helps you step into what she calls your magnetic woman era. If you've ever believed love has to be hard or that it's too late to begin again, Lily's story will remind you that it's absolutely possible to experience real, easeful, soul-nourishing love at any stage of life. Let's dive in.

Speaker 2 (02:11.928)
Hi Lily and welcome to Newcomenlight Awakening. I'm so glad to have you on because love and self-worth are such huge topics for our human journey during midlife. So maybe you can start us off by just telling us what inspired you to do this work, to help woman form love again, not just with someone else but with themselves.

Moves.

Speaker 1 (02:31.862)
yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, thank you so much, Adelia, for having me here. I love talking about love. I love talking about inner work. I love talking about just deep stuff. You know, I don't know. I'm assuming that's you because you do have a podcast and you have great guests on the podcast, too. And my whole life, I've been loving and caring and kind. You know, that's just who I was, you know, from birth. And

What tended to happen with me with relationships because of the modeling that I grew up in my household, like my mom and my dad, they didn't really show me what a true love relationship was. Also some things that happened to me in childhood, trauma, abuse, and things that started to happen to me throughout the years really kind of clouded who I was when it came to love.

The thing that I never learned was really the skill to discern who was right for me and who was not. So the types of people that I attracted in relationships were not healthy for me, but I didn't really know how to make that pattern change. And that pattern happened up until like my mid thirties. I always used to joke to myself and my friends that I'm bad at relationships. Like that was just a story that I had inside of myself because it was continuing to happen.

And really I reached a point in my life where I was really good at achieving. was really good at getting validation from job, from men. was really good at making money. Really, you know, had all of the list of things that society and my family told me that I should achieve and go for. And I did all the things and yet I still felt empty inside. I was in a relationship that wasn't the best for me. It was somewhat like covertly kind of abusive and there was some trauma there. And

never felt seen, I never felt heard. I never felt like he could meet me at the level that I needed to be met. And so I kind of like, I hit this breaking point where I like died spiritually, you know, mentally and emotionally. That's kind of where my journey started. And then I started to do a lot of deep level healing work inside of myself, like, you know, hour after hour, day after day, week after week, session after session with my team and really started to unravel why these patterns were happening inside of myself and really.

Speaker 1 (04:51.33)
You know what this work really is, even though I do talk about finding love and I'm a dating coach, I'm definitely you an outside in approach. What I realized is that anything that's happening to us on the outside, whether that be attracted and emotionally unavailable person, or if I'm getting ghosted or I'm not feeling seen or heard, it's actually a really a beautiful reflection of what's happening on the inside of ourself. So I started to do the inner work to start to change that. And,

Then what happened was is that I kept having, even though all of this stuff was going well in my life, I kept having these same problems in dating. Like just did not understand why these patterns kept happening, why I was self-sacrificing, why I was self-abandoning, why I couldn't hear my voice and my intuition, why I kept picking the wrong people. And so, you know, there was a breaking point with that kind of chapter of my life too, where I had just gotten ghosted by another man.

We had a really great connection and all of a sudden he just disappears. I didn't understand why that was because I was a good person. I knew how to communicate and I just remember breaking down because it was a pattern that I was seeing. Look at myself in the mirror, just crying and bawling and realizing that it's not really about them. It's more about me. Once again, what is it about me that can change inside of myself?

to attract my dream partner to make these changes so that I can be a magnet and a beacon to the true love that I have always desired. And so again, the work, right? Day after day, I did the work of healing trauma, aligning my nervous system, aligning my different parts inside of myself. One part of me like knew that I should be doing something, but the other part of me didn't want to do it, right? And so there's these aligning of these different parts inside of myself. And then

Fast forward to today where I'm coaching women through the same journey. I'm with the best man that I've ever met in my life. Some parts of me don't even believe that this is really actual reality and true because again, I didn't know anything like this. This was literally something that I created for myself and God helped me and universe helped me and spirit helped me do this. He meets me at the depth that I've always wanted to be met. And what's funny about this is that

Speaker 1 (07:05.934)
I used to get advice from friends and family. They're always like, oh, don't go so deep on the first date or just be yourself or whatever. But the thing was is that I didn't even know who I was. And so the whole journey was about learning who I was without the titles, who I was without the money, who I was without the mask, basically. And that takes a lot of work, like easier said than done.

