RESULTS AND ANALYSIS OF THE POWER OF STORY WEBSITE PILOT STUDY

Nancy Somera is not only my collaborator for writing and presenting retreat curriculum, but she is also my younger sister. We have shared a childhood bedroom, coming of age, and the experiences of marriage, childbirth, and parenting as we raised our families. We taught each other how to navigate through perimenopause and the quest for optimal health. Nancy competed as a college volleyball player and has had an extremely successful career in coaching at the collegiate level. She shared her world with me as a Working Mother, and I shared mine as a Stay-At-Home Mom. We were always close, but the pandemic created the space for us to begin sharing tools for moving through our late 50s into our Elderhood. 

Nancy participated in the Pilot Study last Fall. In her answers to the preassessment survey she shares that she is familiar with the term archetype, but she is not familiar with Joseph Campbell or Carl Jung and/or The Collective Unconscious (Appendix 1) Nancy knew about WWRWW, but she had never opened the book that I sent her. After completing the four modules and reading the “Introduction” and Chapter 1, her post assessment (Appendix 2) revealed that she had a new meaning about archetypes and that they are “deep parts of our soul that we share with the collective whether we are aware on not”. In response to the content that discussed the impact of societal myth she felt that it showed up in her life in that the “majority of child rearing duties fall on woman, even when holding down a full-time job outside the home”. 

Nancy indicated that the ideas inspired her, and she would continue reading the book and that her key takeaway is that: “Within us there are the soul-bones of our Wild Self, or indestructible soul spirit. The Wild Woman is an archetype. We can reclaim this innate part of our self with purpose psychic work”. After participating in this experience, she is “excited for the discussion group that will follow to discuss ideas in greater depth” and she plans to apply daily tarot and journaling into her daily life.  

After sending out an email to about more than 50 women, 15 filled out the preassessment and 12 completed the post assessment survey. In early October 2022, six of the participants gathered on Zoom® to discuss the experience (Appendix 3). We got it started with general impressions about the text and some initially noted that it didn’t really do much for them. Nancy expressed that she was grateful for this “Mini Program…forced me to pick up the book and start reading”. As she listened to those who spoke before her, she said, “I felt like if I was listening to a lecture, I’d be sitting there nodding my head a lot…and underlining” (12:04). 

Nancy had insightful things to say when I touched on the theme of societal myth messaging. 

“The creative parts of us are sometimes suppressed by society but women still found a way to dance when no one could see them. For so long, women were not allowed to be free in that way, or were to believe that that wasn’t their role and I know we’ve certainly talked about just the whole idea of being the archetype. If we were using that word of the proper young lady who is to be pure and quiet, and is seen and not heard, so that would be none of the six of us. That would be none of us. But … it doesn’t mean that we haven’t taken on some of that. It might be in the back recesses of our brain, but like that little voice is still there” (25:27). 

She is a collegiate women’s volleyball coach, and she shared a story of a graduate assistant approached her saying, “Hey you’re an older woman who has seen and been through a lot and I have something I need to, you know, get some advice on” (26:56). A male graduate assistant in the athletic department had approached her in the hallway and she didn’t know him at all except that he was another GA for another sport. He basically asked her, “Hey, what’s your relationship status?” (27:27). The gal was put off and she was thrown back a little and she didn’t know how to handle it. Nancy told her, “I think it is really important that you find your voice, and I don’t know if you are comfortable doing this…” But and I was starting to give her advice…the back of my mind was like – But is that good advice to give her? I mean, what’s the point of her rocking the boat? And then I said, NO, damn it, someone needs to tell this…” (28:15). Nancy decided to council her to tell him, “That is not cool” because otherwise he might just keep doing it to other people. She walked her through some talking points, and she gave the group the example as one of those moments where she thought: “There was a part of me that was like, no, just be quiet, let it go. It’s just easier to do that. And that’s not being a wild woman in my mind” (29:09). 

