I stumbled upon Bill Moyers’s series of interviews with Joseph Campbell on PBS in 1988. When I tuned in, Campbell was explaining The Hero’s Journey.
At the time, I was a high school special ed teacher. “You’re so patient and kind,” admirers said.
I spent my summers on horseback working in the Rocky Mountains. “You’re so cool,” strangers said.
I was married to a John Wayne-esque cowboy/teacher I adored. “You’re so lucky,” young girls said. (He later left me for the red-headed art teacher down the hall whose name translates into “Peacock,” a bird best-known for spreading its tail. Just sayin’.)
I lived in the beautiful Ozarks in a charming hundred-year-old house. “You own a slice of heaven,” visitors said.
Life should have been perfect, yet a vague existential angst engulfed me.
I was starved for what Campbell taught me in those PBS interviews. I’m a heterosexual woman, but I knew that the Hero’s Journey, sometimes called The Road to Masculinity, was the spiritual path I needed to make sense of my life.
I bought Campbell’s books and gobbled them up. I wolfed down the meat, sucked the marrow from the bones, licked them clean, and then gnawed on them. I learned that Campbell’s work was influenced by Carl Jung. “No wonder this speaks to my soul,” I thought.
So at 36, I began to view my life as a Hero’s Journey, to see every good and bad event as part of my transformation into a hero. This was critical because when I was an eleven-year-old being persecuted by the jocks and cheerleaders who dubbed me “The Class Queer” and mocked me daily as I trudged home from school, head down, tears stinging my eyes, notebook clutched to my chest, the slogan “Shit Happens” became ubiquitous.
So at eleven, I decided that life had no meaning. Shit would fall from the sky because that’s what shit did, and a lot of it was going to land on me. Life was pointless. With the exception of my wonderful eighth and ninth-grade years in band, I soldiered on for two decades under my cloud of existential angst until I found The Hero’s Journey and began to construct my life-affirming narrative.
Several scholars offer variations on the Hero’s Journey (and Maureen Murdock’s Heroine’s Journey exists, too), but I choose a simplified Hero’s Journey to think about the major eras in my life.
I invite you to peruse your journals for clues to see whether this Hero’s Journeys structure helps you create your own Hero’s Journey narrative:
1. The Hero is living a mundane life- You’re fulfilling your obligations, but engulfed in Weltschmerz.
2. Receiving the Call- A dream, a friend, a book, a fragment of conversation overheard at Starbucks challenges you to change your life.
3. Refusing the Call- You’re scared to leave the nest.
4. Accepting the Call- You can’t stand the Weltschmerz any longer. You will change or die.
5. Meeting the Mentor- You find a mentor (someone who has walked this path) either in person or in print (a writer- perhaps long dead- whose words can guide you).
6. Entering the Dangerous Magic Place- Guided by your mentor, you take your first trembling steps.
7. Finding Allies- You find supporters along the way. Or they find you.
8. Encountering Gatekeepers and Enemies while Passing the Tests and Trials- Human and institutional gates stand in your way. Enemies push you off the cliff. You climb back up, battered and bruised, and soldier on, slaying the Grendels, the gorgons, the basilisks of your life.
9. Entering the Most Sacred but Dangerous Place- You get your big chance.
10. Finding and seizing the Holy Grail/Treasure/Philosopher’s Stone (The Boon) and thereby becoming a new person- This is the moment that you stand or fall. You seize the prize and add a new identity to your persona. You are now A Proprietor. A Painter. A Pastry Chef. A Police Officer. A Professor. A Potter. A Paramedic. You are transformed.
11. Returning home a new person with The Boon- Transformed, you return to your everyday world with valuable new knowledge, skills, and worldview.
12. Sharing The Boon to transform others and the world- You use your new status to improve the lives of your loved ones and the world.
13. Sharing the good news of The Boon with the world- You broadcast the good news of transformation with the world.
I invite you to examine your journals and explore whether this Hero’s Journey brings you a deeper understanding of your life, helps you construct your own hero’s narrative, reject the notion that “Shit Happens,” and view every wound as part of your journey into heroism.
I also invite you to check out the children’s picture book my colleagues and I wrote on our own Hero’s Journey. All is Assuredly Well, which earned the coveted Kirkus starred review, is available on Amazon. Our story tells of King Phillip and his husband, Don Carlos, a royal couple who live contentedly for decades until King Phillip dreams of having a child. To earn her, the retiring king must leave the safety of his castle and embark on The Hero’s Journey to transform himself into a hero: a father.
May your Hero’s Journey transform your life.
All is Assuredly Well - Book Summary
King Phillip the Good and his husband, The Most Excellent Don Carlos Emiliano Felipe de Compañero y Campañero, live sedate, uneventful lives until King Phillip dreams of having a baby girl. Structured around The Hero's Journey, King Phillip must follow his mentor, the Blue Star, and encounter allies (a newt and a bluejay) and overcome gatekeepers (a biting fish and a bear) as he completes a series of tasks to prove himself worthy of becoming a father. Once proven, the Blue Star presents him with a baby girl in the middle of a fairy circle of a thousand different flowers in a thousand brilliant hues. He returns home to present Baby Milliflora to his husband, and the loving husbands joyfully become loving fathers.
Genre: Children’s Books
Publisher: Camille Lancaster Literary Children’s Books
ISBN: 978-0-9998880-0-1
All is Assuredly Well is available as an eBook at Amazon.com.
You can find more about Professor Gore, her co-author Maestro Wilson, her illustrator Angie F. M. Trotter, and their book at www.AllisAssuredlyWell.com
You may contact Professor Gore at Camille.Lancaster.Books@gmail.com
Maestro Phillip Wilson was a public-school band director, music teacher, composer, and arranger for 28 years. His primary instrument is the trumpet, and he is also a campañero(bell ringer). Although he is over 80, he continues to serve as Music Director and Cantor at his church. He is a life-long resident of New Mexico and was born in Santa Fe. Although his genotype is Dutch and Scotch-Irish, his soul is Hispanic. He was Professor Gore’s music teacher and band director, and although the loving biological father of seven musical children, he is a soul-father of the hundreds of students he has taught.
Artist Angie F. M. Trotter holds a BA in Religion and Fine Art. Her pen and ink illustrations are a fusion of icons, illuminated manuscripts, stained glass window design, and her spiritual life. She is also a chronic migraine suffer and her art helps calm her symptoms. Her mother was a folk artist; her father was an architect and fine artist, so she has been surrounded by art her whole life. Her work has been compared to the masters of the Golden Age of British book illustration. She lives in Arkansas.