When we get quiet and take a break from the ‘to-dos’, we can begin to hear our heartbeat, we can feel our own beauty rising within us, we can touch the longings and the understandings that dance with our spirits. And in that pause, between this and that, we can allow the words of our lives to take shape, finding their ways to sentences and then paragraphs. We read what our hands have spread before us and feel how it shifts into place inside us. We begin to understand how the journey of parenting a child with disabilities, chronic medical issues, addiction or other issues has informed and transformed us.
The Hero’s Journey Throughout our lives, we look for meaning. We seek guidance, road maps, and strategies to understand who we are and what roles we may play. We use our stories, our myths, to make sense of things and to give us direction. When we become parents of children with challenges, we embark on a Hero’s Journey as soon as we accept that things are not what we expected. That is when we answer the call to a journey that will challenge our very souls. Joseph Campbell named the Hero’s Journey along with the components that make it a Hero’s Journey. He recognized a universal experience that crosses time and culture. Most people know some more modern examples such as Luke Sky walkers journey from struggling to survive in a desert to a Jedi Knight who saves the universe. Another is Frodo the Hobbits’ journey in Lord of the Rings Frodo’s to destroy the ring and save Middle Earth. Frodo is joined on his journey by his good friend Samwise and though they go through the same battles, treks and experiences, only Frodo is on the path of the Hero. Frodo is changed through his journey and when it is all over and he returns to the Shire, he cannot stay there, it is no longer his home. Samwise returns, gets married and happily grown apples. He did not go through a transformation. Not everyone who goes through a journey with a child with a disability or other challenge is changed; the Hero’s Journey requires going through a crisis of the soul at some point. It does not have to be dramatic like the movies portray but it is an essential part of the Hero’s Journey. Without it, we are like Samwise who could return to his home unchanged. The ‘crisis’ has several names; it is the dark night of the soul, the ordeal, the moment when our old self dies and we are reborn. Since Joseph Campbell identified the journey, it has been written about by scholars, therapists and mystics. For our purposes, we will write about the journey through six main stages. They are:
Before the call in the ordinary world
Answering the call to enter the non-ordinary world
Meeting allies and mentors who assist the hero
Facing obstacles, adversaries, and others who want to thwart the hero
Finding the treasure/reward/gift through a crisis
Bringing it home and sharing the treasure with the ordinary world
Stage One of the Hero's Journey is called Before the Call. Learn more and read some responses from members of the ReWriting Our Worlds writing group.