As we started to discuss the Collective Unconscious, Nancy was excited to share that she had made some big discoveries by reading the text, and someone brought up one of the sides stories she asked, “..Was that the story that recommends that the optimal attitude for experiencing the deep unconscious is one of neither too much fascination nor too little- one of not too much awe, but neither too much cynicism? Bravery, yes but not recklessness” (58:33). Nancy continued, 

“… Was that the story recommending that the optimal attitude for experiencing the deep, unconscious, is one of neither too much fascination nor too little one of not too much awe, but neither too much cynicism. Bravery? Yes, but not recklessness” (. Some may overvalue this whole self-experience and be injured by it. I want to leave with it’s the truth we tell, we’ll make the song, you know, as the singing of the bones. These are some good questions to ask until one decides on the song. One’s true song, because, you know we might not know what our song is that we need to be singing over our bones yet. But these are the questions to ask. What has happened to my soul voice? What are the buried bones of my life? In what condition is my relationship to the instinctual self? When was the last time I ran free. How do I make life come alive again? Where has La Loba gone to?” (1:04).

Everyone agreed that was one of their favorite parts was La Loba singing over the bones. Some felt that was a call to reflect on all the good and bad experiences and build a strong skeleton for to reflect and live with our life stories. As the discussion was coming to an end, the group was inspired to read further, even those who came not thinking they would ever engage with the text again. One of the other participants exclaimed, “actually listening to you there’s so much more into all this. It’s actually making me want to go back and reread it” (1:02). The call ended and Nancy and I stayed on the Zoom® meeting and I kept the recording going. She was bursting to share a big revelation. We had written curriculum for a Samhain weekend retreat months before and it didn’t come to fruition. As we had done with the Spring Ostara brainstorm, we each had made SoulCollage® cards for inspiration. When the workshop host postponed, we kicked around the idea of trimming it and offering it on Zoom® in the upcoming weeks around Halloween, All Saints, All Souls Days. I was going to visit her in Connecticut between early and late October, so we had time to put it together. Nancy excitedly shared, “That card now completely came to life (Figure 1). 

Nancy started engaging with SoulCollage® in July 2021 and has made a few dozen cards. She has not journalized all of them. Her familiarity with Seena Frost’s categories or Suits is limited, but she has created at least one of her Transpersonal cards and has explored a couple of her Companions. Nancy and I created cards for the workshop we wrote and presented together last March 2022, but we did not focus on the archetypal energy. I had deeper familiarity with this, and it was the curiosity to expand my knowledge that led to my research question. When I got to her home a couple weeks after the Zoom® call, I had already finished the book and was getting ready to start up again with Danielle’s new group. We were making cards when I had this brainstorm for the two of us to read and make a card for each chapter. I approached our SoulCollage® instructors, Jessica and Somsara, and they were on board too. At their class in November, they announced it to the entire class and that is how SCWWRWW got started. We started in December 2022 with the Introduction and Chapter 1. 

 

DISCUSSION OF SOULCOLLAGE®ING WOMEN WHO RUN WITH THE WOLVES

Nancy and I both had a very firm foundation on the text for the launch Zoom® Meeting of SCWWRWW. I decided to use Canva to create a presentation deck of the participant’s cards sent to me by email (Figure 2). 

She went on to share with the group her deep and personal connection to rivers: “I am definitely most connected to my spiritual nature … It’s where I go for my soul to sing” (16:36). She is weaving her first discussion experience into another opportunity and shares with the group, a “signpost …trying to find messages that tell you who you are as your Wild Woman, or where you need to look…but when I look at this card and see the chain with a little finger it will remind me that “these are chains that maybe bind us…but I can just drop the finger and the chain is no longer” (17:20). She went onto to share that although she had the card from before (Figure 3), she needed to add a wolf since it was the first card in her deck and “for whatever reason it needed a white wolf – that’s what called to me” (17:51). 

In the three sessions that I have participated in with Nancy, my own SoulCollage® practice has taken on a new dimension. I predicted that I would develop a stronger connection to the text, but it has created more connections with my deck. For the Introduction, Chapter 1, and Chapter 2, I had cards in my deck that I was never quite clear what they fully meant, even after journalizing them. Like Nancy, when I was reading the chapters again, the cards were flashing in my mind (Figures 4, 5, 6)

RESULTS OF PERSONAL IMPLEMENTATION OF WRITING A PERSONAL MYTH

I was eager to learn more about archetypes, so I took an online course last December from Craig Chalquist on the JungPlatform entitled: “Your Personal Myth and Archetype”. It prompted me to reread Sharon Blackie’s book, If Women Rose Rooted, and then I stumbled upon Hagitude. The message was clear: 

It is time to write. 

