Freya and the Worth We Keep Trying to Earn
When beauty, achievement, and usefulness become measures of value
It’s easy to say our worth comes from who we are, not what we do or how we look. It can be much harder to recognize all the ways we still try to prove it.
The Norse Goddess Freya is traditionally connected with love, beauty, sensuality, and feminine power. But like most Goddesses, She is multifaceted and has more depth than a single attribute or quality. As I developed a deeper relationship with Freya, I discovered another aspect of Her: Sacred Worth.
Freya and Sacred Worth
I began seeing her differently as I dove deeper into working with Her as part of the Goddess archetype work I do. I connected Her to the Romantic archetype, and the usual qualities of love, beauty, sensuality, and intimacy. In studying Her stories, I noticed Her energy and frequency in connection with love and beauty was quite different from that of Aphrodite.
For me, Aphrodite’s energy around love is that She’s a temptress. She has a voluptuousness about Her that invites adoration of Her body and beauty. From the energy I feel, She has a driving need to be seen and adored by men and will do almost anything to receive that adoration.
Freya, on the other hand, feels to me settled in her own worth and value. She knows who She is, and Her beauty and sensuality are simply an aspect of Her. It doesn’t determine Her worth, happiness, or sense of Self. Freya loves pleasure, luxury, and treats herself to the finer things in life—possessions, experiences, and lifestyle.
Many of the stories about Freya and Her sensuality come to us from a patriarchal view and are used as a discourse on “morality”, especially Her lack of it. The story of how Freya obtained her treasured necklace, the Brísingamen, is one.
One day, as Freya traveled the sky in her magical chariot drawn by two black cats, She noticed some dwarves working on the most beautiful amber necklace She’d ever seen. Its beauty rivaled Her own. Freya flew down and asked the dwarves to sell it to Her. But the dwarves refused to sell it for any price of coin or gold. Instead, they asked Freya to spend a night of pleasure with each of them. If She did, that would be more than enough payment for the precious necklace. Freya agreed. She fiercely guarded Brísingamen and wouldn’t allow anyone to wear it or take it from Her.
In another story, the Norse Gods gathered at a feast, and Loki attempted to discredit Freya. He stood, raising His horn in tribute to Freya, and accused Her of sleeping with all the gods, including Her brother. Instead of rising to his bait, Freya smiled with secret knowing behind her horn and raised her eyebrow as if to say, “And… so what?” They all knew Loki had slept with many of the goddesses — and a number of gods.
The underlying message of these stories is that Freya was morally corrupt because She willingly traded Her body for a possession and enjoyed sex.
Instead, I see a woman who knew her desires, knew her self-worth, and chose to do what was right for her. She honored herself by claiming what she wanted—both to have and to do. Freya embraced her worth and ignored society’s judgements and constraints.
Those judgments of women’s morality and value haven’t changed much since the writing of Freya’s stories in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Even today, society holds women to a different moral standard.
Traditionally, our value as women is based on our “purity” when we marry to ensure resulting children are those of the male. Women who choose not to adhere to this traditional valuation of themselves are demeaned and degraded as sluts and whores. While at the same time, men who are as promiscuous or more so, are celebrated as studs.
Women and Impossible Standards
Too often, society teaches us that we must prove our worth and value, especially women. We must produce children to be seen as valuable. The way we look, dress, and the size of our bodies determines if we’re desirable—and therefore worthy of a man’s gaze and marriage. Women’s behavior must adhere to what’s acceptable.
But those standards are impossible to meet. I love Gloria’s monologue (played by America Ferrera) in the Barbie movie. It perfectly describes what I’ve experienced in my life—and that of many women.
It states, “It is literally impossible to be a woman. You are so beautiful, and so smart, and it kills me that you don’t think you’re good enough. Like, we have to always be extraordinary, but somehow we’re always doing it wrong.”
She goes on to describe how those standards are paradoxical with women needing to be thin, but not too thin. Beautiful, but not too beautiful. Ambitious or intelligent, but not so much as to overshadow men.
The monologue ends with: “I’m just so tired of watching myself and every single other woman tie herself into knots so that people will like us.”
That monologue echoes what I’ve felt, what I feel. Like Gloria, I’m tired of watching myself and other women devalue themselves, what they do, and who they are because they can’t meet society’s unattainable standards.
I’ve succumbed to trying to live up to those impossible standards. I’ve hated myself, my looks, and who I was because I was never “enough” and never fit the standards.
For years, I considered myself fat and ugly because I wasn’t waif-thin or had the perfect-shaped face. I had to stop comparing myself to an impossible standard before I could accept my body. Now, as a mature woman who has birthed a baby, I’ve come to accept I will never have a flat belly or be super thin. Even as a teen, I didn’t have that type of body—it just isn’t my body type. My body wasn’t the only part of myself I believed needed to change before I could be enough.
