The Heroine’s Journey is an ancient and current story pattern that promises that there is something unique and special within you that deserves to be brought forth.

Introduction

A magic cape, a talking hat, a boot or a carpet to travel on, a ring of power, ruby slippers “Just click your heels, Dorothy!”…our stories and movies are full of devices that transform the wearer, that help her to see the world differently and to accomplish seemingly extraordinary things. (Did you see the Barbie movie? She had to drive in a car, boat, and spaceship to go from one world to the next.) In real life, we find these magical accessories sadly missing.  How I wish I had a ring or cloak that made me invisible or slippers that took me wherever I wanted to go.

Wait!  Actually, I do have one! We have one! 

I discovered a “portkey”, the Harry Potter term for something, like an old boot, which if you held on to it you were transported, in a whoosh, to another place.  I discovered a device that showed me a new way of being and seeing that transported me - and I haven’t stopped talking about it since.

This is what my eight-week webinar is about, using not an old boot, but a construct, a framework to help you see your life in a different way, a way that could be described as magical. 

The construct, The Heroine’s Journey, is an archetype, a pattern that has appeared in stories, in literature in all times and across all cultures, as Joseph Campbell explained “a basic motif of the universal hero’s journey – leaving one condition and finding the source of life to bring you forth into a richer or mature condition.” from The Power of Myth. It’s the motif of our growth and development as humans – what gets us higher and higher up on the spiral of self-actualization. (I work with women so I use the feminine of the term, heroine.)

In using the same milestones and language we are invoking a powerful mythic structure that I believe actually works on us (at that same deep level that poetry, music and art impact us).  As one of the students of my Heroine’s Journey Program said to me:

“Working with the Heroine’s Journey archetype helped open me up in a way that nothing else was able to do.” 

It’s a powerful “magic carpet.” 

I think it’s very important that we all know about this! 

Campbell studied the myths and legends of the world.  He found one myth everywhere - the myth of the hero. He called it a monomyth because of its wide distribution around the world and across all time.  This archetypal theme is what we’re going to use as our magical device in the webinar.  We are going to place your life into the common signposts of the journey and see you and your life or situation through a new lens.  You will find it transformative.

The word, heroine, may bring up different pictures in your mind. It may make you think of a female leading character in a book. Or, it may make you think of the drug, heroin!  Here’s my definition of heroine, as I use it in the webinar.  A heroine says “yes” to her call and takes the heroine’s journey to reclaim who she really is as a person, who she is meant to be, not some version of herself that she presents to others to make them happy. She is herself – genuine and authentic. 

The heroine’s journey is the transporting mechanism that helps you realize your own true self.  You never really lost her.  It’s more a process of uncovering her, dispensing the layers that we use to be less vulnerable and seemingly safe and acceptable.   The journey is your own magic carpet.

Here’s the Thing

As Joseph Campbell detailed for us in his classic The Hero With a Thousand Faces, there are several signposts that are similar in all the stories he studied, but here’s the thing: these milestones are not just buried in stories – they are very alive in our own lives and we move through them every day.  That is the thesis of my webinar. 

You are living the heroine’s journey and you are, undoubtedly, a heroine.

Now, to prove it to you!  In eight exciting and illuminating sessions!  

Here are the signposts and their definitions as we’ll use them in this webinar.  The titles come from the titles Joseph Campbell gave them.  (He has several more milestones and defines them in The Hero With a Thousand Faces.)

World of Common Day: This is home base, the point where the heroine is before she leaves on her next journey (to discover herself). 

Call To Adventure: This is a force, an urging, internal or external, that suggests that you move out of your World of Common Day.  It suggests a transition, a change, a stepping out. 

Refusal of the Call: Often times our first reaction to a call is “No!”  You may be comfortable where you are, secure in your World of Common Day. 

Meeting with the Mentor: Sometimes a person will appear (though it may not always be a person…) who will help you think things through at this point and urge you, and support you in responding to your Call.  

Crossing the First Threshold: This is when you take that brave step to respond to your call and embark on your new adventure or journey.  For the heroine, this means taking the risk to be more of who you are.  

The Belly of the Whale: A metaphor meaning that following our call often seems like being swallowed up into the unknown.  

The Supreme Ordeal: This is where you meet your Dragon or Dragons (if you should be so lucky to have more than one big fear.)  These are those gut-wrenching fears that stop us and block us. 

Gifts/Reward: Once you’ve made it through this particular trip around the journey milestones you’ll note that you’ve received gifts as a result. 

The Return Threshold: You’ve accomplished something and are transformed by it.  Now you can share your newly re-birthed self with the world and let the ripple effect take place.  Every heroine willing to take the journey helps the world by setting the example:  

"In this view all people are heroic, and all are essential to human evolution.  Our task is merely to affirm completely who we are.  We do not have to spend all or even any of our time trying to prove that we are okay."  The Hero Within - Carol Pearson

Freedom to Live: Every trip around the Heroine’s Journey gives you more and more freedom to be yourself, to trust yourself.  You are free of whatever fear you encountered along the way and it’s a step towards dying to your personal ego and living more into the Self.

Our time over the eight weeks will be about putting you and your life into this heroine’s journey framework, using these signposts to help you see where you are and realize you are a heroine. We’ll be touring the signposts of the journey sequentially to introduce you to them.  Then we’ll see where you think you are on the map right at this moment in your life…and what that might mean for you. 

You Are a Heroine!

I have a vested interest in proving to you that you are a heroine.  There is a heroine in every woman but we’ve forgotten it.  Maybe we knew it when we were six or seven.  Sadly, maybe some of us never knew it, but at one point we were fearless and were fine with who we were. 

But then we compared ourselves with others and found ourselves lacking and the covering up of who we really are began. (See my blog about this – how we live in a Measurement World! It’s the source of our undoing!)  This hasn’t served us and hasn’t served our world. 

So, we’ll be traveling the heroine’s journey together so I can show you who you really are, a heroine, someone who matters; has a purpose, and has the courage to act on that purpose.

Sure, it might be safer and a lot less risky to stay in your comfortable World of Common Day but you’ll find, along with the challenges, that there are helpers on the journey, synchronicities that will surely surprise you and ultimately, divine support for you to be who you are.  Joseph Campbell told us if you only take one step towards the gods, they will take ten steps towards you.

They are waiting.  Let’s take the journey.