But who was I? And then that really is how I became, you know, in my community, we talk about being the magnetic woman. That's how I became the magnetic woman and attracted him into my life and many, many other beautiful things that, that align with me too.

Well, that's an amazing and beautiful story of transformation and finding your way back to yourself. And I love how you talk about it's not about finding that ideal person, it's about finding who you are. And I think that's such an important theme in midlife. It's that we have to rediscover who we are and find out who we are because in most cases we don't actually know who we are.

No, we really don't.

No, so the question I'd like to ask is though we've got someone who's because starting a healing journey can feel really overwhelming for anyone. What would you what would your advice be to someone who wants to start off on their journey of finding out who they are, seeing whatever they have to heal?

Speaker 1 (08:38.86)
That's a great question. My advice would be to find a purpose greater than yourself. So that when you fall and when you don't want to do it anymore, which will happen, will absolutely happen. That is the thing that keeps you going. So I don't know if your family was at all like this, Odelia, but my family of origin, we didn't talk about anything. There was nothing we didn't talk about emotions. We didn't talk about anything deep. didn't, you know, it was all kind of surface level.

And so when I started to do this work, I started to start to talk about it, right? Which is also very kind of triggering. But the thing that kept me going, even when like I had, I had people attacking me for my family because I was talking, what kept me going was I wanted my niece and nephew to have a different life than I did. So, you know, I wanted to become basically a transitional character in my family. And that is what kept me going. And I will say to,

There are parts inside of us that do fear starting a healing journey like this because most of, think most of the fear comes from, do I have to relive all of these things or it's gonna be painful to do this? And in fact, to me, you don't have to take this on, but to me, it's more painful to stay in a pattern that is unfulfilling, to stay in a pattern that is not in alignment with who we are, to stay in a pattern that basically harms us in some ways.

than it is to do the work of healing. And again, if you can think of something bigger than yourself, other than like, have to do this because I'm wrong or I'm bad or I need to fix myself, because that can only take you very short distances, then that really helps.

I love that and framing it that you're doing something wrong with something wrong with you is never good. Right? So I love that you said that.

Speaker 1 (10:34.018)
Yeah, sadly though, that's a lot of what personal development is about these days. you know, personal development is like, think, I don't really know. I'm just making this up and I'm thinking it's like a multi-billion dollar business. If we take on the idea that there's something bad and something wrong with us, it can help in the short term. Back in the day, I went on diets a lot and I would do really well in the first like three, four weeks, something like that. But that, that.

I was not able to sustain that because I was coming from a place of, don't like myself. I was coming from a place of this needs to be fixed. Even though outside, maybe I would tell people, I just want to feel good in my body. But in reality, it was because I hated myself. I wanted to change. And so again, if we can find a larger purpose other than I don't like these things about myself. And again, this, this is capitalized on, you know, in our society of

You need to be fixed. There's something wrong with you. That's really not the way to go in my world because what it really does is it re-traumatizes parts inside of ourselves because likely if you feel like that there's something wrong with you, you probably learned that at an earlier point in your life, like from childhood or something bad that happened to you. The whole work is about transforming and alchemizing this idea that something wrong with you to, I'm doing this because I really like, love myself.

Self-love is this, multi-trillion dollar industries. We have really been trained that self-love is actually a transaction rather than its boundaries. It's if you speak up for yourself, if you stand up for yourself, if you know who you are, what you want, really that is the self-love that myself and also my community kind of latch onto instead of this transactional self-love where it's like, well, I'm gonna go get my nails done because I love myself. I like getting my nails done.

