The Heroine's Journey by Maureen Murdock

Author:Maureen Murdock
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Shambhala

The Grain Goddess

I experienced the inconsolable grief of Demeter when my daughter, Heather, left for college. Without her I felt dead. I not only felt the loss of joy that I took in her daily presence, but I experienced viscerally the death of myself as mother. Like Hecate, who “is the goddess of the dark moon, of the mediumistic intuition in woman of that which hears in the dark but does not see or understand,”15 I could not understand the reason for the depth of my pain. I had grieved when Brendan, my son, had departed for college two years earlier, but this time it was different. And much more extreme. I didn’t sleep for two months after her departure, and although I continued to work, I cried every time I looked at her empty room. I wanted her back; I wanted things to be as they had been when we sang and joked and shared the events of the day. I even wanted her there to pick on me!

Helen Luke addresses the immense difference between the mother/son and mother/daughter experience: “On the archetypal level the son carries for the mother the image of her inner quest, but the daughter is the extension of her very self, carrying her back into the past and her own youth and forward to the promise of her own rebirth into a new personality, into the awareness of the Self.”16 Before experiencing a rebirth, I felt the chill cold of death.

At this time I had a dream in which troops with whom I had been traveling left me in a mountaintop cave at nightfall. It was snowing, and they had to get off the mountain while it was still light. They left me there because I had been wounded. The captain of the regiment gave me his glove as he left.

The next morning I reflected on the dream to find out what my unconscious was telling me. In my imagination I went back into the dream cave to see what was there for me to learn. I wrote:

“I look around, and there are ritual objects in the cave: a knife, an empty bird’s nest, three stones, an empty holster, a canteen of water, and food rations. There is also a bedroll upon which I sit. My right thigh is wounded, and there is blood on my pants. It is cold out, yet I feel a sense of peace amid my fear. I have the ability to make fire. I eat my beef jerky.

“I know that I have the strength to stay here for three days; they will come back for me after that. The captain is my friend; I can count on him. Yet I feel immense fear. I find a bird’s nest. It is rare to find a new bird’s nest in a cave at this altitude. The nest is fragile. I feel that way inside too, but on the outside I must be a brave soldier.

“The objects in this cave are the playthings of a boy: the ally objects I once had as a young girl in the woods.

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