Freedom to Live
Welcome to the final piece of the monomyth!
In the United States, July 4th is the country’s birthday where we’re celebrating freedom. The founders of the United States recognized the unhealthy control of their parent country Great Britain and worked toward a solution. They tried other options, but it came to the point where the only feasible option was to shake off the unhealthy control with The American Revolution. On July 4th, 1776 The American Declaration of Independence was signed.
I say that because the founding documents prior to the Declaration of Independence were recognizing freedom as a universal human need. This wasn’t an open support of chaos and everyone can do whatever they want, this was a responsible freedom where sound decisions could be made for a better future for everyone.
So what does freedom to live look like in the monomyth?
When we began the monomyth we had a reluctance to go on any form of adventure. Adventure had to drag us to the point where we were forced to look at our lives, fight our way through the bad stuff, realize what wasn’t our baggage to carry - and then have the courage to dump it.
Once we’d dumped the baggage, we had to move onward, realizing that our healing wasn’t complete. We faced the things that frightened us, conquered them, grabbed the pieces of our missing healing and then took off running, because we felt like something might collapse around us.
Our lives look different now, as we stand with our healing, our emotions and our skills. We still may need some help putting ourselves back together, but we have seen and received help throughout this journey.
Suddenly, we’ve realized that we have to return to the normal world. And that’s scary. But once there, we learn that just because we’re in the middle of a sea of people who aren’t ready to heal - we are prepared, because we didn’t leave what we learned behind us in the realm of adventure. We brought adventure with us. We stand with our healing and our adventure skills. And in this we should find freedom and confidence.
So what does freedom look like?
I’m finding its a slow process of challenging my old norms. Its a quiet questioning of ‘can I do this?’ Its drinking lavender tea without my mother screaming at me because lavender upsets her. It’s waking up from a migraine and being able to sort through the stuff and realize, “Oh yeah - no one is going scream at me for taking a nap.”
Its going back and writing fictionalized old memories… giving myself what I needed but didn’t get in that moment of bad.
I’ll explain that in a moment.
When we tell a story we give our brain an anchor. This anchor helps us say, “That was then - this is now.” This mental division keeps the overwhelm away. This means that fear can’t grab your mental steering wheel and drive you back into the scariest moments of your life in a flashback.
Part of the reason we don’t heal from trauma is that we don’t always get the emotional first aid to clean up the bad thing. We all understand that when a kid falls down and starts bleeding you clean the wound, stop the bleeding and put a band aid on it. But we don’t always do that emotionally. Sometimes we don’t know how.
However, looking back, we all instinctually know what should have been given to heal the emotional injury.
And that’s where story comes in. Not only can you separate the now from the back then, but since it’s a story, you suddenly become in charge of the events.
That’s right. You get to be in charge - instead of letting the bad things happen to you. Which means if you need Batman to rush in and stop something - you can call Batman.
If the bad thing’s setting or incident is too scary for you to handle in that context, then you can put yourself in a new context and a new character. You don’t have to be you. All you have to do is process the emotions surrounding the event and receive whatever you should have gotten to help heal in that moment.
It’s like story acts as a buffer zone. You get a safety zone between you and the bad thing. Think of story like a pillow fort. There’s a ton of soft, squishy, safe things between you and the incident, and if it gets to be too much, you can grab a pillow and be safe.
I know some people do this with non-fiction, telling their own experience but I find it easier to do with fiction. That way I can step out of the story and say its not real. And because of my unfortunate training that emotions are not allowed, having the emotions in a fictional world, allows me to get them out and have them be responded to with whomever I want...
When I was about four, I was in a car accident. I ended up with a brush burn across my entire cheek and I don’t remember ever having anyone check in on me to make sure I was ok. What I do remember was a ton of screaming from my furious mother, (she wasn’t injured, just mad) and my dad attempting to calm and control her while being equally terrified. No one checked on me. I was stunned and in freeze mode, so probably most of the adults thought I was ok.
So there was a large hole in the department of what should have happened to heal and calm the four year old me.
Earlier this year, I was in another minor car accident and all those memories came back. I was shocked at the chaotic clarity. And I couldn’t sit there with the memories because they were too frantic. I couldn’t find the emotions, because I was already in flashback mode. So I did what I do best. I started writing fiction…
I introduced you to my fan fiction dad and daughter archaeologist duo Emily and Indiana Jones in, “It Wasn’t Fun - But You Won,” where as an adult Emily had a panic attack and flashback to when she was a child and gotten trapped in a tomb. Here’s a scene in the aftermath of Emily’s childhood incident. She’s four and they’re in an ancient city in Israel. It’s been a weeks since the tomb incident and Emily hasn’t been sleeping well. (Their full length adventures are on my Wattpad page.)
It helped give me the healing I needed in the aftermath of the accident, because there was a little girl, who had a dad, who listened and helped her. It’s a caring adult, reassuring a scared child and giving her the tools and the confidence to stand up to her fears, while letting her know that she doesn’t have to be alone.