But again, if it's transactional nature inside of ourselves, then that's where it gets a little sticky.

Speaker 2 (12:36.174)
Absolutely. I just wrote an article on my sub stack of my self lab and that it's, there's this big misconception of like you sometimes fit the industry around, I need to get my nails done, need to get some nail care, I need to myself a nice outfit. It's all these external things. And really it's inside of, it's inside of you. It's showing up for yourself every single day. Yeah, absolutely.

For sure. I remember the biggest act of self-love I think I ever did and I was so nervous. I was so nervous. I've already kind of touched on, had this very like love-hate relationship with my body for a really, really long time. Actually mostly hate, not a lot of love. But I remember I had a doctor's appointment and I realized maybe a couple months before as I was doing my work that getting weighed at the doctor's office was really triggering for me.

It took me down like this, this spiral of negativity. took me down the spiral of, of, know, finding diets and starting, you know, starting the whole world went over again. And so I realized that I needed to set a boundary. This was like literally the first boundary that I feel like I've ever set in my life. I realized that I needed to set a boundary with the nurse that was going to check me in. I was so nervous. I was practicing setting a boundary in my car before I went into the office and got up the courage.

checked in at the front, went in the back, checked in with the nurse, stepped on the scale and I said, hey, I would really prefer not to be weighed today. Is that okay? Like it's shocked her, right? Because it's probably like a pattern interruption. I'm like, hey, every time I get weighed, I go down this shame spiral of not being good enough and then I'm too big or things like that. And I would prefer not to get weighed today. And she was like,

okay. Okay. Do you mind if I just write a number down for you? And I say, Yeah, that's fine. I just don't want to see it. Right. And so literally, that was an act of that was like the first real act of self love, like you're talking about Odelia that I had ever done in my life. And then I agree, like it just it's who you how you speak up for yourself, how you set boundaries, who you invite in your life and who you don't how you spend your time, how you spend your energy and all that good, good stuff.

Speaker 2 (14:57.9)
And it can be so liberating once you start doing that for yourself.

Ugh, so liberating.

in that you get that liberation and freedom.

Well, yeah, definitely on the inside, right? Like we can never control what happens, you know, with other people. And that's, that's the hard part, right? Like the fear of rejection, fear of reaction, fear of gaslighting, you know, fear of what happens when I speak up. A lot of women that I work with, there's a part of them that really, really fears speaking up, speaking up, holds a really deep meaning about if I speak up, then something's going to happen.

And typically this comes from childhood. If I speak up, then I'm going to get hurt. If I speak up, I'm going to be abandoned. If I speak up, I'm going to get ridiculed. If I speak up, you know, there's, there's a, there's something happening with that dynamic where again, the work is inside of us. I'm healing those, those deep wounds. But when you do, you actually feel absolutely liberated. And what I've realized in my journey about this is that, is that for me now today,

Speaker 1 (16:05.25)
Like I had to work through all of those fears myself, right? But for me today, as I sit here, what's awesome about this is that just speaking up for my needs and my wants and desires is enough. People's reactions is really, really up to them. It's not up to me. If you have the past like I have or the codependency, that is a hard thing to disconnect to because we have people pleasing parts.

you

Speaker 1 (16:33.784)
We have parts that are afraid of people that are pretty fiery, like loud and angry and things like that, right? So, and here's the next level with that, is that you really get to see who your people are by how they react. So if you are able to speak up for your needs and wants and desires, you're able to disconnect from their reaction, their expectation, any expectation that you have inside of yourself.

The next level with that is that you actually get to see who these people are. Are they able to listen to you? Are they able to hold you, even if they don't agree with you, are they able to hold you in conversation? Right? People always say they want honesty and communication, which is like a base level need. If you swipe through dating profiles right now on like hinge, I bet three out of five of those people in their dating profile are going to have, I want honesty and communication. Well, duh.

