In the interstices of mythology, personal storytelling and psychology lies The Hero’s Journey popularised by Joseph Campbell. Inspired by CJ Jung’s analytical psychology, he proposed the idea of a monomyth. It suggests that all journeys — beloved stories and personal ones — follow a story arc. The main character sets out on an adventure, has an awakening of the spirit and returns deeply changed.
As in literature, so in life: our personal journeys mirror this narrative. We leave homes for work, grow into roles, follow purpose and power, face difficult choices, grow through discomfort, the journey made sweeter by the people we encounter along the way.
I grew up on stories: In a pre-internet world, books were reliable, learned friends. They grew with me, as did their relevance and lessons. Naturally, I was drawn to the hero’s journey workshop with Aruna and Sam six months ago. I saw my experiences as a contiguous arc of events leading to individuation, dropping away generational beliefs and traumas. I recognised my shadow self: the one who was fearful of taking up space & hid my gifts in plain sight, self-sabotaged, served others hoping that it would be the gateway to acceptance and love. I gave myself the permission to turn the beam of generosity that I shine on others, towards myself first. Abundance, generosity and love to myself, first.
Enter the heroine’s journey
The heroine’s journey originates from a lack of space for the psycho-spiritual journey for the feminine. Maureen Murdock’s body of work kicked off surveying the feminine in the spirit. A student of Joseph Campbell, she felt his framework did not adequately address the richness of the travels of the feminine in the spirit. She created a framework to accompany and give dimension to the outward journeys. Less a circle than a spiral, its moving vortex reaches a central point, and spirals back out returning home, deeply transformed. This was the heroine’s journey: An inward going journey to integrating the masculine and feminine into one, true self.
Separation from the feminine
My first clue that I was on the precipice, yet again, of something big, aided and held in safety by Aruna, Sam and my fellow participants was, when we considered aspects of ourselves we considered masculine or feminine. I have always joked that “I speak fluent man” and that allows me to make functional male friendships at work, and get my work done (Subtext: get my work done without getting harassed or sidelined due to gender). I was shocked at how near-universal that experience was, of overindexing on masculine traits for safety and growth, in a work world that rewards masculine energy.
We noted the masculine spirit’s external world needs to chase linear growth, scale, material facets of achievement and glory — and how alone-making that is, giving rise to toxicity and anger. Contrasting it with the feminine spirit, gives words and space to our needs to honour the seasonality of our life, and the social & familial conditioning around gender roles. The archetypal journey of the feminine begins with the recognition of her generational and cultural wounds and a yearning to heal.
The feminine values of intuition, creativity, and nurture have been cast aside, as current cultural beliefs popularise feminine traits as being weak, powerless, and needing protection (Or even manipulative, if you believe the manosphere). To notice the presence of the sacred feminine is to accept the duality present in us as possibly the source of our highest power. I recognized that I contained different kinds of love. Masculine in energy (protective, providing structures and solutions, action-first) and feminine in energy (emotionally expressive, empathetic, seeking harmony). A quick derivative leap cemented my first wish for myself: I could contain within myself the multitudes of caregiver and caretaker. In my articulation, the masculine caretaker was boundaried, responsible, dutiful, but did not (as I do) pour from an empty cup. She indexes on care for herself, asks for help, sets up systems of care, does not see paying for care as a diminishing of herself. The feminine caregiver is supported by the boundaries and structure, to then step into the emotional landscape of care, to empathise, to appreciate improvement that is never linear, always meandering. I excelled at the latter and was yet to open my account on the former.
Recognising the sacred feminine
The acknowledgement of the loss of the sacred feminine gave me the language for making socio-culturally off-centre choices all my life. I have always made choices that seemed to make sense only to me, with everyone close to me asking me, “What is wrong with you?” Here is a snapshot of the big ones:
Them: “Study engineering, don’t waste your brain”.
Me: Studied humanities – psychology, political science and English — to understand the motive forces of individuals, collectives and language to poetically string them together.
Them: “Stay home and shift into socially admired matrimony”.
Me: Migrated to a city, started afresh, cobbled a meagre livelihood and built up a life over the years, enriched incalculably by that missing ingredient — friends who saw my light and held me safe
Them: “Marry before (enter appropriate age)”, that turned to “Get married, you are a responsibility for your parents and brother”.
Me: Put those opinions on mute and refused to “settle”, investing instead, in growing interdependent & fearless
Them: “Don’t mess up this corporate platform. Gain money, power and social position”.
