a hero’s journey
It’s International Women’s day. What does that mean? Do we get the day off? Will men stop mansplaining for today? Will my uterus stop shedding it’s lining to show respect? Doubtful on all fronts,….but we can dream.
On this International’s Women’s Day (or IWD so I don’t have to keep typing it), I wanted to highlight a book I started reading last night. I was grabbing my boys’ towels and goggles for swim practice, and instead of also packing my laptop, I grabbed a book instead to keep me busy. Crazy I know. An actual book. I purchased this book from Bound to Happen Books in downtown Stevens Point in the summer of 2022, right after Roe v Wade was overturned. Bound to Happen has an amazing selection of Indie books, New Releases, and really everything you’d ever want, but didn’t know you did. I was in a fit of rage that June (as many of us were) and wanted to buy books about women’s struggles, secret abortions, and motherhood. One of the books I decided to purchase was “I’ll Show Myself Out: Essays on Midlife & Motherhood” by Jessi Klein. I liked that it said “essays” which meant I could read it in short spurts since I totally have undiagnosed ADHD and get easily distracted.
In the first chapter (or the first essay…whatever), she talks about a Hero’s Journey and how “throughout the history of literature, the hero’s journey has been represented as, specifically, a man’s journey to a faraway place. There, he conquers or fights some person or army or thing and, in doing so, saves us all. While this quintessential hero is running about, his wife/mother/sister/girlfriend/daughter/all of the above stays home, very much not on a hero’s journey. She cooks or cleans or weeps or Pinterests while he is out and about, slaying and defending and generally being courageous.” (I will be referencing A LOT of this first chapter, so get ready for a bunch of quotes….but still.). Think of Harry Potter, Luke Skywalker, King Arthur or Frodo. All “heroes” of their story that go off to live crazy adventures with mentors and friends helping them along the way.
“So Sarah….what does this have to do with women and IWD?”…..so glad you asked…..you didn’t, but for the sake of me talking to myself, let’s say you did. Klein goes on to reference the book, “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” by Joseph Campbell where he describes the hero’s journey in a multitude of beautifully poetic verbiage: “a forest, a kingdom underground, beneath the waves, or above the sky, a secret island, lofty mountaintop, or profound dream state…a place of strangely fluid and polymorphous beings, unimaginable torments, superhuman deeds, and impossible delight.” This is where Klein talks about how the hero’s journey seems to be describing motherhood.
“A profound dream state.” If any of you have had a newborn, you know what this means: basically sleepwalking through life until you can get a solid 3 hours of sleep consecutively. Or maybe that was just me? Either way, she goes on to describe how newborns are polymorphous beings that “from one minute to the next, turn to otters, mermen, humans, wombats, and puppies.” How the “unimaginable torment” of child-rearing can happen multiple times a day from making them eat certain foods, to not napping to getting them in a car seat when they don’t want to be. “And of course, these are the exact same moments in which there is no more ‘superhuman deed’ than steadfastly caring for and feeding your child and not giving in to the temptation to flee the entire situation.”
I had a revelation a few years back. My dad died when he was 36. He had cancer. My sister was just about 11 and I was just about 8. As I was approaching 36 myself, I started to have an existential, “what the fuck have I done with my life” crisis? Not necessarily a midlife crisis, but a whole “my dad did so much and I’ve done so little” crisis. He was a trust officer at Bank One (back when it was Bank One), he had his masters, he taught CCD on Wednesday nights, he played poker with his friends in the basement of our house, attended different community functions, had two kids, etc. Over 1000 people attended his funeral. They have a plaque with his face on it in the hospital in our town. Like “what the fuck dad?” You were only 36! When I was 36, I had my bachelors in fine art, a certificate of french pastry (yes, I’m a certified pastry chef, and yes, I’ll make you stuff), two boys, and……that’s about it. I had become a stay-at-home-mom when our youngest was 9 months old and that was it. That was my identity.
So, when I was looking back at my dad’s life and all he had accomplished, it came to me. It struck me with such a lightening bolt of ignorance and obviousness. My mom held our home together WHILE my dad was doing all of that. Granted, she worked part-time as a registered nurse and worked her ass off, but she was the logistical coordinator of our house and that allowed him to do all of those things. I, then looked at my own life. My husband owns his own business and because of that, sometimes his hours are varied. Sometimes he can’t make it to swim practice (most of the time actually…which is fine), sometimes he wants to get a workout in after work, sometimes he has client events or conferences that he needs to attend. So I stay home. I make sure our kids’ snow boots and gloves are put on the boot drier the night before school, so they’re dry. I check backpacks for important papers. I make doctors/dentists/hair/etc appointments. I buy new jackets or shoes or backpacks. I keep in communication with their teachers about whatever is happening. That’s my hero’s journey.
A piece of you gets lost when you become a mom. Many pieces actually. But it also opens us up to parts of ourselves we didn’t know existed. Sometimes I get really annoyed with being the “go-to” parent. I’m the one they ask for water at night, the one they want to help them with an assignment, the one who’s in charge of dinner (that’s the worst!!). None of that’s going to change. They’ll still “need” me in different ways as they get older.
Klein writes this: “The truth is that motherhood is a hero’s journey. For most of us it’s not a journey outward, to the most fantastic and farthest-flung places, but inward, downward, to the deepest parts of your strength, to the innermost buried core of everything you are made of but didn’t now was there………….A mother’s heroic journey is not about how she leaves, but about how she stays.”
I have no great advice or wisdom on how you should celebrate or acknowledge international women’s day, but if you were born a woman, became a woman, or anything in-between, I see you and we’re on this journey together.
