Let me be your hero

Willow Blooms #011 No thank you, it's time to be my own

I’m trying out voiceovers. I’ve done so because I know that it can sometimes be difficult to sit down and read and I want to make my articles as accessible as possible. I couldn’t read books for a couple of years and loved diving into audiobooks, especially when they were read by the author. It was recorded at home on my phone, so there may be some crackles, the sound of the wind, and definitely some stumbling over the words. I’d love it if you could let me know if you like experiencing Willow Blooms this way!

Preface

I wrote this article on March 25th, the day after the worm moon. Over the next few days I bubbled with creativity, and energy that I have not felt for a long time. Another article developed in those days, about the balance between clearing out and keeping hold. It was as if the soil needed to be prepared, and to settle before the seeds of this piece could be planted.

Each day is an invitation for something new. What are the seeds of intention we each want to plant into the world?

Today I want to share my hero post!

Home grown tulips, complete with snail which probably ought to be put outside!

The ‘Hero Post’

Two months in, and I haven’t got a hero post on Substack. I didn’t know there was such a thing when I joined, but an article popped up in my feed explaining how and why a hero post was ‘necessary’. I wrinkled my brow, experiencing the involuntary ‘ick’ feeling that often accompanies any mention of marketing and self-promotion, but looked up what it meant anyway. Thanks Karen Cherry, for your helpful guide to the hero post!

I considered creating one for myself. Then did nothing about it.

Well, not nothing. I was figuring out the story behind my page, and cutting my cloth at Substack (trying the ink in the pen..?!), so didn’t have a clear image of the hero to be showcased. I enjoyed writing, having fun, and developing my voice. Then this morning I felt I had the bones of something rattling in my mind, and I’ve tried to write it into being.

Let me be your hero

Kick back in your chair, get yourself cosy and imagine closing your eyes.

You hear a man’s voice, in husky whisper saying…

You smile into the sound, as a seductive song starts.

The voice asks a number of things of you.

If you’d dance, if he asked you to dance. If you’d run. If you’d cry, if you saw him crying. Most importantly, if you’d save his soul tonight.

Try out this link if you want to listen. I can’t get sued or charged for posting a link, right? Credits to song writers Mark Taylor, Paul Michael Barry, Enrique Iglesias for their lyrics. (I genuinely welcome any pointers / legal advice about posting song lyrics!)

The video accompanying the song shows the wannabe hero in a car with a bag full of money, a beautiful woman beside him (suggestively sucking on a lollipop!). They drive through the desert, they stop for fuel, and then end up on a bed. He’s so busy stroking her with handfuls of dollar bills, that it’s not clear if they do the deed before the ganstas turn up to get him. I hope so, because when they come out of the building things start to get bad. The beautiful woman, lollipop no longer in sight, is manhandled by the ganstas, and she watches as the main gantsa bashes her man about the head with a big stick, and leaves him on the ground to die.

Through all of this, the beautiful man is singing away, asking the beautiful woman if she’d die for the one she loves, and telling her all the things he can do for her. Not practical things like giving up a life of crime and getting an honourable job, putting the bins out, and cooking dinner for them both, but things beautiful heroes do like kissing away her pain, and standing by her forever. It’s superficially very seductive, but his words, and the unfolding events are somewhat incongruous!

As the video ends, the scene cuts from what was presumably a ‘dream sequence’ in the desert, to the couple’s ‘real life’. The wannabe hero appears to have been shot by the police. It’s raining and he falls to the ground. The beautiful woman bends over his bloodied body, crying. Her wet hair, and wet white dress drip, and she wails behind the singing. The man stops moving, whilst in the final line of the song the promises continue…

I can be your hero.

Right. Thanks, but you’re dead.

It’s a very odd juxtaposition.

Hero stories

I’ll be honest, it’s lovely having the attractive Enrique singing in my ear, inviting me to let him be my hero. Wouldn’t it be nice for him to take away all my pain with his kisses? He will stand by me forever, he says. Ooh, yes please, that sounds good.

And of course I am primed to respond this way. Girls and women have been sold the stories about dashing heroes coming to save us, or the world. So many times.

Typically the male protagonist heads off on a quest, facing and slaying the equivalent of the dangerous dragon, returning victorious, and transformed, to a heroes welcome where he receives his spiritual and / or financial reward. As the stories are typically heteronormative, the hero often gets the girl too. The girl is an extra, mind you, not the hero’s main goal. His transformation into hero status is the goal, but in saving the girl from solitude, or despair, he gets the sexual reward too. And if she does everything he asks of her, and saves his soul, he gains a spiritual reward too, like having his own personal angel-woman.

In the typical hero story, the girl is a bit part, the supporting actress, the not yet developed woman. She doesn’t get a promise of her own adventure, transformation and spiritual reward. She gets the man, and defers to his need for adventure.

This apparently, is the ending that women have been waiting for. It isn’t terribly inspiring.

