where are you in the cycle?

Joseph Campbell is famous for telling us to follow our bliss. (Advice I can get behind.) He is also famous for his work in identifying the archetypal mythic structure in storytelling, the hero’s, or heroine’s journey, and the value of these journeys in our lives.

You can play the game of identifying the Hero’s Journey in popular movies like the Titanic, or you can find the elements in your own life. Each path is unique. He writes, “If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it’s not your path. Your own path you make with every step you take. That’s why it’s your path.”

I’m teaching a one-day writing class called the Heroine’s Journey this coming Saturday August 2. If you are working on a novel, memoir, an essay, or just wanting inspiration to dive into writing, you are invited. There are still a few spots.

If you are not a writer, these Hero/Heroine’s Journey concepts are valuable for you for your own life. And quite connected to quirkyalone. Especially for women. I’ve often thought that women more than men identify with quirkyalone because there are so few positive archetypes for a woman alone in our culture. And by alone, I don’t even mean single. I mean a woman who takes herself and her life seriously on its own terms–a life filled with meaningful quests.

Our culture is filled with stories of the hero, and not the heroine. In The Odyssey, Odysseus is tempted by sirens and Penelope waits at home for his return. In Harry Potter, Hermione is a sidekick. Other powerful male wanderers with wisdom to share: Jesus, Jack Kerouac, the Buddha, and so on. The list is endless. Who are the women? The woman herself does not go on a meaningful journey for her own sake, and if she does, the conclusion usually revolves around finding true love. (Think most romantic comedies or even the conclusion of Eat Pray Love.)

These are our culture’s stories, and our cultures stories reflect us. Justine Musk, a writer and creativity-inspirer, speaks in this TED talk about “the art of the deep yes” for women. What she calls the “deep yes” is self-worth–the idea of saying a big yes to yourself and what you are capable of in this life. This deep yes has all too often been lacking for women. This deep yes is what you need to embark on a heroine’s journey.

As Justine notes in her excellent talk, “Modesty is a feminine virtue.” Women are expected to have low self-esteem and put ourselves down. Playing yourself down is a strategy for getting people to like you, to make yourself “relatable.” Heaven knows I’ve done that. As she notes, women are usually the “wives, girlfriends, mistresses, vixens, femmes fatales in someone else’s epic story–usually a guy.” So what if you are the heroine of your own story? You as a woman are already stepping outside the cultural paradigm.

Maureen Murdock in her book The Heroine’s Journey suggests there is a unique journey for women.

Writing about my own “heroine’s journey” in my new book Wet has been so powerful because I knew I was directly struggling with the dominant idea that a woman’s primary role in life is to be a wife and mother–an enabler of others. To take the position that I could go on a quest for myself, and what I might bring back as an “elixir” for myself and others, has been quite radical. And fascinating. And great.

So that’s why I am so interested in the Hero’s/Heroine’s Journey. I’m interested in it as a writer, and I’m interested in more women seeing themselves on the path of a heroine’s journey.

There are still a few spaces open this Saturday, August 2.
Click HERE for class information for this Saturday’s live class on The Heroine’s Journey in San Francisco at the Writers’ Grotto.
+++http//sashacagen.com/writing-heroines-journey

Several people have written me to say, Hey, I don’t live in the Bay Area, would you do this class online? If you are interested, let me know, and if there’s a quorum, we’ll get that going.

See you on the path!
Sasha