I am writing My Personal Journey into Elderhood. I have memories and experiences that I have cataloged and filed away over my lifetime. I will look back to call them up into my own personal myth storyline. There are support strategies I have learned over the decades, and I have added some new devices into my toolbox over the past four years. 

To spark my own awareness, I needed to spiral back a few years to reflect on how I got to this point, and document what happened as I pondered the power of archetypes, as characters in my life story, to better share what I observed. I am offering an autoethnographic rear view mirror showing the progress that got me to my current circumstances. Then I will present a forward-looking projection so that I can offer transformational learning experiences for others. 

Many narrative structures have been presented to me in my self-exploration of various online writing workshops. For this version of my story, I will loosely use “The Heroine’s Journey” as outlined by Maureen Murdock, in her book The Heroines’ Journey, that I only recently discovered, as opposed to the Blackie models of the Eco-Heroine Journey and the Tarot Major Arcana Fool’s Journey used in the Hagitude program. 

Murdock published her work in the late 1980’s and many have expanded upon her assertion that the journey begins with separation from the Feminine and finishes with integration of the Masculine and Feminine. I will use headings to outline her cycle as seen in (Figure 8) which displays a graphic I created that builds on her illustration but with numbered stages. 

MY JOURNEY BEGINS

SEPARATION FROM THE FEMININE (1)

I was my most authentic, confident, and free self when I was seventeen. The singer, Stevie Nicks had already taught me about “Dreams” and to “Go Your Own Way” when she introduced “Edge of Seventeen ” in 1981. I was, literally, 17 years old and graduating from high school. I felt like the music spoke to me to leap off the ledge into the transitory time between childhood and adulthood. I packed up my belongings for college, including the myths and fairy tales that my worth is wrapped up in being a wife and mother. 

But I would abandon my natural authenticity to put on my mask – my persona -for the world and fit into the myths of society and the demands of what I should do to be successful in a neoliberal society. Wife. Mother. 

I started to lose myself in peer pressure and sexual exploration. My personal feminine flame began to flicker brightly and then dull like a dimmer switch when I became a Neoliberal in training. My indoctrination began at the University of Southern California as Reagan and Thatcher were dismantling social support programs. 

The term, MRS Degree, was murmured by males in my classes and by women, about other women, in my sorority. USC, nicknamed at the time, The University of Spoiled Children, is deemed a place to send a daughter to find a suitable and qualified mate to live the American Dream. Was college really just a place to find a man to provide economic security to fulfill the fairy tale of marriage that was still taught to women my age? For many girls I encounter, that goal is apparent, but for me, I’m still confident in my new unnamed feminism.  I am discovering my independence and exploring my bold femininity. Or maybe I am too naïve to realize that end game. I am moving in and out of different circles, while making the predictable mistakes of a youth to adulthood. Some experiences build confidence while more tear it down.

IDENTIFICATION WITH THE MASCULINE AND GATHERING ALLIES (2)

I graduated from college and as I look back, I was allowed to work until I found my husband and needed to stay home with my children. I got a job at a stock brokerage firm, then truck brokerage, and finally commercial real estate industries. I was playing in a man’s world. 

The dog-eat-dog, independent contractor, commission sales world of business did not fit me.  I was not comfortable in my female attire at male business suit and tie meetings.  I explored the possibility of an education career.  Besides the natural calling to teach, the covertly trained neoliberal feminist found a way to pre plan to have it all. Teachers have the same schedule as their school-aged children.  I had efficiently prepared to balance work and career for my future happy household.

After attending many weddings of most of my friends, I felt the isolation and competition to join the quest to find a husband. At the right time, I became engaged to the son of a history professor, who wrote about the Civil Rights Movement, and a mother who grew up on a Montana farm during the Depression. He is an athlete and a business major, so he is familiar to my world, but his foundation is different, and I don’t know it then, but it will establish the common ground our marriage will build upon. We married in 1990, and I began a career in elementary school teaching. I moved away from the world of free market capitalism into the world of public service. My story is changing but I still need to start our self-sustained independent family unit. 