Like that's like a basic need, but what they really, really want is they want to be seen. They want to be heard. They want to be understood. They want to be loved. And so that whole process is like, is the whole process that we do in our community.

Wow, that's really profound. Thank you for that. So many of us who grew up being the strong, the capable ones, we learn to self-sabotage in the process. So how do you guide women to recognize when they're doing that in dating and relationships?

Speaker 1 (18:12.344)
So self-sabotage is self-protection. That's it. So if whatever the quote unquote self-sabotaging would be, let's say, so probably what you're gonna mention is that I have the feminine dating archetypes. There are four different feminine dating archetypes and one of them is the chill woman. And the chill woman will typically,

jump into physical intimacy quickly, whether she tells herself that she's not going to and she does it anyways, or it's just like the natural progression of things. And that's what that's the pattern that she sees. And then what happens after that is they end up ghosting, you know, and they end up leaving and it's a whole pattern. someone like the chill woman, for example, would say that a self sabotaging action that she has is that she gets into intimacy too quickly.

her. If that action is self-protection, what that actually is is probably protecting parts of her, again, that really want to feel connected. So that's not really like a self-sabotage. Parts of us have purpose and that part of her that really wants that intimacy is really, really trying to get connection, trying to feel loved, trying to feel seen and heard and understood and all of those great things that everyone wants in a relationship, I think.

At least the people that you know that I come across and so it's not so much about stopping quote-unquote self-sabotage. It's actually understanding What that action what that behavior what that thought with that emotion with that, you know? Eliminating belief is also self-protection as well. I don't know if you talk about limiting beliefs here on your show Yeah, so a limiting belief is also self-protection. So something like, you know, I hear all the time

There aren't enough good men out there. There aren't enough conscious men out there. There aren't many men in my town. I'm never gonna find someone. And this is huge in midlife because likely in midlife, we have already gone through quote unquote, lots of failed relationships, quote unquote, right? And so something like a limiting belief along with self-sabotage is self-protection. So if I believe this, I don't have to try. If I don't try, then I won't get hurt.

Speaker 1 (20:36.908)
If I don't try, then I won't make the same mistake again. If I don't try, know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So it's all about the inner healing. are we trying, what's it trying to protect us from? Why is it so hard to have a both and situation with I can still have this fear and I can go out and date and be aligned in dating and who I am and that being okay. And you know, there's so many different kinds of.

stories that happen in this whole process. But with self-sabotage, it's all about self-protection. So it's really about getting curious about, I'm seeing myself self quote unquote self-sabotage. What does that mean? What am I trying to protect myself from? What are parts of me trying to get from this? And then that's where the target for the healing work is.

That makes so much sense. That really does. Maybe we can circle back to your feminine dating archetype quiz. I did it myself. I really love it. Yeah. So I will put a link in the notes so our listeners can have a go. Do you want to take us on?

May I ask what you got?

I got fortress.

Speaker 1 (21:52.522)
did you have a recent breakup?

Yes, yes. Yeah, yeah. So maybe do you want to talk us through the different archetypes that you have and how understanding them can help us shift our dating experience?

Yeah, well, I'm so glad you took it, Odelia. And yeah, let's talk more about this. So let me just set a framework for why these are even important. Have you talked about the attachment styles here on the podcast?

actually just did an episode last week on attachment styles, yes.

Speaker 1 (22:30.466)
The feminine dating archetypes, where they came from is basically a 2020 look back on my journey of, especially my dating journey of I was in a certain stage during this stage of my life. And then I was in a certain stage during this stage and then et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And when I started again, after I kind of reached this point in my healing journey, I looked back and I'm like, okay. And then I started to work with clients who started to go through these same stages.

