About
Scenes from a Hero Quest
"Taking Back
our Arms" Shrine -- 2004
As a writer and long-time journal
keeper, I was well prepared to record the physical and emotional
trials that followed my 1993 breast cancer diagnosis. What I
was not prepared for was my great need to make sense of what
had happened, to put my personal trials into a larger, more meaningful
context.
I found that larger context in 1996 through a serendipitous encounter
with Joseph Campbell's The Power of Myth. As I reviewed
my journal entries to write a creative nonfiction piece on my
breast cancer experience, I was dumbfounded to recognize Campbell's
archetypal "hero
quest cycle" perfectly expressed in my experience: the
call to adventure, descent into the underworld, battles with
demons, and eventual return to the world with the "boon"
of knowledge and healing.
Like Parsifal searching for the Holy Grail, like Theseus pursuing the minotaur in the labyrinth, I realized I had indeed been on a hero's quest. And not just one, but several. As I've continued to chronicle my journey, I realize that, like Persephone, I've gone through several quest cycles as a result of my diagnosis: each descent involves battles with different personal demons; each ascent brings me greater knowledge of the Self.
To help make these quest cycles more visible to you, I have added
quotations at the beginning of each "scene" -- from
Campbell as well as from various women writers who have expanded
Campbell's essentially masculine quest to apply to feminine myths:
Maureen Murdock (The Heroine's Journey), Jean Shinoda
Bolen (Crossing to Avalon, Goddesses in Everywoman,
and Close to the Bone), and Clarissa Pinkola Estés
(Women Who Run with the Wolves).
My chronicle is divided into five parts, each labeled for a particular
Tarot card whose meaning describes each phase of my journey.
Within each of these five parts, individual "scenes"
from my experience correspond to different stages of Campbell's
generic hero quest cycle, or to specific mythological heroes/heroines
whose stories illustrate the hero quest cycle.
Part 1 -- Chariot Phase: (Oct. 1993 -- May 1994) Details how my soul is rudely awakened through my diagnosis, surgery, chemo and radiation. The "symptoms" of the cancer-prone personality that I identify in myself during this six-month phase are variously dealt with in later phases.
Part 2 -- Adjustment Phase: (June 1994 -- Sept. 1994) Details how I learn to balance and center myself during the summer after the end of my treatments.
Part 3 -- Hermit Phase: (Oct. 1994 -- March 1996) Details my pull back from a corporate writing career to go within to reflect and study for a year and a half, learning to value myself and my talents and to listen to my soul's desire to get back to my own writing.
Part 4 -- Wheel of Fortune Phase: (March 1996 -- Oct. 1997) Details another year and a half full of ups and downs and lots of travel/learning, with a focus on starting my own writing.
Part 5 -- Strength/Lust Phase: (Dec. 1997 -- May 1998) Details the divine intoxication I feel for six months as I'm coming into my own and reconnecting to the goddess -- out in the desert, on Venus Day, and at an exhibit of art and writing by women with breast cancer (at which excerpts from my writing appear).
As a whole, this chronicle shows
how my breast cancer hero quest has moved me from sleep walking
through my life, to fully embracing and taking charge of it.
I hope you'll find Scenes speaks to some things you are experiencing on your own hero quest with cancer, and helps you embrace the opportunity for growth your cancer has brought to you.
For information on how to purchase a copy of my book, please see Kits and Books.