The Ride of our Lives

The Heroine's Journey

This picture of my mother and our eldest son Gordie on the Cheetah Chase at Busch Gardens pretty much says it all. I love that my mom went on that ride that day and years later I’m so appreciative of this photo. Never wonder if it’s worth the mortgage payment to buy at the end of the ride!

It reminded me of something that Jerry Seinfeld once said:

“Life is truly a ride. We're all strapped in and no one can stop it. When the doctor slaps your behind, he's ripping your ticket and away you go. As you make each passage from youth to adulthood to maturity, sometimes you put your arms up and scream, sometimes you just hang on to that bar in front of you. But the ride is the thing. I think the most you can hope for at the end of life is that your hair's messed, you're out of breath, and you didn't throw up.”

I’m grateful that I’m still here after 5 decades to see the bigger picture in my own life and to have had the chance to stick around long enough to find peace of mind and fulfillment.

At Queen’s University, in the early 1990s I lived with these 4 amazing women that I met in residence in my first year. Last fall we reunited and it was amazing to catch up. Sadly one of us was missing and we felt her absence greatly. Erin Paul. (Bottom left-hand side of this photo of us in our first year). Erin never made it her 50th birthday.

I have a fond memory of lying on her bed after a late night out in our 2nd year of University looking at the ceiling of her bedroom and sharing our dreams. She wanted to work on television at the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) as her father did. To be an Olympic broadcaster. I wasn’t the least bit surprised that she did all of that and more. She also had a musically talented daughter and an amazing extended family. She was intelligent and beautiful and life seemed to be ripe for the taking. She also silently struggled. She went through a divorce and personal challenges. I wonder if she had better understood the whole ride better that things could have turned out differently. She was so loved and is still missed by all of us.

Years ago, when I read the book “The Top Five Regrets of the Dying” by Australian palliative care nurse Bronnie Ware it struck me that everything we seem to share regretting at the end of our lives is solved or dissolved with our spiritual maturity. Cutting through to our essence and transcending our ego. Otherwise, we never get the full ride and eventual freedom that is our birthright. We feel a pervading emptiness that can never be fulfilled with anything in this world or solved by our own thinking.

Here are the top 5 regrets in Bronnie’s book:

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.

3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

5. I wish I had let myself be happier.

You may be thinking okay Nona, this is all well and good but I’m busy and besides, I’ve been TRYING to do that my whole life. We’re just human and we can only do our best, right?

If that’s the case and you’re open to it, today could shift your perception of what you are experiencing in your life and the way you “try” or rather stop trying so hard and allow things to unfold without so much resistance.

For the next 10 minutes let me share the bigger mythical picture and pattern of how our lives play out. From this higher vantage point, it’s clear that all of us are special and none of us are. The details and faces may change but the roller coaster rides of our life are Universal.

Our Souls appear to be guiding us and they will do WHATEVER it takes to get our attention FOR our own good to wake us up.

You’ve heard my story and you know I’m stubborn so it took me a LONG time before I allowed myself to see or experience this.

You can shift in a moment with a deep and profound realization. There’s a saying in “A Course In Miracles” that if we treat our spiritual teachings like toys, they will have the effect of toys. Allow yourself to notice with compassion what stage you’re in as you read through the two simultaneous journeys we’re all on together on this rolling wild adventure through time and space.

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First, have you heard of the Hero’s Journey?

Chances are you probably have. If you’re rolling your eyes thinking I already know this Nona, please keep reading… it’s not what you think.

This story template is threaded through all of our fairy tales, movies, and stories that we’ve all claimed for ourselves over the centuries on not only what makes a great story, but how we’ve been taught to “live our best lives”.

If you’re not familiar with it, here’s a quick trailer clip for a movie about the creator Joseph Campbell and an inspiring documentary of how we can overcome ourselves and our fears and become the “heroes” of our own lives…

In this masculine myth, it’s about what we DO. “Do something” as they say in the video clip. But now, drumroll, please….

Have you heard of the Heroine’s Journey?

Probably not.

If not, I’m THRILLED to tell you more about it today because it blew me away. It’s almost as though Maureen Murdoch read my own personal story and created a journey around it.

The missing feminine link to our essential wholeness.

GAME CHANGER!!

When I look back at the landscape of my own life, having a deeper understanding of what was happening to me spiritually or in the larger scheme of things or being able to zoom out above the treeline to see the “overview effect” COULD have made all the difference and shaved off about 10 years of struggling. It’s impossible to say for sure, but maybe our roommate Erin would still be here today to watch her daughter grow up and experience the deep peace that is our birthright. I’ve been clearly shown in my own life that the ups and downs on this roller coaster ride of our lives are perfectly normal.

To be expected.

The inspiration and credit for today’s essay go to Maureen Murdoch’s work.

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**IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR MEN READING: Before you stop reading and thinking that this is a “female only” thing, I’d like to clarify something I heard Kristin Hanggi say on a podcast…that this feminine journey or quest applies to ALL of us (as does the Hero’s journey) and represents a step deeper inside EACH one of us which is often misunderstood as our gender rolls rather than our completion as whole human beings.

The balance of our masculine and feminine energies. Our positive and negative polarities.

This mythical journey helps to guide us in the process to become whole.

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One of the complications we’re facing today is that most of us are so out of touch with our femininity and we’re experiencing the effects collectively. If we don’t blow each other up, then the earth itself could shake us off if we don’t smarten up. When the Dalai Lama came to Canada and made his now famous statement at the Peace Summit in 2010, that “the world will be saved by the Western Woman”. It was tweeted out millions of times. It caused some divisiveness and feminists took it as a sign that it was time for us to rise. I’m all for feminine empowerment and equality, but I’m not so sure that this is about gender at all. A part of me wonders if what he really meant on an energetic level was that it is our collective feminine that will save us. When we forgive and heal fully we’ll all see that it’s not the “Patriarchy” or the male gender that is to blame, but rather the masculine energy that exists inside of all of us.

The Hero’s journey is about our outer world (at the level of effect and “doing”).

The Heroine’s journey is about our inner world (at the level of cause and “being”).

We are traveling on both journeys simultaneously.

When we’re in touch with our masculinity it can feel like we’re separate beings and life is happening to us. It seems to us as though life presents us with an endless stream of challenges to overcome using our will or force to get into a state so we can hack our way to inevitable success, overcome our fears, and slay whatever is in our way. We think that an accident we’re in or a diagnosis is something that happens TO us not coming from us. We muster courage and find what makes us feel good and work hard to push ourselves to be the VERY best. To provide for and to protect our family and make things happen. Our masculinity helps us what we like to call in our house… “G.S.D.” (Get shit done:) ACTION and DOING are our mottos.

In contrast, our feminine is where our true power lies in our working WITH the power of nature. We receive information by instinctively getting still, quiet, and listening. We intuit and are guided within the natural rhythms and cycles of life and in our true power is Divine, our fears fall away rather than needing to muscle up the courage to barge ahead in the darkness of our minds sword first driven by fear. Love shows us the illusory nature of our fear and it falls away. We realize that everything we see in “the outer world” is a projection from our own “inner minds”. We create it all individually and collectively. No courage is needed when there is no fear. It points us toward compassion and we are made aware that we are part of a larger ecosystem, and that all of us are interconnected. LOVE and BEING are our mantras.

Both in balance are of course possible and ideal.

Yin is the receptive and yang the active principle, seen in all forms of change.

Funny, I once tried to get a tattoo of this yin-yang symbol on my back when I was about 18 with some girlfriends getting tattoos together, and well, everything that could go wrong did.

This timeless symbol felt meaningful and jumped off the page at me, but having an intoxicated or slightly altered tattoo artist coloring outside of the lines all of my worst nightmares and my mother’s sensible warnings had become a reality. After the infection healed followed by years of hiding it masterfully I decided to do what I could afford to do to remove it. The lasers that gracefully faded the Billy Bob tattoo on Angelina’s left arm and then later Brad’s birth coordinates were just not an affordable option on my student wages so I lived with it messy and then eventually decided to get it “cut” out. Eeek.

I had both a volleyball and a squash game that same week and I was too embarrassed to tell anyone and sit out the games so I accidentally “pulled” my stitches as I was warned could happen if I did not rest. Needless to say, I’ve spent a lifetime trying to hide that giant scar. I’ve never gotten another tattoo because of it, but there is a happy ending. I have found a decent sense of balance between my masculine and feminine energies that eluded me for the first 50 years of my life, so maybe it literally sunk into my skin via the barely sanitized needle.

