The Heroine's Journey: Woman's Quest for Wholeness

Description

The Heroine's Journey is a woman's mythic quest to heal the deep wounding of her feminine nature on a personal, cultural, and spiritual level The Heroine's Journey describes contemporary woman's search for wholeness in a society where she has been defined according to masculine values. Drawing on cultural myths and fairy tales, ancient symbols and goddesses, and the dreams of contemporary women, Murdock illustrates the need for-and the reality of-feminine values in Western culture. This special anniversary edition, with a new foreword by Christine Downing and preface by the author, illuminates that this need is just as relevant today as it was when the book was originally published thirty years ago.

Maureen Murdock is a licensed family therapist in private practice in Venice, California, and teaches in the UCLA Extension Writer's Program. She is also the internationally published author of The Heroine's Journey, Spinning Inward, and Fathers' Daughters. The Heroine's Journey Workbook grew out of her work with women in therapy and workshops conducted throughout North America over the past twenty years.

"Though the book is rich with examples drawn from myths and Jungian psychology, it is surprisingly easy to read. The journey requires serious, often frightening, wandering before one's true identity and power are known. Like the journey Murdock describes, there are no cheap, easy lessons. There are many rich, rewarding lessons, but these are gained only through integrity, courage, and the willingness to meet challenge with all the resources one can muster."-Creation "Murdock's personal journey will surely speak to many women, but I hope also to those men willing to hear these newly awakened female voices-and of the feminine in their own souls."-Utne Reader "Combining personal experience and painstaking erudition, Maureen Murdock's The Heroine's Journey shares with us the essence of the female journey. A fine, warm, and insightful book."-Carol Pearson, author of The Hero Within: Six Archetypes We Live By "The Heroine's Journey offers a map of the feminine healing process. Murdock writes in a clear and compassionate voice which draws inspiration from her experiences as a mother, artist, and therapist and from the collective wisdom of the community of women on the path of the goddess. This book speaks to each woman who longs for a spiritually alive feminine self, one who is actively engaged in the world, and who embraces the masculine principle as a mirror of herself. The Heroine's Journey guides the reader in reweaving the threads of her life story into a mantle of empowerment for herself, for other women, and for Gaia, the Planet Herself."-Patrice Wynne, author of The Womanspirit Sourcebook and co-founder of the Gaia Bookstore and Catalogue Company "Maureen Murdock's important book on the heroine's journey contains a wealth of insight that is of great value to contemporary Western women. It explores a rich territory of the feminine psyche and opens an understanding of female development that relates not only to personal transformation but cultural transformation as well."-Joan Halifax, President of the Ojai Foundation "A great roadmap for the changing landscapes of women's lives. It's assuring, rich in personal stories, and leads us securely to the Goddess."-Z. Budapest, author of The Holy Book of Women's Mysteries and The Grandmother of Time