If someone had told me 15 years ago that one day I'd be living in a redwood forest, leading women's circles and retreats utilizing ancient myths and crafting, I would have laughed out loud! After all, the last time I had read a myth was in a humanities class in college, and I was no crafter. "Didn't have the patience for it," I told myself. What I did know was that I was put on this planet to help women.
At least that was the vision I received on my very own Eat, Pray, Love adventure to India in 2005. It happened in a dark, musty hotel room in New Delhi on the final night of my 6 week journey. I was feeling a bit foolish for having flown to the other side of the planet in search of answers no Guru could give me. The old saying "Wherever you go, there you are" was on replay in my head and the only thing close to a spiritual experience I'd had in those six weeks was a night of passion with a Greek yoga/tantra teacher.
That night, in a moment of intense frustration and disillusionment, I got on my knees and prayed for a sign, anything, that would help me understand what I was meant to do with my life. Suddenly in a flash, it came and went: a vision of me sitting holding the hands of a woman who seemed to be grieving. That was it. Nearly a decade would go by before I would have any idea what it meant.
Fast forward to 2014. I find myself at a similar crossroads and another meltdown...
I had just left behind my life as a success-seeking, "city girl" entrepreneur. I was struggling with health issues, stressed out, angry, and deep in debt. I desperately needed to take a breath and figure things out, so I put my things into storage and moved in with my Grandmother. I had no idea what I was going to do next. I recalled the vision I'd received in India of helping the woman, but in that moment, my life was a mess. I couldn't help myself, much less anyone else.
One afternoon, I dragged myself out of bed and sat down at my desk. Staring at my computer, I began to sob. I felt helpless and utterly confused. The stress of trying to build a business doing work I did not enjoy and living outside my means trying to maintain a certain lifestyle for too long had taken its toll. I had chronic hives, my hair was falling out and I'd been diagnosed with stage 4 adrenal fatigue. Looking at my hormone panel, I was on track for an early menopause.
In another desperate plea for answers, I lowered my head and closed my eyes. I asked God/Source/my Soul, whoever would answer, "What should I do?" The answer was immediate. "Move to nature." A wave of relief passed through my body. My shoulders melted down my back, and tears filled my eyes. They were simple yet divine words of truth. I was finally ready to stop resisting what my body and soul had been begging for for years-- for that deep rest and contentment that comes only from accepting who you truly are and aligning your lifestyle accordingly.
Soon after that moment of surrender, I found myself packing my car and leaving city life behind. An entirely new life (and aliveness) began to emerge in my new forest home in the northern California redwoods. I believe that year was the first time since childhood that I stopped striving and truly rested. Nature and those immense trees provided the perfect, healing environment. There was nothing to achieve and no one to become. I'll never forget those initial feelings of true belonging. I felt perfect in my simple existence. I had come home to the woman I'd always been underneath the borrowed dreams. She had been there all along, patiently waiting.
That's when the real magic began
One of my biggest fears about moving out of the city and to the woods was that I would become irrelevant and my life would become dull and uninteresting. On the contrary, and almost immediately, fascinating people began showing up leading me in directions I would never have chosen otherwise. Like the time I came across a video on the internet advertising a bow manufacturer and found myself captivated by the beautiful blond in the video who was so gracefully and skillfully hitting her target. I told myself "I MUST DO THAT!!!" Strangely enough, I discovered that the woman in the video just happened to teach yoga at my yoga studio, AND she just happened to offer archery lessons! Unwilling to ignore that coincidence, I signed up and have been hooked on target archery ever since.
Another mysterious and serendipitous thing happened when I found myself in search of a new forest home. The search led me to a Craigslist ad for a cottage rental by a mysterious person who would only answer as J. Turns out J was a brilliant, fiery, redheaded 70 year old mythologist who was looking for the right person to sublet her forest cottage while she tended to family business out of state. We hit it off immediately and she agreed to rent me her cottage. It was there, with a golden statue of Aphrodite welcoming me at the front steps and a large library of books on ancient myths, symbols, and archetypal psychology that my love affair with myths began. First it was Artemis, the bow hunter and protectress of the forest, then Medusa, Hecate, Persephone and so many others. I devoured as many books as I could and began to realize that my journey, which had felt so shameful and isolated, was in fact archetypal, and was shared by all women throughout time!