And that combined with attachment style theory, nervous system theory, different misalignment of parts theories that I started to learn and I started to apply. All of a sudden, like, you know, God, universe spirit was like, boom, like these are, this is something we need to start talking about this because no one talks about this. No one talks about how, you know, if you've had somebody that, that, talked about attachment styles, one of the things that I hated.

in my journey about attachment styles is that it felt like a death sentence. I was avoidant, disorganized, but it kind of felt like, like that was just like my lot in life. Like that's who I was going to be. I couldn't change. and it felt like awareness is always great, you know, at the beginning, but awareness without action is procrastination and procrastination is a trauma response. And so I kind of sat in the soup of.

Oh, I'm, I'm avoiding attachment or I'm disorganized attachment and it being like a self-deprecating joke again about, um, who I was. And it was a label that kind of became who I was. And I feel like that people do that these days. They're like, Oh, I'm anxious attachment. LOL. Right. And I don't really think that's funny because I think, you know, again, like I, um, it's great to be aware, but how do you get out of it? How do you change? I never saw that with attachment styles. And so the feminine dating archetypes.

is really a roadmap and it'll tell you based on, based on where you land in the feminine dating archetype, it will tell you what you need to heal inside of yourself to get to the next stage and the next level. So it's a progression of you are here to, to this is where you want to be. What I try aspire to be, what my clients aspire to be is the magnetic woman and the magnetic woman, she knows who she is and what she wants.

Speaker 1 (24:52.334)
She's able to speak up for herself. She's able to be discerning. She's able to pick who is good for her and who is not, right? She's able to listen to her intuition. She sets boundaries. She's that woman. I don't know if you've ever kind of met anyone in your life like this Odelia, but she just has this energy of confidence. And it's not about...

Like what she's wearing, it's not about anything flashy about her. It's not even, she's not even the loudest person in the room. Which like that was a big coping mechanism for me for a long time is being the loudest person in the room, the funny person, you know, things like that. but there's this energy that she carries of confidence of discerning. It's like when she speaks, there's a certain power behind her voice. It's like the way she holds her shoulders and that's kind of at the end of the feminine dating archetypes. So.

If you want, can start at the kind of the beginning, which is the chill woman. So we talked a little bit about the chill woman, the chill woman. and I was a chill woman. So if anyone hears me, I'm with you. She is familiar with overwhelming anxiety in the dating process. And we're talking specifically about dating and finding love. She, this tends to flare up in a span of like 24, 72 hours of not hearing from the other person. The chill woman gets ghosted a lot.

And she just doesn't understand why. She's a good communicator probably. And she just, that's her pattern. She gets ghosted a lot. She doesn't get it. Again, the chill woman tends to get physically intimate quickly than what she's told herself to or really quickly at the beginning of the relationship. And she tends to attract men who really just want to hang out and chill. And she normally says yes to this because she just kind of craves connection. You know, the men are like, let's just see where this goes. You know, she'll be like, okay, well, let's just see where this goes. You know, she's a go with the flow type of person.

She's complained in past relationships of not being seen and not being heard. And she really, really just like the chill woman just really, really wants to know that people are going to be there and not leave her. Those are some deep desires that she has. Now, here's a good part about the feminine dating archetypes is when you go and take the quiz like Odelia did, it'll tell you what you are, but then it'll also tell you how to get to the next level.

Speaker 1 (27:11.052)
And so to get to the next level for the chill moment, if anyone's identifying this is she needs to work on her boundaries inside and outside of herself. She needs to learn how to see and hear and understand her needs and her wants and desires, because probably for a long time, she has not had any needs and wants and desires because of needs and wants and desires have been somebody else's. And so her work is really to do that inner healing work so that she can get to the next level.

Wow, that's amazing.

Have you seen like the chill woman? Have you been the chill woman? Do you know people that are the chill one?

can definitely resonate with the tall woman. I think I was that probably six months ago before the breakup.

Yeah. so the next one is like, Odile is kind of sitting in the soup right now of the fortress woman. Now the fortress woman, the reason I asked Odile is if you've had a recent breakup is because the fortress woman is actually a really good place to do some healing after a breakup. it's like a nice container for the deep level healing work. And you'll understand why when I kind of explain this, the problem with the fortress woman.

