The Heroine's Journey: How to Find Your Path in Midlife, with Joan Perry (Ep. 39)

0:01 is this all there is? I wonder if you've found yourself in a situation, or just in a day, when some variation of that question was in your head what the heck am I doing here in my job, life, relationship, health, whatever it is? I think we all hit this in midlife in some way and of course, it's different in the exact scenario how significant the effect is on our lives, but we hit it and so let's see if we can make sense out of it. Welcome to Mind your Midlife, your go-to resource for confidence and success.

0:48 One thought at a time, unlike most advice out there, we believe that simply telling you to believe in yourself or change your habits isn't enough to wake up excited about life or feel truly confident in your body. Each week, you'll gain actionable strategies and oh my goodness, powerful insights to stop feeling stuck and start loving your midlife. This is the Mind your Midlife podcast. It's really interesting to look back on challenges in life and see, maybe, how they made sense or I wouldn't wish challenges on anyone but maybe how we became someone who could get through or solve those challenges.

1:39 Look back, because I bet you can find an example of you having done that with something difficult in your life, and the reason I have such a heart for women in midlife is that I see shifts happening in so many areas of our lives, and with shifts come challenges. Now, today's guest is going to really enlighten us on this, because she is the bestselling author of the book the Heroine's Journey, and if you've ever heard the concept or the original book the Hero's Journey, this is a female perspective.

2:25 She's also the author of A Girl Needs Cash, and so I want you to meet today with me, joan Perry. She is an advocate for women becoming the heroines of our own lives, and we're going to talk about what does that mean and how do we do that. Let's go, let's start with this, because you're the author of the book the Heroine's Journey and I was taking a look at your book, which is fantastic, and I really see this and the way it kind of describes things that midlife women are going through on our journey.

3:06 So for somebody who doesn't know what you mean by the heroine's journey, can you kind of describe that overall story? Sure, I went to an Oprah event and Liz Gilbert, who wrote Eat Pray Love, stood on Oprah's stage and she made the comment that she asked Joseph Campbell, who, by the way, was the father of the Hero's Journey do women have a similar path to maturity? Very good question, because you know, the path to maturity for a man means he grows up Right. And Joseph Campbell said to Liz Gilbert, as she reported no, they don't, they stay home and cry. That just flipped me right off my chair, bounced me down the steps.

3:49 I felt like I was looking up at Liz Gilbert on the steps of the stage and saying what? Yeah, that's my response. What I can't believe somebody would say that seriously. Yes, and I just found that so appalling that it compelled me to write the Heroine's Journey, because what I discovered over 10 years of work is number one Joseph Campbell was right we don't have a hero's journey, okay. Number two he was wrong. We have a heroine's journey, and there's a decided difference between the two of them, and I think that our society has sent women down the path of the hero's journey.

4:35 All of a sudden, we get to midlife, we're miserable, we don't know why. I like to say it's because I climbed to the top of the ladder and the ladder was in the wrong building, because I was on a hero's journey and not a heroine's journey. So what I'm hearing when you say that is along the lines of we put ourselves maybe into a position and go for things that are sort of masculine energy related, that might not be the right fit for us to be going for. Is that sort of how you might say it? Yes, I'd go a little further and to say that the hero's journey is an external journey. We know it. Go out and fight the lions, tigers and bears and bring back the bacon.

5:17 Okay, if you're graduating from a college, go out, climb the corporate ladder, earn the money and bring some back to the university. Okay, yeah, I mean that is the external journey. When I graduated from business school, that was the journey I thought that I needed to be on. I looked around and I said what is success for a man? And the? I mean what is success? And I got back. Well, it's obviously the path a man takes. I never stopped to think that maybe that wasn't going to fulfill me, make me happy. Let me enjoy the joy of my life. You know, I was going to say that.

5:57 It's very interesting to me that you say that, because I think this hits on something that we have nowhere near enough time to talk about, and that is, as women, do we want to be equal to a man in the corporate world or whatever? We're always fighting for that, or do we not care about that at all and we want to go in a totally different direction, and maybe it's always an individual decision, but what a whole thing there is there to unpack. Yeah, but I don't think it's an individual decision. I think we have a different path and that we've not understood our path up until this point, because while a man takes an external journey to his maturity, we take an internal journey to our maturity, and our maturity arises as we claim our self-worth and our voice.

