I’ve been working on putting the final pieces of my next Rebel MFA Sanctuary offering together, From Myth to Medicine: Storytelling for Personal Development and it was exactly what I needed to refuel my own creative batteries and remind me just how creatively aligned I am with the work I do in the world. This is the type of “work,” I live for. Many a nights I’ve burned the midnight oil working on the materials, exhausted yet deliriously in love with what I’ve accomplished. This is because any offering that involves storytelling lights me up like a firecracker.
SIDE NOTE: When I have a new idea for an offering, 90% of the time it has a very rough shape and I have to mold, bend and coax it into existence. This is why the whole “pre-sell” tactic doesn’t really work for me. I need time and space and certain conditions in order for my offerings to come alive. It’s part of my intuitive process and I’ve learned to accept it. I just wasn’t built for the mainstream life (like…any of it lol).
One of the greatest gifts I’ve discovered while putting together this offering is how beautifully it aligns with my two core programs — Writing Fiction to Heal and the Rebel MFA Way. As you probably know, myths and other stories like it are not just entertaining bedtime tales or things we simply grow out of. Myths transcend time. Myths are eternal.
“Folk tales and myths, they’ve lasted for a reason. We tell them over and over because we keep finding truths in them, and we keep finding life in them.” — Patrick Ness
Myth has the capacity to reach our most profound creative energies and create symbolic images, giving meaning to the complexities of modern life and history. It thrives on paradox, ambiguity, and the transformative power of metaphor in our lives. When we engage with our mythic imagination, we can find self-discovery and a deeply dynamic understanding of various cultures, including our own. Myths ask us to look at two central questions: what meaning does this story hold for me, personally? And, what meaning does it hold in the context of the wider world?
Myths remind us that we are not so different from those who lived centuries ago or from those living thousands of miles away. The themes of love, betrayal, ambition, and redemption are universal, transcending geographical and temporal boundaries. By studying these stories, we connect not only with the ancients but also with each other, finding common ground in the shared archetypes of our collective unconscious. This universal aspect of myths is what makes them indispensable tools —they provide a rich, fertile ground for learning to see the world and ourselves through a broader, more inclusive lens.
Myths and Healing
My witchy mentor calls myths that we are drawn to for our particularly prickly feelings the “medicinal poison” stories. These are often the gnarly stories that involve themes of violence, revenge, comeuppance, trickery, etc. I can affirm to this be true in my own experience. A few years back, when I was dealing with a very nasty person who had completely shit on the lives of many, I was understandably angry. Then, I went to a myth-tenders apprenticeship meeting and the myth of the day was Dearg Due [one of the featured stories in From Myth to Medicine, btw].
Dearg Due is believed to be the first Irish vampire story in history* and it is gnarly. The long-short of it is that after a woman who has been treated with extreme cruelty succumbs to death, she arises from the dead to drain the blood of every person who played a part in her death. She is as brutal — if not more — and it’s a glorious revenge.
And after hearing that story on that day, the rage I felt surrounding that nasty person lifted just a little bit. I gave a bit of my fury to Dearg Due as I replayed the story in my mind, allowing her to metaphorically drain the blood of this person.
Later that night, I blended that myth with the process of Writing Fiction to Heal and I completed a short story in which I surrendered all of me to the page. Everything in me. The guilt, the shame, the anger, the embarrassment, the sadness of lost friendships, lost opportunities, the grief of it all.
And that was the night I stopped giving that person any more of my emotional energy.
Myths are more powerful than you or I can even begin to imagine. This is a small scale example. Try to envision a scenario in which a myth helps you find the path to healing a much larger wound. A wound that has festered for years, maybe even decades.
I believe that is possible. But it doesn’t matter if I do. It only matters if YOU do.
Myths like Dearg Due serve not only as tales of caution or revenge but as cathartic experiences for those entangled in their own emotional struggles. They allow us to externalize our inner conflicts, engaging with them through characters and narratives that have survived through ages. This externalization is not a passive process but an active engagement, where we wrestle with the metaphors and meanings, finding resolutions within the myth that might seem elusive in real life. In engaging with these stories, we not only revisit the universal themes of betrayal and redemption but also reconstruct our narratives on a path towards healing.
Myths and Rebels
It goes without saying that myths and stories are full of rebels. It is quite often the most compelling kind of story after all. To see a rebel defying the odds. Even myths that have been decoded as “cautionary” tales come with a different side to the story. While our white, patriarchal male predecessors wanted us to take Bluebeard as a warning to curious women… all of us curious women have taken it to be a warning to trust our intuition.
More than that, scholars of myths, folklore, fairytales and the mystical have always been outliers in our cultures. “What’s the point?” so many ask. “Why study these things? It’s useless,” they say.
Ah! But we know the truth. So do the scholars. Keeping myths alive is rebellious because they speak the truth to our existence. They continue to be the universal truth even when our modernity tells us it’s not.
I will stake a claim right now that the billion dollar industries (wellness, self-help, self-improvement for starters) would think it rather rebellious of you to say that looking to myths to find your way in this world is appropriate. “That can’t possibly be a path forward! You can’t possibly believe that such an old, free, extremely accessible method would work for you!?”
Well, the joke is on them, the trickster said. I’m not claiming that myths will fix the world or even ourselves.
I’m saying that myths are more powerful than we give them credit for and when we deny ourselves some of the most potent medicine that sits right in front of our face, we add to the collective loss of power.
The rebel characters in myths—from Prometheus, who defied the gods to give fire to humanity, to Lilith, who refused to submit to Adam and left Eden—are not just protagonists in thrilling stories. They are embodiments of the struggle against the status quo, champions of personal autonomy against societal imposition. These stories resonate deeply with the Rebel MFA approach, which itself is a form of educational and creative rebellion. By embracing these narratives, we embrace a form of wisdom that defies conventional learning and traditional paths to knowledge. Myths teach us to question, to explore, and to redefine the boundaries of what is possible, both in stories and in life.
Myths at Every Season
Because Myths are at once universal and personal, they bend and twist to the needs of a reader. I have found that the same myth can be potent medicine at different times in my life depending on the season. Bluebeard was particularly potent for me as I began my initiation as an apprenticing witch. But today, Bluebeard speaks to me from a much deeper place of rage-induced awareness of intuition and knowing. The “Maiden, Mother, Crone” archetype found in many myths are beautiful transitional stories that often speak deeply to women who are at certain seasons or stages of their life and provide profound medicine and wisdom. These stories in particular can often only be understood and appreciated once a woman has reached the phase of maiden, mother, or crone, and having these myths to help guide us is invaluable.
I honestly can’t believe the timeliness of this article because just this past week, someone I deeply admire,
announced her next book, Wise Women: Myths and Stories for Midlife and Beyond.And I could NOT have given you a better example of what I mean than this. Read the announcement and come back here because you will immediately understand what I’m talking about when I say that there are certain and specific myths that are meant to be read and understood at certain points in our lives and Dr. Blackie is undertaking that process in this new book of hers.
Along with Clarissa Pinkola Estés, I highly recommend Dr. Sharon Blackie if you’re interested in reading about the integration of myths, folktales, and fairytales in our daily lives. So much of my deep studies and learnings have come from their wisdom and teachings.
If you found this essay interesting, this is your official invitation to join the Rebel MFA Sanctuary where my From Myth to Medicine: Storytelling for Personal Development experience will be launching in July.
You can learn more about the experience here:
Want to get a sneak peek of what we’ll be doing inside the experience? Check out this bonus myth I’ve prepared for all subscribers for FREE: