journeying

Easter brunch: Chris decorated the lamb cake, Caroline braided the bread, and my friend Belinda contributed the gorgeous eggs. Sadly, one of the chocolate bunnies later fell victim to a dramatic incident involving the morning sun and some left-open blinds.

Happy Easter! We couldn't have ordered better weather this year. The time changed on March 29, so at the beginning of Holy Week the mornings were suddenly noticeably darker, and the weather was cold and dreary. And then over the course of the week things got better and better until on Easter morning the sun was out and the flowers were blooming and the temperature was downright pleasant. I dragged the family to the Protestant church's new monthly English service and we sang my favorite Easter hymn (springeth green! only for some reason we sang 'arising green'! but whatever!) and then we went home and had a yummy brunch (with an actual guest!) and since then things have been sunny and lovely. And I'm feeling surprisingly good, as in physically much less run-down than usual: because of the weather? because I'm avoiding my problems? something else? Unclear, but I do hope this sticks around for a while. 

Meanwhile...I've been occupied by this video, in which Amy McPhie Allebest summarizes this book, in which Maureen Murdock proposes a female counterpart to Joseph Campbell's presumptively-male-privileged "hero's journey." Murdock, a student of both Jung and Campbell, saw in her therapy clients an archetypically feminine "heroine's journey" that differs in important ways from the experience of the hero. Her story goes something like this: 

A girl notices that the masculine is valued by sociedy: men are the winners in the game of life. She therefore distances herself from the feminine and particularly from her mother. As she grows up and becomes an adult, our heroine learns to play the game according to its patriarchal rules. Maybe she pursues a traditionally male profession; maybe takes on a more stereotypically feminine role: in any case, she faces the trials of life and - this is important - she succeeds! At least until she doesn't. Because her success has come at the price of betraying important parts of herself, and deep down that feels like a hollow victory. Eventually, she faces a crisis and finds that she cannot continue as she was. She "meets the goddess" and is inspired to reconnect with her abandoned feminine/creative side, with her mother and her female lineage. At the same time she must challenge and reform the internalized patriarch that has kept her overworked and under-fulfilled for so long. And stop projecting her frustration with the patriarchy onto the real men in her life. If she manages all this, she finds a balance between her own feminine and masculine sides and...it's not clear to me how or whether the newly-enlightened heroine finds her place in society but I guess if she doesn't get burned at the stake, she is able from her newly-integrated state to effect some positive change so that her own daughters and granddaughters don't have to repeat the journey?

Like Allebest, I don't *want* to relate to this story, but if the shoe fits... The part about projecting my frustration with patriarchy onto real men hit particularly hard, because that's been my struggle with feminism all along: every time I've tried to look at the world through a feminist lens I've gotten so frustrated and angry that I can't function. Once in my youth I read some feminist literature and then went to see a stupid movie, and I got so incensed by the fact that my boyfriend was *not* incensed by the portrayal of women in the stupid movie that we had a huge fight and broke up. Poor guy was completely blindsided. These days, the Patriarch and his bros the Capitalist and Catholic Shame still dominate my internal conversation far more than I'd like them to. Have I met the goddess? Maybe. I'm doing a better job of making women friends lately, but I still notice myself seeking male attention and approval any time I can. If this is the journey, I've still got a ways to go.

Meanwhile, in Seattle: my brother spent his Easter afternoon looking at old pictures with my dad, and they decided that my grandmother in her youth looked surprisingly like me. I think it's mostly the hair, but I see what they mean... I never got to know her personally. What would feeling connected to a female lineage be like?