The Key-Holder as Sacred Feminine

Morning thoughts:  All the Ostara/Happy Spring stuff on the internet combined with a rant my friend Mischa went on last night about how dirty, messy, fiery, bloody and painful spiritual growth is has me thinking about femininity and magic.  Our culture likes to separate feminine magic out into tropes like the scary witch doing the bloody magic (good or bad, maiden or crone), the unconditional love Virgin Mary petting lambs and holding babies, and the sexy fertility goddess. But our modern pagan concept of "the feminine" ignores the reality of running a household, the woman as key-holder.  This role, obvs, isn't inherently gender-specific.  My issue is with how patriarchy separates femininity specifically into the binary of "good and nurturing life" vs. "scary and dealing death".  How the two are combined in woman-as-key-holder is barely mentioned.  This is woman as field marshal, manager, organizing tasks and personnel to make best use of assets. She is the last resort - if there is no one else to perform a task, it falls to her.  She makes life and death decisions for animals and people: who can we feed? And this is where she is vilified:  the same woman who comforts a child, might decide under extreme circumstances to leave another to exposure.  The same rosy-cheeked woman who  tends her flowering herbs in the sunshine also may be found elbow-deep in entrails at another time.  She isn't secluded in her cottage having tea with forest creatures nor creeping out townsfolk who visit looking for potions.  She does the dirty magic: getting the work done through anger and sadness and joy and love.  Holding hands to comfort, holding bloody wounds in service of life or death, holding her lover, looking in the eyes of people she cares for or has to work beside every day.. on their worst days and their best days. And on her worst and best days.   I guess this is maybe where Frigg energy lives... the Freyja part makes the best stories... sex and war.   The Frigg energy is the everyday life and death: building relationship with plants, fate played out in dumb games at family reunions, the dynamics of long term marital partnership of individuals with their own aims and goals, the chess of long-tern strategy for guiding generations. 

My stream of consciousness has run out of steam so I guess I'm done.  This is what I'll think of whenever I see all the various pagany springtime memes this year.