What is the heroine's journey?

Joseph Campbell outlined in "the Power of Myth" The Hero's Journey which forms the backbone of most stories and movies and basically, it plays out like this:

A guy living his normal life hears the call of adventure, refuses, then meets a version of Yoda, goes into the unknown. Has lots of close call adventures, almost dies, probably kills some people, survives it, and returns to normal life changed and with a thing that will help his peeps.

Good story.  But not this one.

This one is The Heroine's Journey, and it doesn't go out into the world. Nope, this one goes inside.  It isn't a call for external adventure that is calling...It’s your spirit calling, the unexpressed creative gifts that live, not outside of you, but inside of you.  It isn’t something you find outside but something you give birth to through you. The Heroine's Journey is an inner world adventure and it can be as scary as facing dementors.

Here is how this plays out.  Girl unprepared for life by a mum with her own issues goes out uninitiated into the world.  The toxic soup of cultural oppression and historical family trauma worm their way into her mind, and she becomes her own worst enemy.   She thrashes from one form of escape to another wrestling with and trying to control the vampire perfection in a self-judgment swamp of guilt, shame, and fear. Just as she is about to go under and breathe her last breath, her heart cracks open, and she utters the magic words…”I can’t do this alone.”

Suddenly the goddesses hand reaches under the sludge and pulls her to the surface.  Her lungs fill with air and as she crawls up on the shore. Her gasps, turn to sobs and her tears of gratitude and self-compassion and loving kindness wash away the toxic sludge.  Her breathing slows, and she remains aware. Her mind continues its chatter, she observes it, unhooked, just breathing.  Just present.   She has been initiated into a spiritual life that holds the key to her greatest creative treasures.   

Male, Female or non-binary it doesn't matter

Whether you are male, female or other, it’s going to require a Heroines Journey to get to your best creative work.  That means going inside to honour and forgive your hot messes not by going outside to create more and spread them like viruses out into the world and down the family tree.

At any age in your life, you learn to drop the drama, an you can step on to the Heroine's Journey and become initiated to your rich creative life.

Here is the deal. You are going to die.

If you don’t choose a form of initiation on to the Heroines Journey, you will die in a fizzle, having squandered your gifts by focusing all of your energy into trying to numb guilt, shame, and fear.  

Please don't do that.  Be the wild artivist granny who is peeling donuts with the last drop of juice you have left in your creative tank before you go out in a blaze of artistic glory spreading creative inspiration on everything you touch.

Through all of my own thrashings through life, I have managed to become initiated on the Heroines Journey, and I have taken notes along the way.  I have created a roadmap called the Creative Vortex. If you need your initiation out of the head banging numbing dramas and into your creative superpowers, then put your details below.