Justine Musk, The Heroine's Journey - INBOUND 2015

The heroine's journey, stepping into a bigger story. What the hell does that even mean? I always like that phrase because I'm a novelist. I like stories and love the idea of living a big story. And you spend any time online, you see people telling people this, especially women. We're supposed to find our voice and tell our story. And then a bigger story. Men too. So does it mean like a bigger mountain to climb or a bigger car to drive? Well, the thing about stories is that they're all around us. And a bigger story to me is a story that has a mythic resonance. It's a story that we want to tell about ourselves, where we come from, who we are and where we're going. So when you think about it, David White has this quote, whatever does not anyone or anything that does not bring you alive is too small for you. And that's really what we're talking about. We're talking about passion. We want to be fully engaged with our lives. The interesting thing about passion is that it doesn't really mean what we seem to think it means. It has nothing to do with happiness. Bliss 24 7. It actually means to suffer. It's from a root word that means to suffer. And compassion means to suffer with. So when you have compassion with someone or compassion for someone, it means that you are willing to be there in the arena with them, suffering with them. And to have a passion means something you're willing to sacrifice for. So if finding your story, finding your bigger story is another way of saying finding your passion, then your bigger story is the story that you're willing to suffer for, the story that you embody, that you're living out with your life, that gives your suffering meaning. When I was a teenager, I came across the story of Persephone for the first time. And at the time, I didn't really get it. I mean, to me it was like, okay, there's this girl, and she's out in the field somewhere, and she picks a flower, and the ground opens up and this guy, bad boy on a motorcycle grabs her down into the underworld. And then her mother finds her and she eats some seeds. And that's why we have seasons. So, you know, something like that. But then some years later, I was at a really dark time in my life because my first son died at 10 weeks. And then I got rather brutally divorced a few years later. So it was a really bleak moment for me. And then my friend dragged me to a goddess workshop, which I thought was going to be pretty hokey. And then I encountered The Persephone story again. But this time it hit me very differently because it's this young woman and she's minding her business and she's in a field and then the ground literally opens up beneath her feet and she is dragged down into a place of darkness and despair. And she is lost for a long time. But then the story goes on because Persephone doesn't stay a victim. She becomes queen of the underworld and she guides lost souls to their next destination. So she becomes a leader, and she's taking care of her underworld community. And she's using what she's learned to make the world a better place, which gives her suffering. A story. It gives it meaning. And so to me, at the point in my life where I was, I thought, oh, okay. Oh, that's how it works. It's like a blueprint. I don't have to run from this pain. I just have to go through it and I have to get to the other side. And I can take what I've learned and I can do something with it. And I was really excited about this, and so I blogged about it. And then the reaction I got from some of my readers was really interesting because they were like, oh, you know Persephone. I mean, they didn't see it the same way I did. They were like, she's a victim. You know, she's compromised by the patriarchy. She married her abductor. She's a victim. And I took three things away from this, these dialogues I was having. And the first one was about female strength. When we talk about female strength, we talk about it in a way that looks a lot like traditional male strength characters like Xena and Buffy. I mean, they're great characters. I love them. They're exciting. But is this really the only form of strength that we can think of? What about the kind of strength that involves enduring impossible circumstances, biding your time while you plot your escape at an appropriate moment? Or what about the strength that has to do with telling the truth when you know what it will cost you? Or what about the kind of strength it takes to keep using what you have to create acts of beauty even when the world seems so determined to destroy them? I mean, that's strength. Or what about the kind of strength that's involved when you're gliding smoothly across the water except underneath the water where nobody can see you're paddling really frantically to keep all those balls in the air so you won't collapse and curl up in the corner and watch soap operas all day. So that's strength, too. And, I mean, how many people know about that? I think a lot. The other thing I thought about was the way we talk about victims in this culture. Victim is like an icky word. And then we talk about the victim mentality as if it's always a chosen identity. It's a permanent state of mind instead of a temporary moment that some of us are. A lot of us are forced to pass through. There's a lot of shame around being a victim. I mean, who wants to identify with that? Who wants to be perceived as emotionally manipulative? Because in this culture, victims tend to be associated with the female gender because heroes are male. The female is a damsel in distress. And so if you're strong, you can't be a victim. So what happens is that we get in these situations, and we don't want to admit to what's actually happening to us, because even the strongest ones of us, we get victimized now and then we get blindsided by something. We didn't see it coming. It flattens us. And we spend a bit of time in this dark place, and we don't know how to get back for a while. So we don't tell our stories. We keep them silent. The problem with that is silence has a way of serving the status quo, because those places where we are silent are those places where we make ourselves powerless. And that allows other people to write their stories over us. And in the absence of a counter story, the culture will always default to the story that created the status quo in the first place. And our culture has a story about a young woman, and she's talking to a snake in this really pretty garden. And then she bites into an apple because