The Heroine’s Journey

“Women do have a quest at this time in our culture. It is the quest to fully embrace their feminine nature, learning how to value themselves as women and heal the deep would of the feminine. It is a very important inner journey toward being a fully integrated, balanced, and whole human being. Like most journeys, the path of the heroine is not easy; it has no well-defined guideposts, no recognizable tour guides. There is no map, no navigational chart, no chronological age when the journey begins. It follows no straight lines. It is a journey that seldom receives validation from the outside world; in fact the outer world often sabotages and interferes with it.” 

The Heroine’s Journey – Woman’s Quest for Wholeness – Maureen Murdock.

I am so grateful for the last nine months that offered me the opportunity to step off a path I’ve been on since age 17. A path that developed the masculine side of myself so fully and so strongly that I came dangerously close to completely and fully collaposing into that mode of doing in the world. I’ve spent the last nine months slowing down and examining myself from many different angles. In this slowing down I’ve been able to hear the small voices within myself that were drowned out in my “doing” life; leaving me disconnected from myself, my wisdom, my being.

The journey I’m on right now feels different. I feel the need to cultivate aspects of myself that have gone untended and in this cultivation, new ways of being in the world can emerge. Without this cultivation I am left with the current arrows in my quiver, which were wrought in the fires of my journey thus far which rested on the masculine ideals of linearity, rationality, pushing forward toward, doing as the primary mode of living, and the list goes on. These arrows are insufficient for my journey forward, I need new arrows and in fact – I don’t need arrows, I need something else. What these are I’m still exploring and learning about – I do know they are connected to beauty and to creativity. I now hear my call toward creativity more clearly and I’m still learning to listen to this voice and hear what it has to teach me. My willingness to trust my intuition and my soma (body) is strengthening. I’m in a process that looks like nothing else I’ve been through – it is exciting and terrifying at the same time.

Very importantly, I am able to now more clearly see the connection between my own journey and the journey of our culture, society and world. The imbalances we see in our world today stem directly from the imbalances we embody ourselves. Our white supremist culture (the big umbrella under which things like patriarchy, capitalism, etc. sit) devalues the feminine and over values the masculine. This is harmful to all living beings of all genders, and harmful to women in particular ways. With that connection made – I can now see how my embrace of my feminine will serve to heal me and serve to heal the world.

The polarity of masculine and feminine is one of the most potent and powerful polarities with which we (I) can work. I’ve been exploring this for awhile now and I can see even in the last five years how much progress I’ve made. I’ve had to work through my own socialization which, of course, made me devalue feminine and in fact resist it in myself and others. And work through the conflation of gender and feminine and masculine. I’m further along now and am eager to keep going. I’m now fully in a second-half of life journey and I’m so grateful.