the hero
○ the warrior, the advocate, the warrior, the champion, the achiever, the competitor, the victor, the rescuer, the defender, the crusader, the protector, the jaguar ⁕
I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.
―nelson mandela
There's something that doesn't get talked about enough in the Hero's story.
We celebrate the journey: the obstacle, the battle, the triumph. We love that part. We put it on posters and turn it into speeches and give it holidays and movies and soundtracks.
What we talk about less is what happens when the Hero comes back home.
Dorothy returns from Oz fundamentally changed. She has seen something — a whole terrain, a whole system, a whole truth — that Kansas will never understand or validate. Oz won't give her that gratification either. She alone knows both worlds. She alone has to carry that knowledge, integrating it on behalf of everyone else, whether they can receive it or not.
The return home is ultimately a story of choosing mature un-belonging to the group, because they have returned to the only source of true belonging - within their own power.
That is the full arc of the Hero. And most people only want the glory of the first half, without acknowledging the sacrifice the Hero makes in their transformation.
Hero brands wield the energy of being out in front and being okay with being misunderstood. They are willing to withstand the voices that reside in the old world, the ones who refuse to see, cannot change yet, or see that another world exists.
We often reach for sports metaphors or Star Wars archetypes when we talk about Heroes. But it shows up in everyday projects too.
for example, CIRS is a mold-related illness that western medicine does not yet acknowledge as real — even though the National Library of Medicine has published research describing it as "an under-recognized, under-diagnosed dysregulation of the innate immune system that can affect 25% of the population, representing a silent epidemic." It is more likely to impact lower income people, women, and those carrying higher levels of chronic stress.
The people naming it, testing for it, and treating it aren't waiting for institutional validation. They see people suffering, they have identified solutions and they are moving forward because the terrain demands it.
hero energy makes moves without requisite permission. Heroes are comfortable with the discomfort that comes with invoking a challenge, facing a threat, or saying the truth thing out loud before other people are ready to hear it. Another example is
The Hero notices what needs to be done and then does something about it. Central to the Hero are themes of injustice, challenge, people who need protecting, victories.
The Hero's central question is always: what am I capable of? And the only way to answer it is to push beyond what's already been done; to try harder and to develop the internal and often supernatural skills needed to prevail.
But more than overcoming obstacles, the Hero herself is transform by overcoming them. at first it seems like an external quest - to fight the evil on the outside - but the hero essentially realizes that the entire production is happening internally.
And the further they go on their journey, the more they see - in themselves, in others, and about the world. this point of no return is where the hero finds their power. but it might not always feel good in the classic closing credits on a hero’s tale kind of way... because the all the hero’s relationships are changed. they have chosen to un-belong in order to serve the mission.