Speaker 1 (28:24.722)
is that we can get stuck here. And this was me, I was a fortress woman for like, I don't know, I think three or four years or something like that. And we can get stuck here because in the fortress woman stage, we have the wall, like a wall the size of the Great Wall of China around our hearts, right? We've been hurt. Absolutely. We've been hurt by love before. So the only way to defend your heart is to not let someone in. Like not, you can let people in, but not in, in.

Right? They're, you know, it's really high walls. Yeah. You're like heard. she feels like she's fine. Now this, if Fortress Woman and it just does trigger you, Adelia, I'm with you in this trigger. I understand. The hard part about the Fortress Woman is that.

Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (29:16.844)
We feel like we're fine. we're these, we're independent women. We can care for ourselves. can take care of ourselves and everything like that. So why we don't need a man. And that's true. We don't, we don't need a man. The hard thing is that a part of us in the fortress woman thinks that love equals pain. And so even though you may not want to be alone, there's a stronger part that just does not want to feel the pain that that doing this again would.

would kind of require. When I was a fortress woman, I used to do vision boards and my vision boards always had like this huge mansion on it with a bunch of animals and no partner, only me.

That sounds fun, yeah.

Right? so hyperindependence is a trauma response, y'all. Hyperindependence is a trauma response. So the fortress woman has a hard time trusting others. she normally in the dating process is the first one to break it off, block or delete. Also, you know, funny story in the fortress woman stage when I was out there dating and on the dating apps is that one grammatical error, one comment in the wrong place, one period in the wrong place.

one misspelling, he was out. No, right?

Speaker 2 (30:38.232)
Yeah, everything's a red flag.

Everything's exactly you got that right. Everything's a rat fight. Okay, so here's how we can get to your next level I call these gates. Here's the gates that we need to pass through inside of ourselves in order to get to the next level So the fortress woman the healing is around vulnerability inside of yourself There's a part of of the fortress woman where vulnerability is a weakness and it causes pain basically There's a lot of work around self-trust so

The story for the Fortress Woman is that I don't trust others. I can't trust anybody else. But really, the deeper level issue wound with that is that you actually do not trust yourself. You don't trust yourself. know.

Speaker 2 (31:26.914)
That just hits. Yeah.

Right. So you do not trust yourself to pick the right person. You don't trust yourself to speak up. There's some self-trust there that we need to work on. And the self-trust leads to learning how to listen to your intuition. Again, like who is right for you, who is not? We don't know. It's too confusing. And instead of trying to choose and trying to figure it out, let's just put up those walls. We'll be fine. We'll be safe. And that's the work for the fortress one.

Wow. Yeah, I can definitely resonate with that. have realized in the last couple of weeks that my issue is self-trust. So the fact that you said that, was like confirming that I'm on the right journey.

Yeah, they are on the right journey. just gave me the chills. that's good. Good. Yeah, absolutely on the right journey. The next step. So what you can look forward to when you kind of pass through this gate is the goddess woman and the goddess woman lasts most of the time. If you keep doing your work, the goddess woman only lasts a very short period of time. That's pretty standard. But again, these are archetypes because we can get stuck in them.

with, I can do this on my own or I'll figure it out or, you know, whatever kind of stories are running up for the blockers, the quote unquote self sabotage slash self protection of why parts of you are resistant to this work. So the goddess woman, the goddess woman is very confused by love. What's interesting about the goddess woman is that she has done a lot of personal development work. She's either had therapy, coaching, all of the above books.