The myths told fantastical stories of heroine's who traveled to the underworld, were stripped of everything they had (including, at times, their beauty and even their flesh— flashbacks to my hives, hair loss) but returned to their lives transformed, wise women. This was not just my story unfolding, but every woman’s story— the archetypal Heroine’s Journey. The myths offered such rich and beautiful metaphors and teachings, and I've come to see them for what they are: timeless, ageless, guidebooks for life, written eons ago, whose wisdom is just as relevant to life's challenges today.
I love this image by Maureen Murdock of the stages of the Heroine's Journey. For men I recommend the classic The Hero's Journey by Joseph Campbell.
The birth of Crafting Myth
That following summer I met a lovely young woman on a retreat who had a beautiful, natural vulnerability and authenticity I admired. To my surprise she had been admiring me too and after the retreat wrote to me to ask if I would like to start a women's circle with her. Women's circles had been such a source of healing and well-being for me while I was living in San Francisco all those years and I longed to be a part of one again. After a few brainstorming conversations I discovered that she had a love for crafting and I revealed my love for myths. Seeing how crafting could be a good way to keep women in their bodies and out of their analyzing minds while they listened to stories of old, it was a perfect match. After all, crafting circles were the very way women had passed down these oral stories throughout history.
Additionally we wanted to ensure there was a coherence throughout each circle and so each myth and craft was specifically chosen to tie in with that circle’s theme. I knew that mythology could intimidate some people, as it did me initially, and so we structured the circles to ensure there wouldn’t be any analytical discussion of the myths. The women were free to do that on their own if they wished, but in the circle we would simply allow the wisdom of the myths to integrate naturally while crafting and through the practice of shamanic journeying. During the shamanic journeying, the women get comfortable, often lying down while the facilitator drums. The drumming allows the psyche to relax and take in whatever aspects of the myths are needed for each individual woman at the time and to translate effortlessly for them in visions, symbols and metaphors in the ingenious ways our subconscious minds do so well. There's no thinking, no work involved. In this way we can simply relax, release control and receive. The process is highly intuitive and beautifully feminine.
As you might imagine, the myths often continue to integrate long after each circle is over. If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years it’s that the soul is not on anyone’s healing schedule but it’s own.
As my journey has continued to unfold, so has Crafting Myth which as expanded and evolved in exciting ways. My co-founder Sarah has decided to step down as co-facilitator to create more time and space for new events and projects brewing in her life. In my own life, my connection to nature, and specifically the plant world, has continued to deepen, and so I’ve added a plant medicine component to Crafting Myth's future series. For thousands of years, women were the knowledge keepers of the plants and knew how to keep their families and communities healthy using plants as medicine. Much of that knowledge died out during the height of Christian rule in Europe and the Americas, but we are seeing a revival today and I’m proud to contribute to that revival.
The feedback I’m getting from women has been so positive and after more than a decade of spiritual seeking and trying to make sense of that brief vision in India, I'm so happy to finally understand a larger piece of my calling. As the famous myth The Descent of Inanna brilliantly illustrates, our strength, true power, self-trust and wisdom often come only after we have been stripped of everything that isn’t the pure essence of who we are. We have to be willing to allow those aspects of ourselves that cling to what is false or shallow to die before our true power can emerge. What I'm finding is that my true power is directly connected to a humility that I wouldn't have if I hadn't lost so much. That remembrance holds me in integrity. It also created a strong empathy for other women going through their "descents."
One of the most important things I've learned is that when I hold tight to the reins of my life and try to steer and direct it according to my ego wants, nothing good happens. That approach just leads to 10 year meltdowns, but when I'm able to surrender and say yes to the call of my soul and the delightful ways she beckons me down one path then another, my life gets immeasurably more exciting, mysterious, and magical.