ROAD OF TRIALS: MEETING OGRES AND DRAGONS (3)

I encounter the fiend of infertility and the monster of multiple miscarriages. The inability to carry a pregnancy to term made me feel lesser in a society that pushed women to be wives and mothers. I battled the three-headed demon of silence, stigma, and shame. Through eight miscarriage, two adoptions, and a natural birth experience, I began raising three children. 

I came to accept that everyone had their pregnancy (and adoption) challenges regardless of their circumstances. There were so many lessons I would gather up along the infertility journey. Like pebbles and shells on a walk down the beach, they were treasures to be pocketed and brought out later, for better examination, throughout the years to come. I became a gem cutter.

The struggle in a reproductive body continued when I got thrown into the dungeon with the Beast of Perimenopause and Evil Endocrine Troublemakers. Using my higher education research skills, I would be my own advocate for Reproductive Health. 

FINDING THE ILLUSORY BOON OF SUCCESS (4)

I celebrated my 50th Birthday. I am Post-Menopausal. I lived the archetypal cycle of The Maiden, The Mother, The Crone. I am liberated from my reproductive body, but I am still in the Mother role and besides my lack of cycles, I do not identify with the Crone. I sold my magazine and stepped away from my role as an owner and publisher when my partner moved across the country. I studied to become a Health Coach and enjoyed volunteer work while my kids are still in their secondary school years. With the support of bioidentical hormones, quality food, and exercise, I felt vibrant and energetic for the first time in a couple of decades. 

AWAKENING THE FEELINGS OF SPIRITUAL ARIDITY: DEATH (5)

I awakened politically after the election of 2016. With the Republicans dominating all three houses I predict that Abortion and Reproductive Freedom are on the chopping block and I found myself in arguments with those who tell me I am an alarmist. I felt doom and for the first time, I get inspired to participate in Women’s Marches. I am waking up. I can feel the death of democracy and destruction in my world, and I realized that I had been tucked away as a Stay At Home Mom. I wanted to get more involved. I wanted to rediscover what I would take a stand for in my society. 

I entered a transitional phase of life at age 55. It began with the passing of PT, my father in late 2018 after a very rapid decline and health. In less than 6 weeks, he went from a relatively healthy man with, to his frustration, a diminishing golf game to hospitalization. He was diagnosed with cancer at Halloween and died a week later – exactly the way he would have wanted with a celebration happening outside his hospice bed at home the afternoon before his story’s ending.

I was born again on November 8, 2018. A piece of me died that day when I stood at my dad’s bedside and spoke words out loud in a quiet voice to let him know we would be okay and he could leave his body on earth. I didn’t feel the urge to shed tears. He was peacefully departing. I was no longer his little girl. It would take many months for me to realize my new life – free from paternal expectations and restrictions. Free from patriarchal influences of what I could and should do. I felt closer to him in the days before and after his death. A new confidence rose in me for being recognized as a main part of the supportive team that helped him find the walk home that he wanted to travel. I was born again to myself. I am free to turn the page in a new chapter and walk toward my own ending.

A book development coach asked me to expand on this moment. 

My empowerment came when PT died. It is interesting that I don’t call him Dad anymore. When I ask myself when that stopped, it might just be the day that he died. I don’t even think I use it with my sister, Nancy, or my brothers either. Everyone knows him as PT. I said in an earlier interview that: “I was the glue holding it all together, and I was glowing in it because I was in my element for the first time in our family unit”. Yes, it was validating. (March 2022).

INITIATION AND DESCENT TO THE GODDESS (6)

As my nest was emptying, I found the space and freedom to consider options for my future. Like the mythical Phoenix, reborn after flying too close to the sun, I am comfortable with the theme. I had done it before. In my later 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 toward the second phase of my longevity. 

In the summer of 2019, as plans for a year-long celebration of the 19th amendment – Women’s Right to Vote ramped up, I saw the article, “Lost Mothers: Maternal Mortality in the U.S.” A graphic burned in my brain (Figure 7). I had struggled to live in my own reproductive body for decades and found menopause a relief. 