she wants to, because she's curious, and it looks really good. And then she says, hey, Adam, come here. Take a look at this. Looks good. And so Adam says, sure. And so the moral of this story is you should never listen to women because they will ruin your life, and they will ruin the life of every person on this planet who has not even been born yet. I mean, that's pretty impressive. Casts a long shadow. The other thing I was thinking about was this part of the story, the Persephone story, that means a lot to me. And one thing I noticed was that we don't talk about it in this culture. People kind of skip over this part. And it's the part where Persephone moves from being victim to being a queen. We don't know how she does it. It's kind of a mystery. We Know that she's not a trophy queen because she's guiding lost souls. And she's moving up into the upper world because, you see, she eats some seeds just before she's supposedly released. And once you taste the fruit of the underworld, you can never fully escape it. It's there with you forever. You can't leave it behind. So you have to incorporate it into your life. You have to transform your relationship with it so that it serves you. And somehow she does this in a way that allows her to rise, to transcend her situation. And that's the part that I really liked, because it gave me a new story about who I was and where I came from and where I was going. And that's what the best stories do. They are empowering. They call us to a higher version of ourselves. So to me, this story is about trauma and recovery. Because here's the thing about trauma. Trauma is what we leave out of a story. Because when something happens to you that's so overwhelming, your brain cannot deal with it, and we shut down in the face of it. So we like to go on as if it never existed. But while we're creating the main narrative over here, otherwise known as your life, the trauma doesn't go away. It's like sitting over here and it's spinning out its own secret story, and it keeps sending out these signals that kind of interfere with the main narrative, otherwise known as your life. And then as we grow, the trauma grows and it gets stronger and the signals get stronger and stronger until it erupts through everyday life and acts of self sabotage, self destruction. And we do our best to escape it, escape those icky feelings, repress them so we don't have to deal with them. And then we disconnect from our own personal underworld. And the problem with that is that that's where our truth is. That truth that we have to speak, you know, it lives in the body. It lives in the underworld. And so when we lose that, we become susceptible to other stories. Stories that promise happiness and bliss and usually involve us paying money for something or putting something into our bodies, even though we know it's not good for us, or having sex with somebody we don't really like. And we know these are false stories because they make us smaller. They turn us away from the human community, from the big picture, and more deeply into ourselves. And so we get smaller and smaller and we numb out and we watch our potential fritter away, and we become a story that is not being told. And somebody once described depression to me. As a story that is not told. So when you step back and you look at a culture that has soaring rates of depression and addiction and debt, you have to ask yourself, what story are we not telling that this culture needs? What story needs to live through us into this culture? And we're just stomping on it. We're not letting it flourish. And to me, I think that's the story of Persephone. That act, that mysterious act where she becomes queen. Her mother comes and rescues her. She makes a deal with Zeus, and Zeus tells Hades, okay, you have to let her go. But before she. Before she leaves, on the eve of her release, she eats some seeds, some pomegranate seeds, and people say, oh, okay, well, he tricked her. But when you think about what those seeds represent, you know, creativity. That's what they are to me. The acts of creation that grow out of the darkness, of destruction, of pain. Those places where new beginnings start. To me, that's art. And those are stories. Those are our stories. Those are the stories that we embody that describe the essence of who we are and what we've been through. To stand right here where we are now, knowing what we know. And we all embody stories, stories that have never been told before and yet are told over and over and over again. And Persephone moves up between worlds. She brings what's in the darkness up into the light of the everyday world so it can be transformed by consciousness and woven into a larger story and put in its proper place. We have words for people who move between states of consciousness like that. We call them shamans and visionaries. They're the visionary leaders who go to some realm that we don't even know exists. And they come back with this new, amazing story that changes the world because it changes the way we think of ourselves and it changes the way we think about where we're going. And those people are heroes. And so some people will criticize Persephone. I mean, I can hear them in my head right now. And they'll say, oh, well, you know, she's not so special because she just married the guy. She wasn't a real queen. She slept her way to the top. Or he really wrote the novel or he got the funding for the company. All she did was show up and look cute. Except we know she has power because she's doing cool things. And when you listen to all those voices that are criticizing her appearance and her hair and what she's doing and what she's not doing, you realize that not one of those voices is Persephone's. And usually silence is powerlessness. But with Persephone, she has a story. Because I'm here and I'm saying it to you. She has power. So what if she does have a voice and we just can't hear it? We're not listening to her. Why aren't we listening? Because those are the stories that take pain and turn it to power, empowerment. Those are the stories that teach us how we can empower our own damn selves. Because stories are medicine. They make us whole. They bind us to a larger picture, and they bind us to other people. And they tell us that what we've been through is not our fault, that everybody shares in these experiences, and everybody has to fight through the darkness and come out the other side and transcend. It's a transformative journey, and it's the heroine's journey. Thank you very much.