Each year, I carefully craft my learning charter, then fling it to the wind and clutch at things that call to my spirit. I am coming off a mellow high from The Heroine’s Journey offered by The School of You, anchored by the wondrous duo of Aruna Gopakumar and Sam Arni. It acts as a nice counterpoint to the Hero’s Journey. I attended that workshop six months ago, have summed it up at the bottom of this post, for context.
Cut to present: The Heroine’s Journey
The Heroine’s Journey goes inward, underground, seeking healing. It is a jolly old yin to the yang of the hero’s journey. To meet my inner hero was to summit the mountaintop and go outward, seeking adventure1. This journey is looking from the eyes of the spirit, often at the same events, and making new meaning. Created by Maureen Murdock, it tracks the psycho-spiritual journey of the feminine in the spirit2. Since these are masculine and feminine sides of the spirit, the journey is not restricted to women. This worldview immediately honoured the existence of & the waxing and waning health of my inner landscape. It legitimised my tendency for making big life decisions instinctively, powerfully and then building the outwardly logic to explain to others.
In the workshop, right off the bat, the realisations arrived: What aspects of myself do I consider masculine or feminine, and what am I learning from that connection:
My masculine side had protective & caretaking energy, love, stewardship of others, an outward-bound energy that engaged with the world and negotiated. My feminine had resilience, caregiving energy, service of others, stewardship for myself and the earth, acceptance, an inward-bound energy that marshalled, husbanded and apportioned resources. The two kinds of love within me sometimes contradict each other, causing friction. My promise from the hero’s journey exploration last year was to place care for myself over care for others. I also explored the difference between caretaking and caregiving. In my articulation, the caretaking is boundaried, is a role that comes with power to drive decisions. Caregiving on the other hand, prioritises others’ needs while mine may fall by the wayside, decisions are by committee. With a resume cluttered entirely too much with the latter, to be caretaker was a positive permission.
Sam had a neutrally phrased approach: solar and lunar journeys to denote the hero and heroine’s journeys.
I put together this visual to hold essential elements of the journey: It is cyclical, seasonal, has intertwined growth and death like the waxing and waning moon, is embodied and is more of a labyrinth in its movement, than a circle. The hero’s journey, as a participant identified, is one of achievement and can often be one of exhaustion. This journey is one of replenishment.
My journey inwards
At the beginning, events push you out of the illusion of a perfect world: Everything that novice me had worked towards: Career growth, promotions, validation, recognition, being seen as a leader in the field, money, lifestyle: it was all beginning to fade in relevance. Against conventional wisdom, I logged out of a work world that rewards relentless slogging, fosters the urgency trap, approves of politics & games, expects owning unfair decisions as a gateway to leadership. All because a strong voice inside my head said so.
The world of work, that values business growth at disproportionate scale and valorises people who achieve it, sees many hero’s journeys. Women are rewarded for mimicking masculine energy. Most of us also come from households that are socialised for the role of the woman at home to be caregiver, nurturer, to be protected, tucked away from the outside world, allowed (maybe preferred) to be childish. Our mothers never received the charter to dip into the power of the true feminine. And so, as the world demands it of us, we trade our feminine spirit for the masculine.
If I am seen as “one of the boys”, it is easier to blend in and be visible for growth. I am signing up to play by the rules of the establishment. The logging out allowed me to drop the “Man”tle and breathe.
The illusion of success fell away with the realisation that I was serving someone else’s dreams and plans — at work and in life. I had logged in to the “man”tle of caregiver, which was a sad, odd mixture of taking a masculine control of family decisions, fortunes and anything that needed going out for. At the same time, there was a feminine need to serve and be the best sacrificing woman I could be, and care in a boundariless way. My 20s were a relentless bludgeoning of family expectations to make a good marriage. I had run so far in the other direction as to not have a balanced point to return to. Some untended part of my spirit that keenly felt the imbalance and the emotional diminishing was keeping count. I was outwardly overindexing on care for family, and gradually removing my needs from the equation altogether, and was “showing them all” by being the most silent, personally struggling but outwardly smiling caregiver ever. All this while, the inner wilderness was apparently keeping tabs.
I was functioning well outwardly: My new work was not “scale for the sake of scale”. We were small, deeply specialised, highly valued. My colleagues were spectacular, work interactions fed my soul, I grew in learning, contributed to spectacular communities. Very slowly, though, aridity was setting into the spirit. I was that distance running and cycling person, working all days of the week across my full-time work and support to friends’ businesses. At a far gentler pace, with people I loved. Busy busy busy but for good causes. I didn’t have time for myself but who needed it, when you have purpose and adventure, right?
This image below depicts the dichotomy between a high-functioning outward energy, while the inward energy was uncared for & dehydrated.
It was almost as if, the inner wilderness said, “so, you won’t heed the signs I am sending you. I’ve got you, babe” and it upped the ante.
My body gave up on me. I had mild fever for 24 hours. A week later, my joints felt arthritic. My feet were swollen and knees wouldn’t work. Some abomination of a flu variant called viral arthritis. I got on steroids for a few months and soldiered on. The body switched tactics from acute to chronic pain. I was functional but no fun. The unavoidable pain was invisible. Only adipose thanks to the damn steroids was visible. The aridity of the spirit was turning into a cloud of gloom, hanging low over my emotional landscape.
Then, a few key relationships changed in complexion and my world tilted on its axis again. Enter therapy: it helped cope with the pain of the immediate. A larger darkness had descended and it was getting difficult to see or be in the gloom. This image is how my world felt: a pervasive grey on a parched, ignored, and hurting landscape.
