“The Monster” archetype is summarized as those times when “bad” or uncontrollable energy or happenstance appears which you (or in marketing, your client or customer or character in your ad campaign) eventually rise above, victoriously.
This is an archetype easily used by healing artists, storytellers – anyone who provides a product or service that makes someone feel better about some experience or circumstance.
In these cases I consider my cancer journey, my client’s experience of grief, perhaps the movie “Jaws” or I think about Julie Andrews losing her ability to sing.
I wrote for two consecutive 5 minute brain dumps today writing to the prompt of “monsters” which became “These are the topics I have never wanted to talk about.”
What you see next is simply stream of consciousness. No editing or foresight. In using this approach, I was able to tune into my own process AND glean insights my clients/customers/students may relate to as well.
Follow along with me now as I wrote to this prompt:
It hurts too much to open the door, which is why we keep the door shut and refuse to open it.
It is why the word “cancer” is whispered and we turn our heads from the mirror when we see our scars or an obstruction that blocks us from seeing what we would rather see. Even with that, we can’t stop watching the tragedy – the airplanes flying into the twin towers – is on replay in our mind’s eye, the most horrific images from wartime (I am seeing a few in my mind as I write) the heart stopping stories I look forward to watching each week on Law and Order, SVU.
Yesterday I spoke on the phone to a personification of “The Monsters” in my life. A person whose presence in my life initiated an episode of abandonment in my life I rarely address.
It was interesting because for the first time since that episode, I wasn’t overly troubled by the conversation. I still haven’t come to a conclusion about where I will take the conversation or what I will do with it, but it seems that particular chapter has lost some of its power as distance and time often does.
(It actually stirs me to think of lines of poetry in my head, oddly or not.)
The monster archetype and rising above it is a story of healing, a story of proclaiming victory – a definitive overcoming of the monster, not the surprise “this isn’t really over” almost to the ending scenario but the true ending.
I might have proclaimed victory from melanoma, but the scar on my face troubled me a lot in the year afterwards so much so, I had a second surgery to make it not so pronounced.
My face still hurts in very cool temperatures and I notice that as I age, it takes on different nuances.
I suppose overcoming that monster is more like making peace with its presence on my face. I actually think my scar is cool much of the time.
People look at it in a sort of awe when they notice it is shaped like a heart. Other times they make up stories that I was attacked by a knife wielding… lover of love to leave a heart shape? I don’t know what they think when they think that but when I say it came thanks to melanoma people look relieved that I wasn’t attacked by a fellow human, instead I was attacked by a disease.
I stop typing momentarily. I think about the real monsters in my life, the ones that stay in the closet and remain untalkaboutable: the fear of being abandoned and alone. (My stress cough showed up as I typed that.)
The fear of my children having unsurmountable problems.
The fear of being disliked by people I treasure the most.
Some of these fears have already been realized and I have survived.
I am literally laughing and coughing, coughing and laughing because as I continue writing and continue to “speak my truth” through writing it on the page in spite of the coughing that attempts to choke me into silence, I am beating the monster one slug at a time.
#End Writing –
And to layer this over my Core Message: Express Yourself Freely, On Purpose to Leave the World Better than How You Found It….
The fact I wrote and laughed as I coughed and my stress cough has been a huge barrier for expression… I believe I am onto a victory of one of my biggest battles.
THAT FEELS PRICELESS!
Stand by to see how this is morphed into a marketing message and marketing story, to be used and told repeatedly.
Julie Jordan Scott (the one who wrote this blog post) says: This is what I crave for you: soulful creativity, aliveness in your passionate productivity, and a deeper sense of knowing how you belong in the world so that together we will be able to create a context for the rest of your life via your next book or your next workshop or simply your next day, week, month or year.
The people who named me “Creative Life Midwife” found words and paint and laughter and flexed their courage muscles on the way to a deeper satisfaction in their daily lives via new blogs, books, webinars and friendships – just to name a few. Contact me now for your complimentary Transformational coaching conversation. Click here to complete the request form now.
Rather than get frustrated I have found a few strategies to “free” the words that are stuck inside me and then return to the writing process reinvigorated.
Julie Jordan Scott inspires people to experience artistic rebirth via her programs, playshops, books, performances and simply being herself out in the world. She is a writer, creative life coach, speaker, performance poet, Mommy-extraordinaire and mixed media whose Writing Camps and Writing Playgrounds permanently transform people’s creative lives.
What does it mean to be “woo woo”?
You know those beliefs that are stuck so deep you don’t speak them ever for fear of… well, for me I suppose it is fear of amplifying that belief no matter how false I pray it is.
Today I used a quote as a writing prompt, simply writing whatever flew off the ends of my fingertips in response.
Ouch. Sting. I reach for my face – my heart shaped scar, the tears that want to pour out but stay continually stuck. Frozen.
Note to self and you: this is normally when I abandon my writing, when I stop going any deeper with my words because it looks and feels scary and I don’t want to face whatever might come next. In so doing, I have missed a lot of light, a lot of hope, a lot of joy and who knows what else.
I remember feeling panic about my cat, Tina, being trapped and how we could possibly get her out. Samuel came with me and we brought a can of tuna to coax her. I was worried about getting any dust specks on their hard wood floor. I was afraid when Samuel came out from under the house he would leave traces of dust or worse, dirt, and they would be made at me (as if that was anything unusual.)
Old Narrative: People who don’t like me are always ready to find me in the wrong and make me feel more shame than I already do, naturally.
Julie Jordan Scott inspires people to experience artistic rebirth via her programs, playshops, books, performances and simply being herself out in the world. She is a writer, creative life coach, speaker, performance poet, Mommy-extraordinaire and mixed-media artist whose Writing Camps and Writing Playgrounds permanently transform people’s creative lives. Watch for the announcement of new programs coming in soon!
