The Heroine’s Journey

  • She’s Still Writing for Me

    She’s Still Writing for Me

    The idea of striving for perfection—and, perhaps, being satisfied with nothing less—has been on my mind lately. I finally feel like I understand the role perfectionism has played in my life: a big one, but like most ideas, it’s not straightforward. My perfectionism does not look like my sister’s, which does not look like…

  • We All Have a Journey

    We All Have a Journey

    The take by Joseph Campbell that Murdock recounts on page 2 is interesting: In the the whole mythological tradition the woman is there. All she has to do is to realize that she’s the place that people are trying to get to. When a woman realizes what her wonderful character is, she’s not going…

  • It Takes Two, Together

    It Takes Two, Together

    Now I turn to Maureen Murdock’s own words at the beginning of the introduction to The Heroine’s Journey. She tells us that she is a therapist who has worked with women, particularly those between the ages of thirty and sixty, and says, “I have heard a resounding cry of dissatisfaction with the successes won in…

  • The First Step Out

    The First Step Out

    I wrote the following paragraphs a few days ago and then let them sit. After reading your pieces, I was sore tempted to edit them. To edit myself and my thoughts to align better or rather, less contradictorily with yours. But then I paused. The point of a dialogue, the meaning of a conversation…

  • Re-member Who You Are

    Re-member Who You Are

    Back to that epigraph: “So the female void” gets cured “by a remembering or a putting back together of the mother-daughter body.” Yes. It’s the body. Healing involves the body as much as—if not more than—the mind. And it’s important to remember Eugene Gendlin’s statement: “The body is the unconscious.” Maybe memory is held…

  • What Ails Thee?

    What Ails Thee?

    The epigraph with which Maureen Murdock has begun The Heroine’s Journey deserves a closer look, and what I post here and now may not be all I have to say about it. We’ll see. In the meantime: “There is a void felt these days by women and men—who suspect that their feminine nature, like Persephone, has…