In attempting to prove my worth, I’ve spent years trying to improve myself, to be a better version of myself, to be my full-potential. My underlying desire was to fix what was wrong with me, so I’d be worthy and deserving of love and happiness. While I did change and grow, the belief that I wasn’t worthy or valuable continued to lie beneath the surface. No matter how much I changed or transformed, I still wasn’t “good enough”.
The more I moved away from self-help and danced with the Goddess, the more I began seeing myself in a new light. Instead of seeing all my faults, flaws, and imperfections, I saw the Goddess reflected in the mirror. The Goddess has many faces and names across the world. In each variation and incarnation, She is beautiful. She is Whole. She is Worthy. I could look in the mirror and see my own beauty, worth, and divinity. I am the Goddess and She is Me, isn’t just a saying for me. It is truth.
Intrinsic Worth and Achievement
I began to understand what that meant: my worth doesn’t come from what I do or how I look. Rather, it comes from who I am and from simply being that unique person. There has never been another person exactly like me, just as there has never been another person who is exactly you.
We incarnated into physical bodies not to escape into enlightenment, but to experience life. Living a fully embodied life means learning more about ourselves as we grow, make mistakes, and try new things. Sometimes we stumble, fall, and miss the mark. We fail. And at other times, we grow, dance, and soar. We succeed. Our failures don’t diminish our worth or value, and likewise, our successes don’t make us more worthy.
Sometimes, it’s much easier for me to understand my intrinsic worth than it is to live from it.
In the past, I looked at my contributions, my work, and what I accomplished to prove my worth and value. If I was adding to the world, making it a better place, I had value. But I rarely considered what I did or accomplished as valuable.
As a CPA, I struggled to see how preparing financial statements for a company or doing tax returns was valuable and made the world better. I’d just have to do it all again the next month or quarter.
Even as I started following my heart and passion to write stories, I questioned if they were “big” enough. How would my fantasy and science fiction stories change the world? Although I knew writing was my soul’s calling, I still sought to prove my value—and the value of my stories—as being worthy of my time and effort.
Once again, Freya brought me back to the question of where worth actually comes from.
While working with Freya and writing the Freya’s Sacred Worth Guide, I finally embraced my calling to write. Not just writing about Goddess Spirituality, but also writing my fantasy stories.
Freya showed me how they worked in tandem. My Temple and Goddess Spirituality writing helps women remember through reflection. Through sharing my dance with the Goddess, other women can discover their own dance and remember who they are, remember their value and worth, and remember their dreams.
My stories help women and readers to remember through experience. The stories reflect what could be possible if different assumptions and expectations underlie a society.
I finally understood that my Temple and my stories aren’t competing callings. They are simply two expressions of the same underlying vocation.
Although my writing is a vocation and calling, it doesn’t determine my value and worth. At the same time, outside measurements of success or failure for my writing don’t diminish or increase its value to me. It’s valuable because it lights me up and brings me joy. And that is enough to be a worthy use of my time.
Living From Sacred Worth
Freya is a Goddess who knows and embodies Her own worth. The light of Her mirror reflects to us our intrinsic worth as we dance with Her. Her beauty, sensuality, desires, and choices don’t determine Her value. Neither do our bodies, accomplishments, successes, failures, or usefulness determine ours.
As we develop a relationship with Her, we can begin to embrace our uniqueness and see ourselves as valuable. Sometimes, it’s much easier to understand that than it is to live from it. I still live in a world that values women by impossible standards, and I still catch myself measuring my own worth by what I do and accomplish. But I can now recognize those measures for what they are and know that they aren’t the source of my value.
Freya doesn’t ask us to become someone else to be worthy. She shows us another possibility: knowing our worth belongs to us, and living Self-fully from there.
It can be easier to believe that worth is intrinsic than it is to recognize all the places where we still measure ourselves by something else. As you think about your own experiences, reflect where ideas about beauty, behavior, achievement, usefulness, or success have shaped how you see your value. Consider what becomes possible when those measures are no longer the ones that define you.
1. What messages have you received about what makes a woman valuable or worthy? Which of those still influence how you see yourself today?
2. When you think about the things you spend your time creating, doing, or pursuing, where does usefulness or achievement enter into how you determine whether they are worthwhile? What else makes something valuable to you?
3. If your worth did not need to be earned, increased, or proven, what might you see differently about yourself or the way you choose to live?
Continue Exploring with Freya
If something in this essay resonated with you, Freya’s Sacred Worth offers a way to continue the exploration through relationship and devotional practice.
Through time with Freya, the Guide invites you to explore worth beyond simply knowing you are worthy. You’ll consider how you value yourself, your gifts, your desires, and your inner knowing—and whose measures you may still be using to determine what is valuable.
There isn’t one right answer or a particular place you need to arrive. The Guide offers different ways to spend time with Freya, reflect on your own experience, and discover what becomes visible for you.
I invite you to join the conversation on my Substack, Lunar Ink & Alchemy, to share your experience and insights from reading this essay.