6:46 Yes. And once I understood that and I started to claim my self-worth, be happy with who I am, prosper in who I am, and I couldn't have a voice until I had self-worth. So it's rebelling from that whole culture, culture about you're too fat, you're not pretty enough, you're not smart enough, you're not, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yes, you're all. You're all of what you need to be. Claim your self-worth, and that will allow your voice to spring forward. Now, what's terribly interesting about this first story I'm telling is is that 10 minutes before I was finishing the book and it was going to go off to the publisher, someone who was working with me said Joan, I have a quote for you, and she sent it over.

7:32 It was a quote from Joseph Campbell, the author of the Hero's Journey, that finally said I can't tell you what the journey of a woman is. I can't tell you if it's like the hero's journey. All I can tell you is that a woman is going to have to tell us about this. And if the very last page of my book it was so perfect because, at least in my mind I found felt like he'd found a little maturity. I agree, I was thinking okay, he got it together. And he wasn't requiring me to be him. Yeah. Because I'm not Right.

8:13 I'm just not Right. So that's the first story I would tell you. The second one is that a profound experience happened to me, as profound as that experience. I was with a group of women down in Mexico and we were sitting around a fire and all of a sudden, someone I had known, a friend of mine, came and sat down next to me, and I didn't expect to see her there. I didn't think she was coming to that event. It was a women's retreat, you know. You pretty well knew who would be there, and all of a sudden she showed up. She sat down next to me and when she sat down next to me I could feel that there was something going on in her that was dramatic. So when we had a chance to talk, she told me this story.

8:55 The story was that she and her husband left Canada, where she lives, flew down to Mexico, checked into a gorgeous resort, you know, walked into their room rose petals everywhere, champagne, you know just I think it was their 24th or something and you know just expecting to have this unbelievably romantic weekend. So they're going to go out to dinner that night. They walk down the hill, they get in a rowboat and the rowboat takes them around the cove and they walk up a long set of stairs to get to the top of the cliff. Once we're there at the top of the cliff, they're standing in front of this rail, magnificent blue sky above them and crashing rocks, with the sea just pounding on the rocks below them.

9:42 So you can imagine the drama of this scene, right, she's, like you know, kind of way out there in romance at this point. You know, in this, you know magical setting and he turns to her and says I want a divorce. Oh, my goodness. Yes, and she? This was a true story. She was expecting to spend the next 10 days there with him, which she did, trying not to be, you know, dramatic or whatever. Um, we all knew that he was having an affair with another woman. She was the last to know. But the why that hit me so hard, sitting in this magical setting in Mexico, was that I believe that every woman who hits midlife hits something similar, and what I mean by that is that and this is a basis of the heroine's journey whether it's financial or relationship, or health or self-worth, and whether it's a big blow or a smaller one.

10:48 Now, I was such a hard nut to crack that in my life it was a huge blow. I mean, it just rocked my world, sent me flying. It was a yard sale that covered the planet, you know. But myth life does, and the heroine's journey it's a step on the heroine's journey does often come with something that majorly upsets your life, shatters your vision of what you think life is going forward, and then calls you to reinvent yourself, and it's very easy at that moment to go oh my gosh. This is the most horrible thing that ever happened to me and I can tell you. It took me years, but I determined that it was the best gift that could have ever been delivered to me.

11:34 We so often see that in hindsight, don't we? Yeah, but between those two stories, I realized that women have a journey and that it's a major upset which is the start of the journey. I agree with you about midlife and I agree with you that these things can be big or small for sure, and maybe big or small is not even the right pair of words to use, because something that might feel small for me might feel really big for someone else. So it's probably not fair to say it quite that way, but I've definitely hit on a couple of things over the past few years that I didn't see coming, and it's not going to be the same things that happened to you and not the same things that happened to the person who's listening right now, but there's a shift of some sort, or maybe many shifts.