Me: Left mainstream workplaces, when they felt wrong for me, choosing to work with growing organisations that I had values and work DNA in common.
Bill Watterson said, “You’ll be told in a hundred ways (…) to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you’re doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you’ll hear about them.”
While I listened to my inner voice, the outer voices always held sway: “You are avoiding success”, “You are arrogant”, “You will ultimately rue your choices” So, instead of leaning into my inner voice, for years, I became too busy to not face the uncomfortable. This led to a painful spiritual aridity with no easy answers anywhere in sight.
That day at the workshop, I was reminded yet again that the pain is the path. That I need to invoke the part of me who leaned into the pain again and again.
Descent into the abyss
I am in awe of the number of times my inner voice refused to give in to the convenient. I noted the resilience it required to watch myself descend into the abyss, and allow the darkness to seep in.
I took in a fellow participant’s astute observation that the dark is not harm-causing. It is disorienting and you don’t know if you are going up, down or sideways, but once you recognize the impassive nature of the darkness, you calm down and navigate better.
In the outer world, I started my own consulting outfit; in time, I went from being quiet and accepting, to articulating my unique capabilities and which organisations would benefit most from my time. I went from being my family’s keeper to being my own steward, first. The old identities didn’t go quietly into the night. They fought for foothold in my head. So came the rolling waves of grief. I grieved the roles I let go of, the people I left behind. The people I stopped being. The people I never got a chance to be.
The awakening: Wild Woman
On the other side of the grief and letting go, I was awakening into more equitable power structures, even in the same relationships. I was spending appropriate time with people I loved — time that I wanted to spend, not time they demanded of me. I stopped being everyone’s go to listener-in-chief and started being a true friend: everyone spoke, everyone listened, everyone felt loved. My receiving of others love no longer predicated on my service to them of being an empathetic listener or solver of their problems.
This translated into less gamey workplace relationships, more appreciative and genuinely respectful partnerships.
In Sam’s phrasing, “Something was birthed in this crucible of your pain.” “Name the part that was birthed”, encouraged Aruna. The answer came to me quickly, seemingly from a place of knowing: Wild Woman.
As I explored the role of this persona, Wild Woman’s role in Monica’s life was powerfully visible:
“I help Monica do things she feels she cannot own up to in her good girl pants and her dutiful daughter skin”
“I protect the wildness in her spirit, which is the fount of her creativity, her generosity, her gentleness. Without those, she would lose her potency”
“I help her develop the courage to stand her ground, to walk into the landscape of gripping fears. She deploys these in work conversations, refusing to participate in exit conversations she feels are unfair, pushes for pay parity across cohorts of people, asking hard questions of business leaders”
“I hold her safely when she feels abandoned by people she comes from, who don’t accept her because her choices are not like theirs”
“People who truly love her love me: the creativity, the generosity that springs from an abundance mindset, the calm she radiates, the joy that comes sallying forth. Her people know that she and I are the same, there is no distinction”
Coming together
It has been over a month since the workshop, but I cannot help feeling that there was life before meeting myself and my heroine’s journey and life after.
The heroine’s journey gave legitimacy, language, grammar and beauty to articulate and see and honour the innate sacredness of my life path, the courage of my choices, the richness of my spirit.
As I explored wild woman, I wrote this, and I read it near everyday, to remind myself of my existing and emerging powers: I am wild. I transcend conventional roles and expectations. I revel in being courageous and adventurous. I am untamed. I heed my instinctive, primal, independent voice. I am fierce and fabulous. I am rising rooted. Just under my skin live all my authentic emotions. I have the frame to embody everything, the good the bad and the ugly. I have space to hold it all. I acknowledge my sacred rage. I run alone and when I do, I connect with my muse. I am bound with abandon, I am wild and free.
About the author:
Monica Pillai is a People and Culture practitioner with 25 years behind her, building emotionally agile and resilient organisations. She believes in systems but believes more in the power of human collectives, with their metaphorical voices raised together in song. She loves to create magic out of the mundane in the workplace. She is proudest of her connection-building muscles and efforts where work relationships have outlived the brevity of their time together in offices and thrived into marvellous human connections and communities.
Monica lives life in the slow lane, is usually happiest curled up with a book, with gentle birdsong and music in the background, a cup of tea and a nice fried snack at her elbow. She often takes leisurely long walks, has meandering conversations with friends and learns about fresh ways of being in the world. She is trying to unravel the mystery of what makes for a well-lived life, and enjoys sharing her forays with others, one person, one experiment and one day at a time.
Leave a Reply