Keeping the Spark Alive: Honoring the Eternal Girl Within Every Woman

In therapy this week, a young woman reflected on how much she had changed since starting her first full-time job. “I used to feel so bling bling — full of sparkle, curiosity, and excitement,” she said. “Now I feel like that part of me is gone, and I don’t know why.” Her voice carried both confusion and disappointment — a quiet grief for the part of herself that once felt alive.

Many women can relate.

Adulthood often brings structure, stability, and responsibility — all valuable and necessary — yet it can also dim the light of our spontaneity, imagination, and sense of possibility. The busy rhythm of adult life can make the inner girl fade into the background, unseen but not gone.

From a Jungian perspective, this is not a sign of immaturity. It is a natural and meaningful tension within the psyche. Beneath the layers of our professional roles and adult responsibilities lives what Jung called the Puella Aeterna — the Eternal Girl.

The Eternal Girl Within

The Puella Aeterna archetype represents the youthful, imaginative, and idealistic feminine spirit. She embodies dreams, curiosity, and a longing for freedom and beauty. She is the part of every woman that still wants to dance, to explore, to fall in love with life itself.

When this energy is alive and integrated, it brings warmth, vitality, and creativity to daily life. The Puella helps us stay connected to what makes us feel most alive. But when she is suppressed, we may feel flat, joyless, or overly serious — as though we’ve lost our inner color. Conversely, when one becomes over-identified with her, there can be a resistance to commitment or a tendency to drift in endless dreams.

Jungian work invites us to find a living balance. The goal is not to silence or indulge the Puella, but to listen to her voice and ground her energy in adult life. This may look like reconnecting with creative passions, nurturing beauty in small ways, or simply allowing more play and wonder into the everyday. Honoring this part of ourselves doesn’t make us less mature — it makes us more whole.

The Journey Toward Wholeness

Jung described the process of psychological growth as individuation — the lifelong journey of becoming who we truly are. It is not about perfection, but about integration — bringing together all the parts of ourselves, including those we may have outgrown or forgotten.

Across the lifespan, different stages invite different aspects of the psyche to unfold:

• Adolescence: discovering identity, forming ideals, and testing boundaries.

  
  

• Early adulthood: building a career, relationships, and independence — often where the Puella first feels constrained by external structure.

  
  

• Midlife: pausing to ask what has been lost, reevaluating purpose, and rediscovering unlived parts of the self.

  
  

• Later life: integrating wisdom, freedom, and acceptance; reconnecting with childlike wonder in a quieter, more soulful way.

  
  

Each transition asks us to balance the outer world of responsibility with the inner world of imagination and meaning. Individuation is rarely linear. It spirals, returning us to old questions in new forms, helping us integrate past, present, and possibility.

Between Dream and Reality

Jung believed that growth arises through the tension of opposites — holding both sides of a psychological polarity until something new emerges. In this context, the Puella represents the world of dream and ideal, while the adult self represents reality and structure.

Both are necessary. If we live only in dreams, we risk drifting without direction. If we live only in practicality, our spirit withers. True maturity means holding the tension — allowing dreams to inspire reality, and letting reality give form and grounding to dreams.

You might imagine this balance as a bridge between sky and earth. The woman who can dream deeply and act responsibly carries both wings and roots — and through this integration, her life gains depth, meaning, and aliveness.

Finding Balance in Transitions

Life transitions — entering adulthood, becoming a mother, facing midlife, or redefining one’s career — often awaken the Puella again.

She whispers: What happened to the girl who once loved to create, to explore, to dream without limits?

Rather than silencing her, we can pause and listen.

What is she longing for now? What kind of beauty, play, or freedom is missing from your current season of life?

Finding balance does not mean choosing between the dreamer and the adult. It means allowing them to walk side by side — the dreamer keeping the heart open, and the adult helping the dream take form. This is how we keep the spark alive, even as life grows fuller and more complex.

Standing between who she is and who she once dreamed to be, she embraces both the light of her inner girl and the grounding of her adult self.