12:24 I struggled a lot with kind of playing small and learning how not to play small, and your term self-worth is exactly what maybe I was trying to say is that I needed to grow my or recognize that, yeah, yeah. Because here's the truth, and this is what I discovered In a similar fashion. The plot line of a woman's life my life, your life, any number of other women we can mention the plot line's the same. What's different are our stories, Ooh, how we experience it, what meaning we make out of it, how quickly we do the things on the journey.

13:12 We've been telling each other our stories for many, many years, but we haven't understood that the plot line is the same, which is why the heroine's journey and you and I can help each other, because we can see what comes next. Yeah, that's very profound to think about it, because, well, what would you say if someone's listening and they're thinking, well, but you had kids and I never had kids, and you worked and I had a business, and how do you say that that's the same? It's a very different experience. I had a business, and how do you say that that's the same? It's a very different experience. Well, I would first say, go to heroinesbookcom and get your free plus shipping book so that you can learn about the steps on the heroine's journey.

13:59 Because the steps on the heroine's journey are not specific to incidences or life choices. They're specific to our growth and the different steps we go through for that. And you know, there are days when my life just isn't working the way I want it to work and I sit back and I think what's throwing me in the gutter today? And because I know the steps of heroine's journey, I ponder it, I can figure it out and then I can move on. Yes, yes, yes. And some days which was, you know, is the discussion on my podcast that people can go listen to, called the Heroine's Journey with Joan Perry Some days it's a self worth issue.

14:44 Yes. Some days it's that I've spent more money than what's in my checking account. Some days it's a really bad day, or it seems so, because my husband just gave me divorce papers, which you know was what happened to me. So you know, but it's going to be one of those areas, of those areas, and the heroine's journey invites you to know what's going on in that part of your life and move forward. Something you said in the book and let's see if I'm interpreting this correctly is that we need to figure out how to create our stability, and to me it kind of feels like that's sort of what you're talking about.

15:29 Is that fair? Yes, so the overall, not the individual steps, but the overall path of the heroine's journey is create your stability. Okay, because that's the first step. You have to have legs on the ground. The next step is awaken your authenticity. But let me tell you, as long as you're in prostitution which you are if you haven't created your stability and it's very important to know what it means to create your stability you cannot be authentic until you are stable. Once you awaken your authenticity, then the next step after that is light up your gifts.

16:11 Well, god sent you roaring down the birth canal with a whole bunch of gifts, tools, talents that you're supposed to deliver while you're here. Well, if you haven't created your stability, awakened your authenticity, you can't find your gifts because your gifts come from being authentic. You can't find your gifts because your gifts come from being authentic. So then, when you know your gifts and I'll tell a quick story a professor in college said to me you're a writer. I said, no, I'm not a writer, I'm a biology student. You know, I was expecting to go off to marine biology or something. And he said no, you're a writer. Well, many years later, 30 years later, when I wrote A Girl Needs Cash, which was my first book.

16:52 I signed it and took it back to him and said I'm a writer, I love it. You light up your gift. You can proceed to the fourth step, which is make your contribution. And that is the best place to live in, honestly your joy, your freedom, your prosperity, it all lies there. I mean, I'm happy to say that I spend my days now making my contribution. My contribution is clearly, you know, to argue with Joseph Campbell to, you know, put my arms around women who are standing at the top of the cliff and saying Do I fall over and crash on those rocks below, or do I rise like a phoenix into the blue sky?

17:45 Yeah, and I'm standing there as your cheerleader saying put those wings on and fly baby. Yes, yes, yes, yes. And when we hit this period, why are we fooling around? We don't have forever. We have a lot more time, hopefully, god willing, a lot more time, but it's not forever, and we know that. So enough fooling around. Well see, I think you spend the first 50 years doing everything to make yourself safe and secure. And then you reach the mid stage and you say, well, wait a minute, is this all there is? I chose to go work over here because I thought I'd be secure.