I know sometimes that symbols and myths can be easily dismissed by our egos. I never really have been an archetype kind of girl and if you were a therapist or coach and asked me to roll play what animal I identified with or what color my feelings are and where I was feeling them in my body I probably wouldn’t have come back. But please TRUST me and you’ll thank me… for the next few minutes please “Veto” that voice of reason and stay open to receiving the practicalities available to us through these two powerful myths.

Besides, our shared reality is one that has many of us feeling overwhelmed. I noticed yesterday that the death toll in Türkiye and the area is now over 45,000. It’s so disheartening. I also heard that 3 more people have been rescued a full 13 days after the quake. They survived and it’s astounding what we can endure when we have hope and the will to live.

Some of the physical disasters we are facing collectively seem totally unrelated to our everyday life on earth. It’s hard to connect the dots and trace how we could be responsible for shifts in the earth’s crusts, but science is pointing out that we even affect the weather in ways we may never fully accept or even comprehend. Our beliefs, our behaviors, our political policies our growing economy. When masculine energies alone are driving our actions then money can easily become our bottom line.

We know this because it has. We are experiencing the effects globally today.

Things on this masculine track we’ve been on can quickly spiral out of control. Our structures have become unstable and we become disconnected from the earth.

Before we address the Heroine’s journey, let’s do a quick recap of the more familiar Hero’s Journey so we’re all on the same page. You may recognize the patterns in your own life playing out now or even in our collective:

1. EXPOSITION: The main character is in the ordinary world with ordinary levels of consciousness.

2. There’s a call to adventure, an INCITING INCIDENT often related to dissatisfaction or an underlying pull. Unclear of our purpose or desire but we feel called to do something to feel better. The external seeking begins.

   Note: It appears as though the incident is coming from OUTSIDE of us in the form of relationships, and circumstances. Maybe we are in a bad accident, we go through a nasty divorce, we lose someone we love or we’re diagnosed with a life-threatening illness. Something has happened to shift our normal everyday life.

3. RISING ACTION: Inspiration comes. Faced with the option to take a new direction. We need to make a choice. The call is here. Do we leave the comfort of the familiar of the known or venture out to the unknown or refuse the call? Take the new job with no guarantees? Go on the date with someone we met online?

4. Something inside of us wants to keep us safe and SHUT it down. Stephen Pressfield calls this “the resistance”. It all shows up and we feel conflicted.

5. We meet a mentor, an elder, or a sage. Think ob1 Kenobi, Mr. Miyagi, Glenda the good witch, and our fairy godmother. (Mythic representation of our SOUL in communion with us)

6. CRISIS & DECIDING MOMENT. We know on some level it’s time to repair, restore and move into spiritual maturity. Like Neo in the Matrix, we decide. This is our red pill or blue pill moment. We make a choice and CROSS THE THRESHOLD.

7. Now we’re venturing into the unknown. We have NO idea what will happen.

8. Soon after we are tested, and we go through trials. We train with our mentors. Basically, picture Rocky running through the snow and chopping wood in the Russian tundra. Doubts and fears are felt and a part of us wonders if we should have never come down this road. Like Tony Hawk, we find sponsors and build the never-been-done-before looped skateboard ramp.

9. We may feel falsely high or low at this point. We’re making progress and things seem to be going well but then…

10. (cue Ominous music) The bad guys are closing in. Things go REALLY wrong. We fall on our faces. How do we handle it? Joseph Campbell calls this stage “approaching the innermost cave”. Our stuff is coming up. We’re being tested. In the Hero’s journey, it ALWAYS feels like it’s in the outer world.

11. All feels lost. In one moment there is a death. A surrender. A dark night of the soul. Ego death. Something or someone dies. OB1 dies. This stage allows for the rebirth of the hero.

12. We transcend or rise above and we can see what we didn’t know before. The revelation. The Aha moment. The epiphany. A new understanding. A shift in our perception and we’re shown a way.

13. CLIMAX: We defeat the dark forces. We slay the dragons when we embody our new truth. We face our fears. Our inadequacy is overcome. (Mythically and spiritually the enemy is the personification of our fears. Our guilt, shame, and all of our fears were reflected and projected back to us so we can see now.)