The exploration progressed organically to the descent into the abyss. Quick segue, my closest men friends have all walked this way: Of doing spectacularly well on conventional parameters of work, growth, visibility, success etc., till the spiritual deadweight is too much to bear. And one day, answering the call of their inner drummer, they march out of mainstream work, never to return, unless on their terms. So, tending to the spirit’s needs has been their heroine’s journey.
More changes appeared on the horizon: I left a beloved workplace and started my practice. Found a quiet space to operate from. The pace of work changed, as it would for a new business searching for clients. Prolonged therapy with a proficient practitioner turned the tide a bit. I operated more boundaried, acknowledged helplessness, recognised the fear guilt and shame that drove my train and was aware of operating in victim mode. This was a good start, but not enough, clearly. The pain and the gloom still persisted. The spirit was still holding out for more.
My caregiving rigour was unchanged: both, as primary caregiver for parents, and the first person too many would reach out to, in crisis. I was always on call. A mental health practitioner who knew me from work asked, “Monica is there to lend a listening ear to everyone through tough times, but who does Monica talk to?” She caught that I was not open about things I was fumbling in the dark with, not really activating my tribe. I had little experience of being confident that when I fell, I would be picked up and held safe, and so I did everything to not fall. The inner wildness must’ve been at wit’s end, but this time, the outer world helped.
Just as work was stabilising, the pandemic hit. In the blessed quiet, I learnt to love solitude. While others organised zoom meet-ups, I started to flourish in the quiet. Never before had I had the luxury of hours and days of calm to myself, and a gentle space to be calm in. No bat-signals sent to turn up and support someone somewhere. When the world started to return to normal, the gloom descended again. The physical pain persisted.
A kindly teacher suggested that the pain was here to teach me something and I had to stop striving and surrender. Surrender I did.
My wintering was finally beginning to end. I started inquiring within: Why were my needs were absent in all this striving? Shouldn’t I lead that vanguard in striving for myself, instead of expecting others to do that for me? Is my striving for others equitable with their striving for / championing of me? Who are my allies and which are my communities?
From this exploration emerged an identity of a re-wilded me. In the workshop, we searched for a name to call that part that was birthed in the sacred space of the descent, “Wild Woman”, I called myself. I was reminded that Clarissa Pinkola Estes writes about the Wild Woman, La Loba and immediately felt a knowing along my spine.
(Edit: I went to read this on preview mode. At the bottom, there’s an introduction to myself that I wrote a year or two ago and promptly forgot about. That references the Wild Woman and a Wolf. So, she’s been there all along)
The exploration then moved to knowing more intimately this side of me that was birthed by the abyss that held me in thrall for seven years. I knew this Wild Woman. She is primal, intuitive, independent, flawed and fabulous, fierce, authentic, mystic and mysterious, unpredictable, a healer, has unbridled energy, has a voice and rage to give voice to, is bloody unapologetic.
The instagram post below serves to add a visual to the Wild Woman, the poem that follows is a happy coincidence
Held in warm support in the last hour of the workshop, I re-connected with the Wild. The skin I wore of the “good girl”, “service-oriented person”, “dutiful woman” were to keep the Wild Woman in check. Add-ons to my “man”tle. However, upon review, it was clear that every time I have taken an unorthodox decision, this force has been in play. To move cities and find work at 22, with absolutely no need and no support, just a primal call to go out in the world and find my people. To repeatedly reject, nay, kick in the teeth, the traditional model of matrimony (this one is still in the murderous rage phase, and I’ve let that emotion be expressed). The clarity that biological parenthood is not for me, to evaluate situations that need to hold for me to adopt, and then to say, maybe this is a wish that falls by the wayside. To find solace in solitude and revel in the relationship I am building with myself. To reject a linear growth and career path and constantly find small, values-aligned businesses with strong-minded business owners to work with. To veer off the paved roads into wild paths with chances to commune with wolves and bears. That was all Wild Woman.
Finally, to reclaim my power, I had to reconcile with the wildness in me, honour it. The strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack, after all. The next pursuit will be to integrate the wild, the unstructured, the walker into the unknown. To own that to be wild is not the same as uncivilised. To be wild is to remember and reclaim the vastness within. To quote Sharon Blackie, who’s been a notable presence on my bookshelf lately, “To rise rooted from the wasteland of modern society to a place of nourishment and connection”
To find time and love for my family of choosing, my inner circle, my pack, to go on grand adventures and enjoy each other in the time available to us.
The back story: The Hero’s Journey
Luckily, I got in on the ground floor: Aruna and Sam did the Hero’s Journey sessions in October and November. That look back led me to articulate and learn from a different aspect of the same journey. We go through many cycles of the hero’s (And heroine’s) journeys.
For starters, here are some of mine that I remember fondly:
- From moving to Delhi and being scared and scarred, to establishing myself there as a rising dancing talent and at age 15, having a career in reserve
- From moving to Bangalore at 22, finding work and growth, to a full complement of friends, corner office at 30, and in the seven-ish years since migrating, offering my parents a home with me when they retired
- Novice runner to working with a distance running company, taking over their content arm & growing its readership to, at a point, comparable number with the best in the world
At the end of this exploration, I recognised that the last few years have delivered me from a victim / wounded child state to that of an Adult-state. Who I was before the ordeal stage in the hero’s journey, and whom did the crucible create/ resurrect? I decided to let go of the self-sacrificing, dutiful and passive side of me and embracing a self-loving me who is a fount of generosity to herself first.
New to “Savage Daughter”? Read up
This song is gaining ground in recent times. I came across it, thanks to my friend and finder of mystical things, Chinta. It was written by Wyndreth Berginsdottir in the 90s. That link has a lovely rendition by the woman herself. The other well-known, haunting cover is by Ekaterina Shelehova. The one I’ve shared above is by Sarah Hester Ross, a force of nature, comedian and singer.
Monica Pillai 