18:28 And then you realize when something blows up, ah, it never made me secure. What was I thinking? Yes, and you start to let go of that and realize that your safety and your blossoming comes from your fulfillment. Yes, yes, yes it's not from trying to calm your fears, it's from blossoming. You're like a rose of nature and nature has a natural process to bloom. That rose, the rose, cannot say I'm not blooming, it just doesn't. And we're the same. We can't say I'm not blooming. So if you reach that stage and you don't see it as a gift that there was a disruption and you don't start to then look at life from a new lens, you'll create a lot of pain in yourself, right Because you're supposed to bloom.

19:20 Yes, and I love that you said is this all there is? Because I think almost to a person. When we women reach this stage, we're asking some form of that question and it might sound a little different and look a little different and it might be just about one area of your life, but it's that question and that just opens up every possibility. The heroine's journey calls you to ask big questions. That's the whole point of the heroine's journey, and one of those big questions is who am I? Do I like what I'm doing? Yeah. I mean big questions that are authentic questions.

20:03 That's when your authenticity blossoms, because you're asking authentic questions. Yeah, you know, maybe it's for you. For me, I lived with this man for 20 some years. Was that where I wanted to be? He left me, but the honest answer was no. I didn't want to be there because I couldn't become who I am today under those circumstances. So those circumstances had to change Right Now. Did I resist? Was it painful? Did I hate the transition? All of the above Right. However, looking back now, I wouldn't change a moment of it. I love that you're kind of sharing, that there's such a big, powerful, positive impact to this kind of sharing, that there's such a big, powerful, positive impact to this, because I think asking those big questions is scary and no question.

20:54 You get stuck there Because it feels who am I? Is this all there is? Where am I going? It's too much. I don't, I don't know. It's too much. Yes, but it will create a natural tension inside of you and that tension and that pain is going to get bigger and bigger, and that's until it breaks loose. That feels big and scary to hear it that way, except for the fact that it's creating something great. There's a path forward. You're not alone. You're not out in the wilds doing it all by yourself. There are women who've come before us, that are very wise, who show us the path.

21:36 Yeah. It doesn't matter whether we're talking Amelia Earhart or Eleanor Roosevelt or Oprah, or you know any number of other women we can mention. They crossed. This was their plot line too. Absolutely, we're not making this up. Oh, I'm absorbing, I'm absorbing. Yeah, it's a lot. So now, another thing that that jumped out to me is I liked your concept that we have I think you call them four cornerstones that maybe give us strength, and I like the way you describe this, and it was beliefs, physical, people and financial.

22:16 So tell me a little bit more about that. So, as you can see, I'm a very visual person person. So to me life is a flower cart. You know those kind of really lovely wood patina. They're slatted, you know, and if you were going to market with your flowers, you would put all your flowers in the bed of the truck and it would be beautiful. Okay, that's who you are and you're trying to get your cart to market because you want to monetize your flowers that you've grown and share them with other people. But damn, you're riding down the road and all of a sudden you look back over your shoulder and you're like that wheel is wobbling and you're thinking it's slowing down my pace.

23:06 And then you look back over the other one and you're like, ah, it just fell off. And then all of a sudden your butt's dragging on the ground and you think how am I going to do this? And then you realize your front wheels aren't all that stable either. So you get out of your cart and you think I got to get these flowers to market and you start pushing. Well, that doesn't work. You start pulling Well, that doesn't work, because you're literally grounded. I get so annoyed, Cheryl, when I hear people tell women get empowered. You cannot get empowered. You cannot power your cart if your four wheels are off.

23:48 Okay, so what are they? The four wheels? Are we discussed one? Self-worth? Yeah, when you're saying shitty things to yourself about yourself and you're diminishing your self-worth, that wheel is going to be wobbly 100%. If you're in a relationship, like I was, where the man I was living with was physically abusing me, how did I think I could become great? Hmm, If you spend more than what's in your checking account and you're not running your life like a business you got a problem there. And if you're not sourcing your life force, energy, which means lots of things, getting enough sleep, eating well, a variety of things that wheel just might have fallen off.

