EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

I am actively engaged in my own personal transition and transformation toward the next phase of my life. My fascination and curiosity lead me to ask: In what ways can multiple tools, including awareness of archetypes and individual personal myth development, guide us in our personal growth? To answer this question, I will utilize a qualitative research approach to present an autoethnography outlining my personal timeline of experiences that include tools such as storytelling, societal myths and narratives, and the energy of archetypes. Grounded in Transformational Adult Learning Theory, I will review the influence of Carl Jung on Personal Myth development, and the Hero and Heroine Journey narrative structures outlined by Joseph Campbell, Maureen Murdock, and Sharon Blackie. I will present a case study using the singular text Women Who Run With the Wolves by Dr. Clarrisa Pinkola Estés. After an informative set of modules on topics such as storytelling, transformation, archetypes, and myth, I weave in the art tool SoulCollage® created by Seena Frost to enhance the transformational experience of text interaction. 

When we tell our stories, we open opportunities for others to share their stories. I created an online experienced based curriculum to provide a transformational experience for others. As older adults move into the second half of their lives, it is important to maintain basic literacy skills in these later years and further develop later literacies which could include financial literacy, medical literacy, grief literacy, and more. As I learn more about individuation for the second half of life, I believe there may be an opportunity to further develop frameworks and curriculum to guide people to reflect and write their story while keeping their literacy skills sharp.

KEYWORDS: Transformational Adult Learning, Storytelling, Personal Narrative, Myth, Archetypes, Heroine Journey, Art, Writing to Heal, Later Literacy, Curriculum Development

INTRODUCTION

We search for meaning and crave richness and depth in our lives. We want to grow and transform with the progression of the world around us. Many of us want to write ourselves into new societal scripts. All living beings develop and change. Curious humans are compelled to elevate and expand the viewpoint from which they grasp themselves and their world. There is a call to nurture the soul. 

I am actively engaged in my own personal transition and transformation into the next phase of my life. In my late 50s, I was called to follow the turn in the road and travel away from the highway of the first half of my existence and climb the ascent of the second phase of my longevity. My fascination and curiosity lead me to ask: In what ways can multiple tools, including awareness of archetypes and individual personal myth development, guide us in our personal growth? 

To answer this question, I will present my autoethnography outlining my personal timeline of experiences that include tools and engagements that have guided me toward my upcoming 60^th birthday. In the spirit of sharing my knowledge with others, I plan to create a website that can present an online curriculum to spark awareness for those who are eager to engage with the content and use text and personal narratives to ascend into Elderhood. 

BACKGROUND and SIGNIFICANCE

Transformative learning opportunities can guide the spirit through the maze of self, society, language, and culture. Soul connects the individual to their personal world. Knowledge Seekers catalog prior experiences and images and these can play a role in teaching us to learn from the soul. In the spirit of exploring, embracing, and advancing awareness, this research study and online project seeks to introduce the importance of life-long transformative wisdom moments for learners of all ages, but especially for this study, those who are entering middle age and beyond. 

Today there are women and other groups living across the globe faced with political strategies and policies that are harmful and degrading. I believe there is an urgent need for people to unlearn damaging myths and stories. As the number of people over the age of 60 is growing, and the opportunity for many additional decades of life is increasing, there is a need (and hopefully demand) for later literacies that guide individuals to change and grow. There are many tools we can personally use, collectively and individually, to initiate and inspire change in societal and personal narratives. For too long, oppressed, and marginalized individuals have been told to be quiet, polite, and behave according to rules and directives from power brokers in modern society. 

When I set out on the voyage of this project, I was aware of the name Carl Jung and that he was well known in the field of psychology. As I dug deeper and broadened my knowledge on this subject, I recently came to discover that he is the bedrock below as well as the foundational slab for this project. His lifetime contributions are too numerous to summarize for the scope of this project, but I feel it is of great importance that I mention that none of my work, or many of those included in my literature review analysis, would be possible without his influence and contributions to a rich knowledge base for individual growth and the pursuit of discovering our own personal stories. 

The scope of this project will focus on the tools that I stumbled upon in the past few years to enhance my personal growth and guide me toward my own personal myth storytelling design. In the presentation of my findings, I will attempt to better explain how I came to meet and interact with the work of Carl G. Jung through the many knowledge creators I have encountered along the way. I will attempt to share what I did, why I did it, and how I did it in a chronological timeline model. Since my learning grows with each moment forward, I can only offer what was acquired at a cutoff point. This is only a slice of what is still to come, but I am excited to report that the unfolding is immense, and I wonder if 60 more years will allow me the time to touch it. 

To begin, I was unaware that I had acquired multiple copies of Clarissa Pinkola Estés book, Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype, until early in 2022, when I committed to doing a chapter a month to complete the rich and dense text. At that time, I counted four copies sprinkled around my physical and digital libraries. It was calling. me to engage. Within a few short months, I encountered individuals in person, and on social media, that called the book their feminist bible. I was familiar with the term archetype, which is probably what had drawn me to the title, but I became passionate for more on the topic when I realized my personal archetypes could energize my intuition, self-growth, and confidence. The messages presented in Estés work are one of the many tools for those who seek to gain awareness of the constraining, if not false, societal messaging. For this reason, I have chosen to focus on this literary offering. 

On the cover of her book, Estés tells us that: “She who learns to howl…will find her pack.” It is my own personal journey, full of decades of experiences, that has led me to this study and project. I will conduct an in-depth review of literature, interview women who are guiding others, implement a pilot study, conduct a retreat, attend workshops, and write my own personal myth into elderhood to build a strong foundation for this presentation. This endeavor is rooted in the belief that if we gain awareness of the tools that are already wired inside of us, we can use them for development and transformative growth.

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