Allison Wall

Stories help us discover who we are, what is possible in our lives, and what we should strive for. They are crucial containers of inspiration and wisdom. I believe deeply in the power of story. Unfortunately, that power cuts both ways. Stories can also obscure who we are, create confusion, and impart a profound sense of lost-ness.

The dominant storytelling structure in Western tradition is the Hero’s Journey. Joseph Campbell coined this term in his book, Hero of a Thousand Faces, in which he demonstrates each of the stages by weaving together myths, fables, religious writings, and etc. from various cultures.

One of Campbell’s students, Maureen Murdock, asked him what the heroine’s journey was. His response was something to the effect of: women don’t need to take a journey. Their goal is to realize they are already the destination–implying that women exist to be a destination point, presumably for men.

Vastly unsatisfied with this answer, Murdock wrote her own book, based on her years of experience working in therapy settings with clients as well as drawing from ancient mythology. The Heroine’s Journey: Women’s Quest for Wholeness is Murdock’s answer to Campbell, which points out how patriarchal society forces women to dismember ourselves to survive.

I come back to this concept of dismemberment.

I’ve read The Heroine’s Journey at least five times (I can tell by the different-colored inks and penciled notes), and each time I’ve been in a different stage of self-exploration. The first, on the brink of stepping out of the cult mindset I grew up in. The second, in the violent aftermath of religious deconstruction. The third, after realizing I am Autistic. The fourth, after I came to understand my sexuality. Each stage was a deepening. I was doing what the book described: I was descending into the dark depths of my Self. I was calling to the parts of me I had abandoned to survive. And they answered.

The Hero’s Journey is sexist, and, essentially, ableist. The concept of going out into the world implies the ability to go out. It implies the stamina and fortitude to conquer. To slay (not that kind of slay–though one could argue that competing on Drag Race would be the ultimate slay-slay) and to return home victorious.

(True, the Hero’s Journey doesn’t have to be a literal journey to a physical location. The stories Campbell uses to illustrate the stages involve male figures performing outstanding acts in a patriarchal world, and these can be read as metaphors. Even in modern stories, though, the Hero’s Journey is generally depicted as an external movement toward a concrete goal.)

A crucial moment in discovering my Autistic Self was when I realized I was coming up against invisible barriers. The older I got, the more I found myself unable to participate in the wider world. Overwhelmed, exhausted, sometimes by nothing “more threatening” than the feeling of humidity on my skin, or an awkward social encounter with a stranger. I felt disabled. The life patterns of my peers were inaccessible, somehow. I could not understand how to get to where I was “supposed” to be.

That’s the point. The Hero’s Journey doesn’t work for me. It isn’t for me. A woman under patriarchy, a disabled Autist with trauma under ableism, a queer person under heterosexuality… None of my recovered, true Self is compatible. But I’ve spent the majority of my life assuming that this story is for me. The stories I read, by and large, were Hero’s Journeys. As a hyper-empathetic person, I can put myself into anyone’s point of view. Anyone’s story can feel like my story. That doesn’t mean it is.

It took me reading books by Autistic writers to understand just how much of my Self I was ignoring in order to relate to the vast majority of the books I have read in my life. To realize how much my Self really wasn’t represented in story. And that’s to say nothing about the other marginalized parts of my Self.

Maybe, somewhere, there is an archetypal rhythm of external living for me. Maybe it was buried thousands of years ago with the aggressive domination of patriarchy and the loss of the old ways. Maybe I’ll find it by doing it. Then again, I’ve always gravitated more toward my internal life than my external one.

The Heroine’s Journey, the journey inward, is not easy, but it is so rich. It rejects completion, domination, acquisition in favor of rest, healing, regaining wholeness. Murdock says we repeat the Heroine’s Journey over and over. A holy spiral, ever deepening. We meet with the moist, life-giving Earth Mother. We meet the parts we abandoned. We welcome them back. We integrate. We become more whole. More able to travel deeper.

I always thought that healing (physically, mentally, emotionally) was needed so one could get back to something else. I am beginning to suspect that there is no something else to get back to. That maybe healing and deepening my Self is not a bridge to some other thing. It is the Thing.

I am beginning to feel my way through a story that is for me. I am beginning to believe that a life spent not in outward pursuit of success or fame, but in quietness, creating, thinking, smelling the spring air, watching birds, gently unwrapping the infinite complexities of one’s Self–that this also is a worthy pursuit. That this also can be Enough.