14. Finally the nickel drops…WE GET it! The gift. The grail. The ring. The Elixir. The knowing.

15. The RETURN: The Hero goes back home to the community and shares what was learned and gives back to the community.

This must seem familiar because it’s the water we’re swimming in. Star Wars. Harry Potter. And of course, this is playing out in our lives. In 2023 terms, we may even make a digital program to help serve others and paves a new road in the old world. Our mess becomes our message. We can share our experience, strength, and hope with others and hope to be of service.

The end.

Hope that is a decent recap so we’re all on the same page, now tie up your bonnets because this next one may blow your velcro curlers out…

As I mentioned earlier, the Heroine’s journey is simultaneously happening inside ALL of us alongside the Hero’s journey.

It’s the yin to our yang. The peanut butter to our jam. If we go through life trying to master only our masculinity as we’ve been taught or life coached to do, we may miss out on the potential peace of mind, guidance, and creativity this part of our being has the potential to bless us with every day of our lives. That we can then extend out to the world.

Here it is….

1. SEPARATION FROM THE FEMININE: When Cinderella’s mother dies at the beginning of the story the stage is set. A symbolic separation of how we’re all disconnected from our own mothers, our essential nature, and our creation. There’s a veiled forgetting that settles in on us. Like wool being pulled over our eyes we forget who we are at our core. We feel separate and alone in the world and we quickly realize that need to take care of ourselves.

2. IDENTIFICATION WITH THE MASCULINE: (I acknowledge that this is a generalization, many places in the world are very well connected to the Great Mother. To creation. To their divinity. Our Western secular culture is not really one of them. We have a very masculine concept of God and we are overidentified with our masculine energies.) We’re taught about external success, the focus on materialism (matter), and that happiness is experienced through actualizing potential through external achievements. Awards, competition, an outward focus on the body, job, careers, homes, vehicles, relationships with others, travel, and adventure, and we’re taught that these material or worldly things help us feel fulfilled.

3. LEARNING THE RULES OF THE “BOYS CLUB”: We double down. Study hard, obtain degrees, and doctorates, and rise up in a hierarchy at work. We’re driven and are taking action on all of our goals. At the same time, we become over-identified with the masculine and in our physical bodies. Our Self-Objectification and focus on looks are driven by an unconscious desire or a craving for attention from the “masculine” approval from others (men and women). Disguised as health and “self-care”. The energy or focus on external objectified beauty and being alluring to others. Innocently convinced we are just trying to be healthy, and youthful, and look and feel our best so we can show up in the world confidently. Feel better. Find peace. We may even do unhealthy things to achieve this goal with disordered eating, overexercising, and the use of toxic products from shellacking our nails to coloring our hair, risky surgeries, and using injectables that are damaging our livers to obtain a certain “look”. (ps. Please NO judgment this is just the water we find ourselves swimming in mostly unconsciously because it makes perfect rational sense to us when we’re in it)

4. FIRST THRESHOLD: Testing and Trials: It’s not working. We look great and our name is on the wall of our firm, but we’re internally feeling uneasy and stressed. Unbalanced with all our doing. We don’t see another way, so we continue on as best we can. We plan ahead and become super productive. People know if they ask us for help it will be done “right”. We suppress our femininity and focus on emulating the Hero’s journey because that’s all we know, BUT silently something feels off.

5. ILLUSORY BOON OF SUCCESS. It works. Goals achieved. Awards are won. Income is generated. The company goes public. Books are published. The ladder has been climbed. The finish lines have been crossed. We’ve never been so fit. But there is still a lingering or nagging feeling that something is still missing.

6. SECOND THRESHOLD: WTF. WHAT the actual “F” IS THIS ALL FOR? Existential crisis. Why AM I even here? We’re officially sad and we may say it to others that feel safe. We feel an inexplicable loss. We’re just going through the motions. Spiritual aridity is experienced. Feeling overworked, overscheduled, depleted, empty. Tired. Feeling cut off from self. Integrity is being compromised and we’re not feeling aligned with our higher self, just our ego and we’re spent.

