Most people know the Hero’s Journey, Joseph Campbell’s famous “monomyth.” The hero is called to adventure, leaves home, finds a mentor, faces trials, defeats a monster or shadow, seizes the prize, and returns with a gift for his people. It’s a story of linear conquest. A straight line moving outward into the world.
But there’s another pattern, one that feels more honest to the rhythms of real life: the Heroine’s Journey.
The Heroine’s Journey isn’t about slaying dragons. It’s about healing inner divisions, reconnecting with what was rejected, and watering what has gone dry. It spirals like the seasons, moving in cycles of descent, dryness, healing, and integration. Though Murdock framed this journey in the language of the heroine, I find as a man, and especially as a gay man, this pattern has played out in my own life.
The Stages of the Heroine’s Journey
To understand why my last six months feel like this journey, it helps to see how the entire journey takes shape:
- Separation from the Feminine – The seeker feels they must reject the “feminine” (intuition, softness, receptivity) in order to survive in a world that rewards the “masculine.”
- Identification with the Masculine – they prove themselves by striving, achieving, competing, climbing ladders of success.
- Road of Trials – they succeed, but it’s exhausting. They are praised outwardly, yet inwardly feels a growing hollowness.
- Spiritual Aridity – they reach burnout or emptiness. Despite all the achievement, something is still parched inside. This is where I am now.
- Descent to the Goddess – Crisis or loss forces them inward, back toward what they neglected. They re-encounter their intuition, their body, their softness, their soul..
- Yearning to Reconnect with the Feminine – they begin to long for wholeness. They no longer see the feminine as weakness but as vital.
Healing the Split — they reconcile with the feminine, either literally (with their mother or other women) or symbolically (with their own neglected inner self). - Integration of Masculine and Feminine – they emerges whole. No longer either/or, they can weave strength and softness, logic and intuition, doing and being.
Unlike the Hero’s linear quest, this is cyclical. The heroine may live it many times over a lifetime. Each descent brings her deeper into herself, and each integration makes her more whole.
Wintering, Then Aridity
My own spiral began about six months ago during what I called my wintering. Winter is not failure. It’s the quiet season when roots conserve energy, when what looks dead is secretly preparing for life. I thought that was where I was — resting, storing, waiting for spring.
But then something stranger happened. Spring did come. We are still talking figuratively. The world around me turned lush and green. I was building, planning, creating. Almost like doing figurative landscape architecture around me. I was sketching gardens, laying out designs, filling the space of my life with structure and potential.
Yet nothing grew.
It was confusing. I thought perhaps it was still winter, that I simply had to be patient. But the truth was harder: spring was here. The soil was fertile. The conditions were ready. What was missing was simple; I hadn’t watered it.
And in the same way, I hadn’t watered myself. I was pouring out for others, working four jobs, caring for needs everywhere around me. But the well inside me was running dry.
That is the heart of spiritual aridity. Not gentle dormancy, but thirst. Life all around, but nothing blooming because you yourself are parched.
The Dream of the Black Elk
Months before I realized this, I had a dream. Not a passing dream you forget by morning, but one of those rare, archetypal dreams that feels more like revelation. A dream that stays lit inside you like a lantern.
In it, I came to a big, beautiful house. It was mine, but I felt no need to enter the grand rooms. Instead, I was drawn to the back, where a smaller shed stood connected by a hallway under the same roof as the house. The door was ajar, a light spilling out as if something waited for me.
When I stepped inside, I froze. There, taking up the room, was a giant elk, black as midnight. It was magnificent, yet it looked sick, weak, parched. My heart clenched with worry.
It began to follow me as I turned toward the front of the house. I knew I had a large basin there, a place I could fill with water. The elk moved behind me, trusting, waiting, a massive presence. I pulled the basin forward and filled it, and the elk drank deeply, thirstily, as if it had been waiting years.
And then the miracle came.
Bright blue crystals began to glow along its back and forehead. They had always been there, part of its fur, but dormant until it drank. With water, they lit up, shimmering with power and magic.
As it drank its fill, it grew strong again, and then it began to push me forward. It pushed while I placed my hand firmly on its forehead. Not with anger, but with guidance, insistence, like a mentor saying, “This way, this way.” And, I turned and started walking that way. More elk appeared in the distance, and my black elk turned to join them. But I knew: this one was mine. My guide. The best part of me. The truth of who I am when I am watered.
The Symbolism of the Dream
Looking back, I see it so clearly:
The house is the structured life I’ve built. Impressive, yes, but not where my soul was waiting. The shed is the overlooked chamber, the hidden part of myself. The elk is my deep vitality, the neglected best of me, sick only because I hadn’t fed it. The water is self-nourishment. The care I give so easily to other things but must also give to myself. The crystals are my gifts, my magic, my truth; always present, but only visible when I’m nourished. The push forward is guidance: when I water myself, I don’t just heal, I’m shown the way.
And here’s the most astonishing part: soon after that dream, I met my mentor and guide, Joi. It felt like the dream had foreshadowed her. The elk within, and Joi without, both pointing me toward the same truth: it is time to water yourself.
The Obstacles on the Road
Joi invited me to a weekend of growth and self nourishment. Of course, the moment I said yes, the tests began. Life put up obstacle after obstacle, as though asking: Will you really come? Will you fight for it?
My husband broke his ankle. I thought surely I’d have to stay home and cancel everything. But help came, and I was freed to go. At two different jobs, coworkers came down with Covid. I waited, tense, for symptoms to appear. But five days passed, and I was clear. Then, the man I worked with in a small box office grew sick. This is it, I thought. There’s no way I escape this. But it wasn’t Covid. It was stress. The same stress that had been drying me out too. And finally, the sharpest test: I was driving on a narrow two-lane road when a car fleeing the police flew up behind me. With nowhere to go, traffic rushing by the other way, it swerved between me and the oncoming cars, ramming me off the road into a small ditch. My whole body shook for an hour afterward. By some miracle, I wasn’t hurt, and my car was untouched.
It felt like the universe asking me, over and over: Will you still come? Will you still choose the water?
And I did.
Aridity as Teacher
That’s the gift of the Heroine’s Journey.
In the Hero’s world, success means slaying the dragon and claiming the prize. But in the Heroine’s world, success comes after realizing that what is missing is not out there but in here. That the lush world around you can’t make up for your own thirst. That all the figurative gardens you design will remain barren if you don’t water them.
Aridity is not failure. It’s teacher. It’s the parched throat that tells you what you need most. And when you listen, when you offer water to yourself, the crystals glow, the elk rises, and your true guide pushes you forward.
Why I’m Here
That’s why I had to be here this weekend, despite everything that tried to stop me; the broken leg, the jobs, the illness scares, the accident.
Because this is where I water myself. This is where the black elk drinks. This is where the crystals light up again.
The Hero’s Journey is about conquering the world. The Heroine’s Journey is about healing the split inside and reclaiming what has been neglected. And I have learned this: if I do not water that elk in the shed, then no amount of building, no amount of working, no amount of helping others will ever bear fruit.
This is the season to drink deeply. This is the season of Joy. And this is the season where I trust my elk, luminous and alive, to guide me forward.
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