But how is it that the United States was losing more mothers and babies when other countries were seeing a decrease? I was appalled that in the twenty years since my seesaw between infertility and recurrent miscarriages things were getting worse and the shame and stigma was still continuing. Why wasn’t anyone talking about this? The article noted, “In the U.S., unlike some other developed countries, maternal deaths are treated as a private tragedy rather than as a public health catastrophe”.  No one wanted me to talk about my losses, so I found my way in newly launched internet chat rooms in the1990s to pull myself through it. I assumed that social media would tell this story. There was still …silence. 

Spark. Flame. Catalyst. I needed to return to school. I left a PhD program in 1998 and by 2002,

I had three children. UNLV did not have a graduate program in Women’s and Gender Studies so I signed up for online courses at CSN the community college. (Figure 10 )                                                                              

It was a powerful introduction with a new foundation in Goddess and Early Civilization History, Race, Class, and Gender, and a dabbling in Marriage and Family. I found myself wanting more, but not anymore undergraduate coursework. 2020 was quickly approaching and I instinctively felt that clarity, 20/20 vision, was coming for not just myself but society. I experienced a calling to write, and I signed up for an online Memoir Writing Course. I celebrated the Winter Solstice with a friend who reintroduced me to Tarot and Guided Meditation. I was remembering my earlier teens and my mother had always noticed that I had very strong intuitive skills. Some would say it was coincidence or I was good at reading the room and predicting, I felt it was more. I needed to reconnect with my intuition and inner wisdom. I purchased a tarot deck and a guidebook. 

URGENT YEARNING TO RECONNECT WITH THE FEMININE (7)

I was my most authentic, confident, and free self when I was seventeen. Writing my story of transition into motherhood in “Three Angelfish” and self-publishing it for my children cracked open my own story. After revealing it to others, I began to feel the shame and stigma melt away and I felt the healing medicine of telling and sharing my story. I learned that when I shared my story, it provided the opportunity for others to tell their struggles. I saw relationships deepen and watched others step out of their shadows and find solace. The world was months into living through the pandemic and I applied to Northern Arizona University where I would spiral back toward the person, I was born to be in 1963. This is how I got started. I am calling back all the pieces of me that I left all over the place in the past four decades.

HEALING THE MOTHER/DAUGHTER SPLIT (8)

As I finished my Masters Certificate in Womens and Gender Studies, I took an Anthropology of Gender course. I had written a poem (Appendix 4a) and produced a multimedia slide show (Appendix 4b) To end the course my professor challenged me to write a book proposal on my project title: An Autoethnography of a Reproductive Body. I hired a Book Development Coach and in early 2022, I outlined multiple books and titles and table of contents. 

For most of my life, I did not feel WHOLE. I felt less than whole. Through years of sexual exploration and infertility, I was like the thermos from childhood days that got dropped on the way home from school. The outside looked whole, but the inside was a jumble of pieces rattling around that I hoped could be fixed. 

I am writing this book to share my journey to Wholeness in a Reproductive Body. 

I want to guide others to push back against the societal messaging that we are not whole beings.   

I was told I was not a complete person unless I was a mother and had my own individual nuclear family. I was told to do it all on my own in the spirit of rugged individualism. I was taught that my worth (positive and negative) was wrapped up in my reproduction.

At 59 years old, I reflect, and I can only come up with a few times in my life that I might have been WHOLE: Birth. Abortion. Pregnancy. Menopause. I finally feel whole today but for 50+ years, I felt like I was a bunch of pieces-fragments-bits of a reproductive body. 

WHOLE – baby child. I am a representation of reproduction

PIECES – Sexual Exploration. I learn my parts and pieces. No thoughts of reproduction.

WHOLE – Abortion. Avoiding reproduction. 

PIECES – Infertility. I am trying to reproduce.

WHOLE – Pregnant. I am reproducing

PIECES -  Perimenopause. Deconstructed reproduction. Becoming a different reproductive body.

WHOLE – Menopause. Wisdom. I am whole. I am a creatrix. Discovering a reproductive soul.

