My first significant brush with the hero's journey took place in the 11th year English class.
Our teacher read us Henry David Thoreau by leaving the house and leaving alone to find wisdom and transcendence, and to avoid being one of the mass of men leading “a life of quiet despair”. His in -depth voice highlighted the severity of these words.
“Yes!” I remember thinking and I continued to pass a lot of my teenagers and twenties to seek the raw diamonds of truth and meaning according to the recipe for “Walden”.
Thoreau's belief in the need to leave his house and loved ones for what you could call a “good” or “interesting” life was not unique. The stories of “the Odyssey” and “Star Wars” to “eat Pray Love” and “Wild” use a similar framework, in which the main characters alone put themselves in order to continue a life story that deserves to be told.
These stories resonate; I'm a fan. But I had to become a mother to question the domination of the hero's journey, and the many inaccurate, patriarchal and pernicious hypotheses on which she rests. Independence does not necessarily predict it over interdependence for self -discovery; The public sphere does not necessarily prevail over the domestic sphere as the place where great things happen.
In the 1940s, the literary scientist Joseph Campbell identified the hero's journey in a variety of cultures and periods. First, the hero must deviate from familiar circumstances – “the world of the common day”, as Campbell wrote. Then, they enter a special world – “a supernatural wonder region” – where they are faced with a trial. There is a crisis, they have trouble, then “a decisive victory is won: the hero returns from this mysterious adventure with the power to give advantages to his neighbor.”
When I became a mom for the first time, I was frustrated by the hypothesis that my chance to make the trip of a hero was over because the great adventures do not arrive at those who have to stay at home and take care of children. But over time, a deeper grievance has come into play. I saw how Campbell's formula prevents us from seeing how parents like me experience trials that change life and wisdom and triumphs all ours, at home and alongside loved ones who depend on us.
For me, it all started in the walls of an 800 square feet apartment.
First of all, I left a deeply familiar child existence. Goodbye, independence. In front of a new existence, in which my body, my mind and even my living room were rendered abroad by the presence of my first baby, Augig, barely larger than a miche of bread.
The crisis? What is a crisis? I had to make sure that this vulnerable human survived and, if everything went well, prospered. I had to rediscover who I was and what it meant to be a human, now that I had a child. There was a struggle and, finally, a return in a way when I made peace with someone that someone else depends. Along the way, I discovered the types of diamonds raw of truth and meaning that family life can provide: more deeply than ever before, I understood how important it is and how important it is to try to really connect with another.
Unlike traditional heroes, there is no end for a mom's trip. The dynamics of entanglement and levy, conflicts and ease are underway. In fact, accepting this reality, that in real life, the fight rarely ends completely, is another raw diamond.
Now I want everyone to see what I see. Taking care of another can be the journey of a hero.
When we see it through this lens, raising a child is epic. This also helps us to release ugly and simplistic binaries often applied to maternity in particular – the notion still omnipresent that being a mother is either a fairy tale or a nightmare, an experience of frantic joy or merciless destruction.
When we consider motherhood as the journey of a hero, the ups and downs, and the moments of feeling lost and found are part of a single story, in which a meeting with a significant challenge leads to deep ideas on ourselves, others and life itself.
To be clear, I am delighted to live in a time when women can go on a solo adventure in the pursuit of self -discovery like the heroes of Campbell. I do not call the end of women traveling outside the house. Instead, I want to raise the many trips of the domestic and family hero that have long been ignored.
And not only mothers win when we consider care as a career of a hero.
We all have something to gain to imagine a path to wisdom, respect and status of heroes that rest more on human connection than robust individualism and muscles. In this increased era of loneliness and isolation, a cultural model that honors the difficulty and complexity of being in intimate relationships, and the potential awards to stay with them, could encourage people to invest more in long -term links. Even when annoying. Even doing it, you need the murder of a few dragons.
Consult the care as a hero's trip and we could well treat those who take care of a toddler or a resolved teenager or to help a parent with dementia with the same curiosity and the same respect, we treat someone who has just climbed Mount Everest. This would not reduce the requirements of care, but it would give the acquired wisdom of experience the respect it deserves.
Perhaps this change of understanding would lead to more practical support for parents and caregivers. Even the greatest heroes sometimes get the help of an acolyte or an intervention from another world, to pass alive.
My children are now 8 and 12 years old. The extreme physical and emotional conditions of early maternity have been blurred, but existential struggles remain. How much should I protect them from pain? Direct them towards pleasure? How many of myself do I give them? And how much should I protect, cut out time for these solo adventures of Thoreau style that I still need and eager?
Campbell would probably have seen my life packed and a carpool as taking place in the “world of the common day”. I don't know. The struggle with major physical, philosophical and spiritual questions surrounding maternity, as I see, clearly landed in a “region of supernatural wonder”.
Elissa Strauss is the author of “When You Heare: The Forest Magic of Caring” and The Newsletter “Carefully. “”