7. INITIATION AND DESCENT: Falling into the darkness. A crisis often appears. Divorce, life-threatening illness, money issues, addiction, loss, and grief and it’s always something SO big that it is out of our control. It cannot be solved with money, the mind, or intellect. Even prescription drugs can’t mask this. It takes us down.

8. We have to SURRENDER to it because it overpowers us. It’s frightening and scary we’re not sure we can handle it but we can’t resist it any longer. We don’t know how long it will last, it feels like it’s never going to be over. We grieve. We don’t care what anyone thinks anymore. We fall to our knees and we don’t know what we believe but we ask God for help anyway because we’re desperate. We stop rushing around and sit still. We feel it all. Our pain. We may isolate for a time. Still not knowing how or when things will end. We feel a deep urging for reconnection to something beneath the surface of things. We breathe. We stay. We crave spending more time alone. More time in nature.

9. URGENT YEARNING TO RECONNECT WITH THE FEMININE: We move our bodies in intuitive ways that feel good. We feel drawn to watch sunrises. We stop using others’ practices and begin our own form of meditation and prayer that feels authentic to us. We feel an inexplicable craving to become more creative. To paint. To draw. To drum. To write. To dance. To connect with others. Energy begins to move. Here we encounter our TRUE Self. Our Divine self. We reconnect to our essential nature, our intuition. Our migraines dissolve. Our rashes, digestion, and skin clear up. We heal.

10. RECLAMATION: We feel complete. Fulfilled. At this stage we may literally forgive our own mothers for any unconscious behaviors projected on us from her own wounds. We may be drawn to ancestral work and healing at this stage. To reiki or energy work. Yin yoga and meditation. We may go back to church in our community or pick up the Bible and the sacred teachings and texts become compelling. We understand all spiritual teachings in a whole new way. We forgive others and see them in their wholeness. We forgive ourselves and see ourselves in our wholeness. We notice we have no desire to judge others. Fear falls away.

11. HEALING THE MOTHER-DAUGHTER SPLIT: We feel aligned with the Divine. At one with everything. We reconnect to the wisdom and the rhythms of nature. We learn HOW to be ourselves fully. We listen deeply. We feel and nourish ourselves. Shame and guilt have left the building. Divine energy moves through us. Our generosity, abundance, love, and solutions to our problems come to us the moment the problem occurs. We’re in love with ourselves, others, and all of life. We see past the illusion of fear and thought and they have totally lost their grip on us.

12. HEALING THE WOUNDED MASCULINE: Our healed masculine begins to serve the feminine. All the action is coming from a deep knowing and truth. There is a new desire to show up differently in life. Synchronicities are noticed and guide us. We don’t need to “strive” to manifest things consciously anymore because we feel no lack. We may also go back to routines, practices, and structures, or even the gym but now it comes from love and not fear and it feels entirely different energetically.

13. BEYOND DUALITY: We feel radiant. It’s an honor and a pleasure to serve others. A deep reverence for all of life and divine love is in all we do. With deep forgiveness, our relationships are healed. We witness for ourselves that all of our anxieties, depression and compulsions are miraculously gone without our attempts to deal with them in any direct way. We are fully present and we are no longer afraid of death.

14. BELONGING TO A COMPLEX WORLD: The END OF SEEKING. We feel complete. Whole. Holy. We can clearly see our lives as interbeings. Connected to the whole of humanity.

15. A SACRED MARRIAGE between the masculine and feminine ensues. The integration of both and we can now build sustainable structures and support one another.

We are free.

“Wow” is the word that keeps coming to mind. We wonder, how did we all miss this? Why do we suffer and why is this so hard for us to see for ourselves when these teachings have been with us for thousands of years?

From this new balanced vantage point, we can birth new life. We can trust life and we see the possibilities of experiencing profound changes in ourselves and our greater communities. In our politics, in our economy, and in our environment.

We know that the old unsustainable masculine structures built in fear will eventually fall away. The earth will shake off the destabilizing forces and we feel its physical effects but we will do all we can to help each other through the shift.

This marriage of our masculine and feminine energies is a template to help us go beyond what we ever believed was possible for us individually and collectively.

Peace of mind and peace in the world.

The END.

I hope now that your own hair is a bit mussed and you feel exhilarated with a knowing smile on your face.

With love,

Nona

ps. Where do you see yourself on this mythical journey?