I am writing this book to share an example of how I came to discover my bodily parts and how I learned to love my WHOLE body. With this wisdom comes awareness and strength and the inability for outside forces to pull me apart. I control my mind, body, and spirit. I am a reproductive body and I decide my destiny. 

I write this book to claim my Reproductive Soul. 

HEALING THE WOUNDED MASCULINE (9)

I am certain of this Beat in the story structure, but I am healing. I am using tools such as Archetypal Awareness, Writing to Heal, Tarot, Guided Meditation, Blogging, Writing Workshops, Poetry, and Art. I have been exploring the work of Jungian Analysts and Reading Literature. I believe we have learned when we can share it with others. I co-created an 8-module transformative learning opportunity called “Intuition Ignition” and we taught it last Spring. One of the modules focused on Duality. The yin and yang symbol tells us that we need the light and the dark. The goal is to live in the center of the wheel not at the polar ends. 

INTEGRATION OF THE MASCULINE AND FEMININE (10)

I am still a work in progress. There is more to come but I feel like the Feminine is in the lead and I will find ways to integrate the Masculine in a self-nurturing, loving, and caring partnership. 

I was recently reintroduced to Stevie Nick’s “Edge of Seventeen” song lyrics the other day when I bought tickets to attend the 74-year old’s concert in Las Vegas in March 2023. I absorb a different meaning from the words today and I marvel at how lyrics touch us, in different ways at different times of our lives. At seventeen, I heard it as a rally cry to move forward and fly away from my natal family. Today, the song nudges me toward the second half of my life with grace and excitement. 

And the days go by, like a strand in the wind
In the web that is my own, I begin again

(…)

Just like the white winged dove
Sings a song, sounds like she's singing

(…)

The clouds never expect it when it rains
But the sea changes colours
But the sea does not change
So with the slow, graceful flow of age

Stevie Nicks “Edge of Seventeen (2019) Remaster”

ARCHETYPES IN MY LIFE TODAY

Since 2020, I searched for clarity and sharpened my 20/20 vision of elements of my life. It has led me to identify the many archetypes in my world as I read, create, and analyze problems that come up in my life. Is there a Villain out to get me or is the Trickster just showing up to shake things up? The creation of this Capstone project can be seen through the lens of archetypes introduced by Lucy Pearce in her guidance of the journey of The Creative Way (60). 

The Storyteller - one who creates a narrative of our experiences.

The Entertainer - the part of us that loves to play to an audience.

The Shapeshifter – our chameleon nature that shifts into new forms, refusing stagnation

The Visionary – one who sees with the inner eye and relies on intuition.

The Artist – one who expresses themselves creatively.

The Crazy Woman – she has a rebellious energy and ability to embody forbidden parts of the psyche.

The Magician – one who makes the impossible happen, who makes things appear or disappear at will and has supernatural control over their surroundings.

Burning Woman – the incendiary Feminine power; our burning passion, that has often been condemned as witchcraft and burned at the stake to silence its heresy. Lucy coined the phrase.

Medicine Woman – the soul of the Feminine healing energy. Lucy wrote a book about it. 

The Hero/Heroine – the central character around whom the story is woven.

The Hunter – one who tracks patterns and ideas, following hints and traces.

In researching and writing a research project, I found these archetypes:

The Researcher – one who asks questions and goes searching for what has been done before, what needs to be done in the future, and how she can observe and report what she finds.

The Critic – one who criticizes, for many different reasons. They can appear as the judge, the editor, or even the troll. An outside force.

The Inner Critic – does the above and can sabotage from the inside if we aren’t aware.

The Witness - the wise, inner reflective nature.

The Mentor – a teacher or guide to the journey who imparts wisdom and helps the Heroine to develop their skills. 

The Gatekeeper/Threshold Guardian – one who protects our guards the next stage of the journey.

I have learned that these energies are not to be taken personally as I may have done before my awareness. They are simply roles played by characters in my life story. They are just energetic psychic forces that play out for everyone. If we can respond consciously to their presence our interactions with them can be seen as acquiring wisdom. As I continue to write myself into the next phase of life, I plan to create and rewrite the archetype of Woman Over Sixty.

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