Speaker 1 (33:10.584)
podcasts, she's done a lot of work and she's done a lot of work specifically about dating. For example, she's written out a list of characteristics that she wants in a dream partner. She's written a letter to her dream partner. She may have a love altar. The problem with the goddess woman is that she does not understand because of all the things that she knows. She's super smart. She's very self-aware. She does not understand.

the misalignment and the mismatch between what she thinks that she wants and desires and what is showing up for her in real life. For example, she likely is attracting emotionally unavailable men. She likely is attracting feminine men rather than masculine men. So the things again that she is wanting, that she thinks that she desires and she's so clear on is not showing up for her. There's also a very interesting thing that happens with the goddess woman. There is an outward perception

with the goddess woman of Instagram or social media or even with friends and family. I got this, everything's okay. But in reality, her dating life is mess. It's a freaking mess because she doesn't understand that it should be better than it is, but it isn't based off all the work that she's doing. She wants a conscious relationship. She feels like that that can be pretty intimidating to the men that she's attracting. She receives kind of feedback sometimes that she doesn't have time or she's too busy.

And really she feels like that she is better than quote unquote than the men that she attracts. Again, so there's a mismatch or something happening inside of her that's causing this thing that's happening on the outside of her. Sometimes with the goddess woman, they're like the man that she's attracting, their teacher, their coach, but not their legal lover. And so there's a weird thing that happens with that too.

She's also maybe studied or looked at like Instagram reels or, or Tik Toks about masculine and feminine dynamics. And she's tried these, these kinds of tactics about masculine and feminine dynamics, but they haven't worked. Things have not changed on the outside of her. And so again, she's at this place where she's kind of stuck because what she knows in her head should be happening is not happening in real life. And so there's a misalignment there. All right. So any goddess women that are listening,

Speaker 1 (35:31.818)
Your goal and your signpost to heal is all about perfectionism and is all about control. So there are parts of the goddess woman that really, really want to hold on and hold tight to what meeting a dream partner in real life may look like. There's a lot of control and perfectionism happening about I need to be a certain way in order to attract this person. Of course, we know that we know that it's what it's authenticity that is most magnetic. But again,

You don't know you're being inauthentic really if you're in this state. So it's just a wall that she keeps hitting of things have to be this certain way. And so her healing is about perfectionism and about control. And this isn't just dating, it's probably other areas of her life. It's probably with friends, it's probably with job, it's probably with money, know, that type of thing too.

Speaker 2 (36:28.878)
That's really good, yeah.

Yeah.

And that's the one before the, what did you say? The magnificent woman? Magnetic woman. I like that. I like that.

Yeah, so yeah, the magnetic woman really is the woman that I aspire to be and my clients kind of take on that too And again, this is not just a mask. This isn't like Lily can tell you today how to be the magnetic woman and please You know that my only caveat to all of this is that I cannot tell you how to be who you are Right and who you are is your magnet

Right? So that's the healing work. So if Lily says, I need to be discerning or, I need to know who I am and what I want. and you're still having patterns outside of you. My check to that is actually, you got some work to do. We always have work to do, but the magnetic woman, again, she's loving of herself. She's caring of herself when she messes up her. This is big for the, for the magnetic woman, her internal worth and her magnetism has moved from her head to her body.

Speaker 1 (37:35.532)
And what that means essentially is that, you know, instead of women being confused, like I know that I'm worthy, but I don't feel like I'm worthy. I don't get it. I don't understand when her, her behaviors, her beliefs. used to hold that story of, there not enough conscious men left? And now all of my parts believe the world is abundant. That's how I attracted the man in my dreams. And it's more than just saying it in the mirror. Like the world is abundant. Affirmations don't work because they don't.

help you change your behaviors. And if parts of you don't believe these affirmations, then your behaviors are gonna remain the same. And so the magnetic woman, all of her behaviors, her thoughts, her actions, her beliefs, her emotions have aligned into who she is and again, what she wants. She's a beacon in the world. In dating, the magnetic woman realizes very quickly instead of like three, four, five months down the line, she...

recognized very quickly whether someone is right for her or someone is not. She doesn't idolize dates, which is big with a, well, big for anyone really, chill woman, goddess woman. She doesn't idolize any of her potential dates. She really is back in her own intuition, her own knowing, her own nervous system, her own body. And she's able to kind of observe. She's able to see and hear and receive him and his actions really more as information so that she can make a decision.