24:34 So the very first task you have in the heroine's journey is to get all four wheels back on the cart. What does that look like? That looks like only say good things to yourself about yourself. That looks like spend less than you earn and invest the difference. That looks like surround yourself with people who love you it's called your circle of love so that every day, you get up and you're happy to be with the people you're with, and the ones that don't make you feel that way may need a swift boot right out of your life which I've learned to do now because I'm not going to let anyone compromise me and so that you do the things you need to do enough sleep, good diet.

25:19 The things you need to do, meditate there's quite a few so that you get those wheels firmly back on your cart. Quite a few so that you get those wheels firmly back on your cart, yeah. And then you have a chance, once you've created that stability, to move on to the next step, which is awaken your authenticity. But, as I said earlier, you can't awaken your authenticity until the flower cart of your life is in good shape. That's a great visual. I know it's going to stick with me. I know it's going to stick with whoever is listening too, because you can just imagine, like I can. It's almost like sometimes we feel like we're dragging ourselves through life. So now I'm imagining myself just trying to drag this whole thing with me.

26:03 Yeah, absolutely. And then there are days when I say to myself that gutter is getting pretty close. And then I say to myself which wheel is not working well? And as an example, maybe two months ago I said to someone who I thought she was my friend, but when I looked at it I was having to work harder than she was working. You know, sometimes when you just stop, you realize there's not a friendship there. And I had the courage and strength to say to her we don't need to pretend any longer that we're friends. And she took offense. But she had the opportunity to engage in a meaningful conversation with me and say you know, could you explain this to me?

26:48 Instead, she took offense and disappeared. Well, I want to put my energy in positive ways and I surround myself with people who give and take and that didn't fit, yeah, that didn't fit, yeah. So there, there's so much to learn on the heroine's journey. I mean it's it's been transformative in my own life, mind boggling, you know, I practice it, I, I swear by it and I can tell you that it got me out of the gutter Because I was bouncing from one gutter to the other and when I went through divorce and a number of big, big transitions in my life and it was understanding this pathway forward and what, what it took to get my cart with all four wheels on it Right.

27:44 Yeah. And then moving forward, moving forward. I love it and I, I and I kind of want us to just sit with that visual for a little while. Thank you so much, Joan, for joining me today. I know this is going to really resonate with anybody who is listening, and it's given me something to think about for a while too. Good Well, thanks for having me and my. My greatest joy is to see that you know, help you to live the best life you can live, and I hope that people will find the book. You know that they will come back to you to ask questions and that that we will all prosper. Okay, I've realized two things in this conversation.

28:26 One, that flower cart with the wheels falling off concept is going to stay with me a long time and I hope it stays with you. And number two, I love it when people speak in pictures, and I am going to work on that for you, dear listener, because maybe you enjoy that too and maybe it makes it easier for you to remember. So the idea of all of this discussion is that we can grow through challenges that happen in our lives, and in that part we were talking about creating your stability. Joan has 13 steps that we go through in that part and we did not go into that.

29:10 So I agree, you do want to take a look at her book. Make sure you go to the show notes or go to Cheryl P Fishercom slash read you'll see it there and look into it more, because Joan and I fully agree on the fact that we're going to hit challenges and the act of overcoming them and believing in ourselves. Overcoming them is what takes us into moving forward and making something amazing, and I hope you got that out of today's episode, just like I did. Now make sure that you come engage with us in the Patreon community. I'm going to be doing another chat about those 13 steps in the heroine's journey.

29:52 Can't wait for you to listen in. Find me at the Midlife Pivot Patreon that's patreoncom slash midlifepivot. Now make sure that you have hit the follow button, because I am so excited about what's coming in the next episode. I'm going to start about once a month maybe once every six weeks, we'll see how it goes Doing a Q&A episode for you so that you can ask questions and I will answer them. What might you ask? Well, maybe it's something that you've thought about asking a coach about related to midlife.

30:33 Maybe it's job, relationship, physical body, mindset, something that you're struggling with, or maybe it's a wacky question. I'll answer maybe a wacky question each time too. So scroll down in the show notes, find where it tells you that you can ask a question and throw it in there, and maybe you'll hear it on an episode coming soon. And in the meantime, slow down, notice what's going on around you and what's going on in your head. Let's create something amazing.