Those were the emotions that I needed healing from. They were not given. Hopefully, reading through this, or another story you can find emotions that you needed and see how a fictional character can fill holes in your emotions. And then you can write something that will fill in your own needs. It doesn’t have to be a real scenario - only the emotions have to be real. And those emotions are going to be real whether you’re writing fiction (not real) or non-fiction (something real).
Fighting the Darkness
Israel, 1947
Indy felt a small hand stabbing his ribs as he tried to sleep. “Yes, Em?” He murmured exhausted.
“Can’t sleep.” His nearly five year old daughter mushed her words together in exhaustion.
Indy moved his arm out of the bedroll. “Want to sleep on my shoulder?”
“No.”
“Em… please…”
“Daddy, please…”
Indy sat up. He’d heard the fear in her voice. “What is it, Littlest Artifact?”
“I’m scared to sleep.”
Indy took a quiet breath, staring at his daughter. “You were sleeping just fine on my chest this afternoon while I was grading papers…”
“It wasn’t dark out.” She was hesitant then spoke again. “I don’t like it when the world gets all dark like the tomb.”
Indy flopped against his rolled up jacket, which he’d been using as pillow. “Em…”
“But you told me sleeping was bad!” Emily protested.
“When?” Indy was struggling to remember.
“When I woke up on the camel and we were running away.”
Indy wrapped his jacket around Emily. She was still small enough to be swallowed in it. “Em,” he brushed her face with his hand, trying to avoid the bandages. “When people fall asleep and they have head injuries it’s not a nap - it’s called a coma. You’re getting better, sweetheart. It’s safe for you to take naps.”
“Even when it’s dark out?”
“Especially when it’s dark out,” Indy tried not to groan through his exhaustion. “So go to sleep.” He put his fedora hat over his face, hoping Emily would take the hint and settle. His arm was still out, waiting for her to lunge and snuggle like she’d been doing the past several days.
She didn’t move. “Didn’t the ancient Egyptians think that their gods fought when the sun goes down?”
“Yes.” Indy blinked behind his fedora hat, uneasy to start another conversation.
“And if the right god didn’t win… the sun wouldn’t come back up?” Her tiny voice was trembling.
“Yes. That’s what they believed.”
“Do I need to do something to make sure the sun rises?”
Indy turned on his side and lifted his fedora. “Em… what’s wrong?”
“I don’t like it when the world feels like a tomb!” She crawled against Indy’s chest, crying.
“Come Littlest Artifact,” Indy mused, fully awake. “I’m going to teach you something. Let’s go up on the roof and look at the stars.”
“Don’t wanna be outside. Scary. Dark.”
“It’s darker in here than outside,” Indy replied. “Hang on.” He pulled a cigarette lighter out of his left jacket pocket. “Em, you’ve seen me start fires with this… if you get scared, we have a light. Ok?”
“Ok.” She stared at it, as Indy let her hold the cigarette lighter.
Indy offered Em his hand. She took it, wrapping herself around his hand and forearm, her other hand clutching the cigarette lighter.
Indy climbed the stairs of the ancient city’s outer wall and motioned Em to sit down with him. She plunked in his lap, leaning against his chest. Indy put his arms around her. “Look up… see all those stars?”
“Wow.”
“There’s a lot of them, right Em?”
“Yeah.”
“Why don’t you try counting them?”
She turned back to look at Indy. “Is this a plot to make me fall asleep?”
Indy grinned. “You’re adorable. But I know you better than that. You wouldn’t fall for that.”
Em went back to staring at the stars. Indy leaned over her shoulder, explaining at a whisper. “While the Egyptian gods were supposed to be fighting over the sunrise… there was a man named Abram who got a visitor. And that visitor told him he was going to have more descendants than the stars. But Abram didn’t have any kids… and his wife thought the visitor was crazy. But Abram had kids, eventually. And they live in this land right now. And some live all around the world. And a lot of those descendants think that Abram’s visitor was God, who created the stars. And as the creator - he’s in charge of making the sun shine and the moon come out. He knows every star out there and they all have names.”
“Does he know where Mom and Annie are?”
Indy’s voice caught. “I’m sure he does.”
“Did you ever meet him?”
Indy thought back over his adventures. “No, but I know that the artifacts that claim to be his have more power and feeling to them than other things.”
Emily paused for a moment, thinking. “Then I guess I should talk to him about my fear of the dark… since he’s in charge of making it not dark.”
“I think he’d understand,” Indy replied softly. “You see… some people say he got stuck in a tomb, too.”
“How’d he get out?” Emily asked.
Indy shrugged. “From what I heard there was a big rock… and he just rolled it out of the way.”
Analysis coming next week - just like I did with “It Wasn’t Fun - But You Won”
Perpetual Disclaimer for this series:
I am not a counselor or a mental health professional. I am going to attempt to avoid things which will cause alarm or harm, but I can't know what will trigger each individual. If you need to speak to a mental health professional please know that there are resources available.
Your stories are amazing!
Chronic Writer