And she's really patient. She's patient of herself. She's honoring of herself in every way.

Wow, I love that. That it really gives you that sense of empowerment that it sits with you that decision. You know, it's just as much for me as it is for the other person. Especially if you're like a lifelong people pleaser, you know, that's really impactful. And I think this is a really good tool. This quiz is a really good tool to sort of start that journey to understand where you are.

Speaker 2 (39:32.928)
If dating and relationships are something you want to focus on, then focus on healing. I think this is a really good tool to start that journey to understand what do need to work on because it can be overwhelming.

Yeah, yeah, it absolutely can be. It absolutely can be. My hope is that again, like I, I really had a hard time with the attachment styles again, because you know, people like, I used to joke about it, like, I'm avoiding or I'm anxious or I'm blah, blah, blah. it's like, to me, it's not really funny anymore. It causes a lot of pain, a lot of hurt, a lot of confusion, a lot of frustration and sadness and anger and all of these things that I never really understood how to, how to heal.

People would just say, to therapy. But again, this was kind of more of a gift than anything else. And it really, it works. mean, thousands of women have gone through this. If you can target your healing on these certain things, then it really does help you get to the next level.

Amazing. Yeah, I'd encourage all the listeners to go. I'll put the link in the show notes, as I said. And so last question, and I ask all my guests this at the end. What would you tell your younger self if you had the opportunity?

all the things. I love you. I'm here for you. I'll never leave you. You're perfect as you are. These are all my core wounds really. To be honest, this is the way, this is the work that I do. It's a mix of quote unquote inner child healing and all those things, but you don't have to perform to get love. You are already loved. I'll protect you. I got your back. Let's leave this place.

Speaker 1 (41:16.632)
Talking about my childhood. I got you. You don't need to hurt me more.

I don't know how did. So if someone wants to work with you or join your community, where can they find you?

yeah. Thank you, Adia. Yeah, I just invite anyone listening. Even if you're single, obviously, it's a great quiz. But even if you're in a relationship, patterns can still run in relationships. And likely, very similar patterns may be running. So if you're kind of unfulfilled, feeling seen or heard or anything like that in your relationship, you might want to take the quiz as well. But I invite anyone, really, to go to datingarchetype.com.

and take the quiz. takes two minutes. super quick. And it'll reveal your blocks to love. And it'll also, again, tell you what you need to heal in order to get your true love match and get you to the next level.

Amazing. And I'll put in the show notes links to your Instagram and your website and everything else. So if anyone wants to work with you, can find you. Thank you so much for joining us on the show.

Speaker 1 (42:18.488)
fine. Awesome. Thank you.

Speaker 1 (42:24.654)
you

What a beautiful and empowering conversation with Lili. I loved how she reminded us that love doesn't have to be hard and that when we begin to trust ourselves, set boundaries and stop abandoning who we are, we naturally start attracting relationships that feel safe, easeful and aligned. But we have to do the work first and that part is the hard part. If this episode resonated with you, I really encourage you to take Lili's Feminine Dating Archetype quiz at datingarchetype.com.

It's such a powerful tool to help you understand your patterns in love and discover what's ready to be healed. You can also connect with Lily on Instagram. I've added all her links in the show notes. And as always, if you're on your own journey of rediscovery in midlife, remember, you are not behind, you are not broken, and it's never too late to create the love and life you truly deserve. Thank you for listening to the Midlife Awakening. If this episode spoke to your heart, please take a moment to follow the show, leave a review,

or share it with a friend who might need to hear it today. Don't forget, when you subscribe to my sub stack, you'll get my free gift, which is a five journal prompt to start your midlife awakening delivered straight to your inbox. Until next week, be kind to yourself, take care of your heart. I'll see you in the next episode. Bye for now.