Untangling July, with restraint: The Queen Archetype (IN KNOTS)
- 3 hours ago
- 7 min read
I am very aware that I skipped June. My June Archetype is still metabolizing. We may circle back, or I'll forget to entirely.
The Queen showed up for July and apparently her royal decree was: stop making other people's decisions for them. Or, more accurately: stop making everyone's decisions and masking them as my own.
Rude. Useful. Deeply inconvenient.
Because I have built a whole personality around being extremely good at handling shit. Need something done? Use subtle shifts in tone and body language & I'll do it. Need a decision made? I took care of it 5 minutes ago. Need an emotional intelligence filter, logistics solved, expectations adjusted, contingency plans built, wifi reset, disappointment metabolized privately in the shower? Baby, I'm the whole package.
I don't even need to be asked. That's sort of the problem.
I have spent a lot of my life calling this independence. Some of it absolutely is. But there is a difference between autonomy and deciding that no one else gets to participate in the tiny authoritarian state inside my own nervous system.
Very progressive politics. Terrible border policy.
the queen Archetype, but make her tired of my shit
The Queen archetype gets flattened into this very boring internet version of feminine power. Know your worth. Adjust your crown. Don't chase. Sit on your throne. Wear a blazer while holding a goblet for some reason. Goblets belong in sunlit windows arranged by color.
The Queen I met in July was less concerned with whether I knew my worth and much more concerned with why I kept using my competence to avoid finding out what anyone else was willing to offer me.
Over-functioning has a gorgeous little loophole built into it. If I meet my own need first, no one can fail to meet them. If I decide what is realistic before I ask, no one can disappoint me. If I assume someone cannot or will not show up, I never have to stand in metaphorical rain, cradling my disappointment instead of opening my umbrella.
If I close a door myself, technically no one slammed it in my face.
Extremely efficient. Emotionally, perhaps, not my strongest flex.
i have confused sovereignty with self-containment
I thought being sovereign meant needing very little (from others). Making my own choices. Carrying my own weight. Knowing when to walk away. Not asking anyone to become something they are not.
And yes. All good qualities in moderation. Discernment is not something I am shitting on here. But sovereignty is not a fortified island.
A kingdom where nothing enters is not necessarily peaceful. Sometimes it is just empty.
And I think I have been discovering how often I preserve my autonomy by quietly conceding connection. Not dramatically. Not in a martyr way. Much sneakier than that.
I decide. I adapt. I make the thing work. I accommodate reality before reality has even finished introducing itself. I am halfway through constructing the solution while everyone else is still locating the problem.
And then I wonder why I feel alone inside something I built entirely by myself.
Haaaaaay, Queen. I sssssssee why you came.
restraint is doing something weird to me
There has also been this other thing happening. I have been experimenting with being held inside very intentional containers.
Consent. Trust. Clear edges. The ability to say yes and the ability to say stop. The strange experience of having limits without being the person constantly enforcing every single one of them.
And somewhere inside restraint, there's glimpses of freedom.
Not the freedom to disappear. The opposite.
I am very fucking there. In my body. Aware. Participating. Choosing. But not managing.
There is an enormous difference between losing control and not being responsible for controlling everything.
There is something almost embarrassingly revelatory about being held by a container you consented to and realizing that your autonomy did not vanish. You are still there. Maybe even more now.
And once you have a somatic experience like that, it gets harder to pretend that hyper-independence is the only available form of safety.
First comes embodiment, then comes...
Wanting. More.
More aliveness. More work that actually feels like mine. More being reached for (this one hurts a little to write). More initiative. More mutuality. More room to be affected by my own life. More moments where I am not the sole architect of every meaningful experience I have (this one stung, too).
Which sounds nice until you realize that wanting requires somebody to have the opportunity to say no.
Terrible UX, my dude. My operating system is coded to want less. Or want something I can contain myself.
Very reliable. 5/5 stars. A Therapist would not recommend.
I've been at this a long time, and avoiding disappointment from others does not fulfillment make.
CLOSING A DOOR WHEN YOU're SCARED SEEMS LIKE A VERY REASONABLE REACTION
There are older places where I can see this pattern now too. Places with much higher stakes.
