The Heroine's Journey Quotes

“Women's bodies are public domain, as evidenced clearly at the present time by the furor over abortion. Everyone has an opinion about what a woman should or should not do with her body. ”
― Maureen Murdock, The Heroine's Journey: Woman's Quest for Wholeness

“Being is not passive; it takes focused awareness.”
― Maureen Murdock, The Heroine's Journey: Woman's Quest for Wholeness

“Women have to learn where their true source of validation is.”
― Maureen Murdock, The Heroine's Journey: Woman's Quest for Wholeness

“There is a danger in the repudiation of the feminine when the daughter who rejects the aspects of the negative feminine embodied by her mother also denies positive aspects of her own feminine nature, which are playful, sensuous, passionate, nurturing, intuitive, and creative. Many women who have had angry or emotional mothers seek to control their own anger and feelings lest they be seen as destructive and castrating. This repression of anger often prevents them from seeing the inequities in a male-defined system. Women who have seen their mothers as superstitious, religious, or old-fashioned discard the murky, mysterious, magical aspects of the feminine for cool logic and analysis. A chasm is created between the heroine and the maternal qualities within her; this chasm will have to be healed later in the journey for her to achieve wholeness.”
― Maureen Murdock, The Heroine's Journey

“During this part of the journey, the woman begins her descent. It may involve a seemingly endless period of wandering, grief, and rage; of dethroning kings; of looking for the lost pieces of herself and meeting the dark feminine. It may take weeks, months, or years, and for many it may involve a time of voluntary isolation—a period of darkness and silence and of learning the art of deeply listening once again to self: of being instead of doing. The outer world may see this as a depression and a period of stasis. Family, friends, and work associates implore our heroine to “get on with it.”
― Maureen Murdock, The Heroine's Journey

“The mother/daughter relationship and the separation from the mother is so complex that in most women’s literature and fairy tales the mother remains absent, dead, or villainous.”
― Maureen Murdock, The Heroine's Journey

“This stage involves clear choices and sacrifices that to anyone with a patriarchal focus may look like dropping out.”
― Maureen Murdock, The Heroine's Journey

“so many women having taken the hero’s journey, only to find it personally empty and dangerous for humanity. Women emulated the male heroic journey because there were no other images to emulate;”
― Maureen Murdock, The Heroine's Journey

“Society places enormous responsibility at the feet of mom without giving her the financial support, prestige, and acclaim due to a job of such momentous import for the entire culture.”
― Maureen Murdock, The Heroine's Journey

“To protect patrilineal descent, men have for centuries tried to control women's sexuality. Although man needs woman, he tries to keep her power under control, legislating against women's free use of her sex in case she compromises the fragile but tenacious social structure of our patriarchal society.”
― Maureen Murdock, The Heroine's Journey: Woman's Quest for Wholeness