Versions of family I imagined. Bodies and biology and parenthood and all the weird grief that can live between the family you have, the family you love, and the other portals to possibilities of past and future.
I closed doors. No, I wiped out entire galaxies. Not because I did not care. But because I cared too much. Caring too much turned into fear. My fear grew sharp teeth and decided to rebrand as resilience, autonomy, the decider.
And when you are very good at making the hard choice, people may never realize there was another answer you secretly hoped they would fight for.
That is not their failure alone. That is not mine alone. That is a dynamic.
And dynamics without consent are sneaky little fuckers because everyone can be acting in good faith while not knowing where the guardrails are.
the queen does not need a villain
There does not always have to be a baaaaaaaad guy.
Sometimes someone struggles to initiate. Someone else becomes very good at initiating. One person hesitates. The other learns to decide. One person has trouble meeting the moment. The other starts meeting the moment before they even arrive.
Years pass. Suddenly everybody has a role. And then one person wakes up and feels the real weight of what they've been carrying. It's heavy and it's yours, but it doesn't feel like you. What once created safety now limits possibility. My own competence became a cage that until recently I didn't know I built and put myself in.
autonomy without GHOSTING VULNERABILITY
The Queen Archetype is not surrendering her autonomy in this story. I have no interest in becoming less capable so that someone else can feel more necessary. The Queen Archetype is not helpless. She is learning how to remain sovereign without being sealed shut.
Which means I am trying something deeply unnatural and frankly offensive to my operating system: I am leaving some questions unanswered.
I am saying what I want before I know whether it is available (fucking 10/10 devastating, try it).
I am trying to notice when I am solving a problem that has not actually been handed to me. I am letting people have enough room to surprise me. Or disappoint me.
Both require the same doorway.
The risk is not that somebody will fail to meet me. My amygdala has already signed, sealed, and delivered that message in a blood oath.
The scarier possibility is that someone might show up. And then I would have to stop complaining to my therapist every Wednesday that receiving is simply not a thing available to a person like me.
Shit.
the throne can only summon others if my ass is in it
I keep coming back to the Queen on her throne. Just sitting there. Meanwhile I've been running the whole kingdom from a dead sprint, mopping my own floors, doing everyone's job, and calling it leadership. My duty. Leading from the throne means my ass needs to be in it to recieve. That sounds a lot like trusting someone to show up, except now the I have a goblet and the stakes are higher.
I am starting to dabble with the notion that freedom might occasionally look like having all of my faculties intact while allowing myself to be recieved and held by something I did not build alone, or at all.
Which is, frankly, some bullshit.
But here we are. I think my personal throne is just a place where I allow myself to be held by something stronger than what I'm made of.
long live the queen, i guess
July did not teach me to take my power back. I have power. That was never really the issue. The Queen asked me what I am doing with it.
Am I using it to build the life I want? Or am I using it to make sure nothing can hurt me before it has the chance to become important?
There's a difference between choosing something and rejecting it before it can reject me. Discernment in drag.
There is no neat ending here. I am not cured of deciding things. God help us all if that ever happens.
I am still competent. Still discerning. Still deeply attached to having a plan. However, pumping the brakes on my own bullshit keeps the doorway open so I can want what I cannot manufacture alone. I try to remember that being held does not mean being trapped or at risk. The medicine in restraint has allowed me to stop gripping everything so fucking hard.
I do not have to abandon myself in order to let someone else reach me. Welcome to court, ye fellow trash goblins.
Will The Queen Come For you?
About Amanda — the Entraprenotsure™ behind MYQB.
I'm a queer, neurodivergent, recovering perfectionist who built a business out of grief, creativity, and way too many browser tabs. I’m not here to give you a one-size-fits-all formula. I’m here to help amplify your voice, your rhythm, and a way of showing up that feels like you.
I started Mind Your Queer Business for the misfits, the feelers, the overthinkers, and the creatively stubborn—especially those building empires in nap time increments. Around here, we build brands and marketing strategies that actually make sense for who you are, not who the internet told you to be. If you’ve ever felt like entrepreneurship wasn’t built for someone like you, good news: you get to rebuild it.
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