NOTE- Drew Barrymore plays a different version of the hero story in EVER AFTER. She’s a swashbuckling heroine, and if you haven’t seen it, I recommend that you do so!

And what comes next? Men, no matter how wonderful, are of course only human. They may promise to stand by us forever, but life is messy and unpredictable, things happen, feelings change. And beautiful though they might be, they certainly cannot take all the pain away. It’s a risky business for a woman to put her heart and soul into the hero story. In Enrique’s story the beautiful woman doesn’t even get to keep the man. She follows him out to the desert, fulfils his sexual fantasies, and he ends up dead. It’s clearly a risky business for the man too.

The hero story is a fine recipe for disappointment.

I choose a different story

So for my own Substack hero story, I choose something different.

Willow Blooms, my writing profile name, had a few influences, but the main one is Shakespeare’s story Othello.

For those of you who do not know it well, Othello starts as a tale of love between Othello and Desdemona. Othello is from a far away land, an outsider, but has gained hero status and acceptance due to his aptitude and courage in battle. Desdemona’s love and loyalty for Othello is pure, and she chooses him over her family. But, the play is a tragedy. Envy, jealousy, and ambition drive the merciless Iago to plant a seed of doubt about Desdemona’s fidelity in Othello’s mind. Iago feeds it until Othello sickens with so much hatred towards Desdemona, that he plans to kill her. The night this tragic act is to occur, Desdemona speaks with her friend Emilia (Iago’s wife). Emilia is wily and warns her to be careful, but Desdemona speaks of her love for her husband, and her faith that he is coming to reconcile. She trusts that Othello will know her words to be true as she speaks them. She sings a song that she says will not go from her mind. The song tells a story about a broken hearted maid, suggesting that in her heart Desdemona knows a different truth.

I have listened to many versions of this song, and attach the link to what I think is the most beautiful version by Sarah Sturvedant, in case you want to listen.

The song, Desdemona says, was sung by a maid who died singing it, having been abandoned by the man she loved. The maid cries at her husbands betrayal, yet sings how much she loves him still, accepting all his scorn of her. It foreshadows Desdemona’s ultimate abandonment. Othello, the ‘hero’ of the story is twisted in jealousy and doubt due to false stories fed by a man wanting to steal his power and status. Blind to her truthfulness, Othello kills Desdemona.

Desdemona is typically portrayed as innocent, pure and naïve in her loyalty. She represents the pure light of the spirit of the feminine. True and loyal and steadfast in her love, even when facing death.

The warning is that when a desire for power, envy, and fear overpower goodness, faith, and love, our humanity is destroyed. A potential Iago exists in all of us, and is causing havoc across the world.

What if the heroine wants her own life?

Desdemona does not grow into her warrior woman power and become the hero of her own story, as Emilia counsels. Willow Blooms is my tiny movement against this- touching into the pain of the hero stories, but rather than songs of death, or stories where women are in the supporting role, or the hero’s ‘prize’, let’s write stories deeply rooted in our beautiful, and powerful inner natures.

There is a wide and vast universe out there, and women have fewer stories encouraging us to explore it than men do.

Go somewhere where a lovely hero will be sure to see you, look pretty, stand by their side, and be content with their kisses, we are too often told. But what of the girl who wants to grow up and out of the supporting role? What if she wants to have adventures of her own? What stories are there for women to show how this can be done? How do we celebrate ourselves in our fullness, rather than the angel woman saving the souls and carrying the light for others?

Are women taught to hold the light for ourselves before facing the burden of dragging others through it? I want something bigger. I want adventure. I want the bloody moon!

I have picked up my pen and started to write my hero story. It begins…

Chapter 1

Yesterday I swallowed the moon. It passed slowly across the window in the dark sky, and called me back to my wildness.

Earlier in the day I wrote, and saw others writing about flipping between the extremes. Feeling into the opposites, despair and delight, and I put it down to the shift in energy created by spring, but I was forgetting the moon energy. As I looked up at the bright, beautiful moon that night, I spoke of transforming into a werewolf, and felt an invitation back to my wildness. I’ve spent too long doing what I thought was asked of me, being the good girl, waiting for the kiss of approval from the prince, the true hero of the story.

Let rip, the moon whispered to my wildness. Hold the light for yourself first.

And I raised my arms high in the air, reaching for the moon with both hands and laughed.

Words came and I couldn’t get them from my mind. I didn’t want to, though I knew they sounded silly. I continued to laugh. Those around me started to laugh, and I couldn’t get the words out for giggling. Then with an unfamiliar boldness, I cried out…

By the power of Greyscull!!!

And I was transformed.

Note- For those of you unfamiliar with the phrase from 1980s TV cartoons, this is the call to power made by Prince Adam, just before he transforms into He-Man! He-Man, along with his sidekicks, protects their planet from the arch enemy Skeletor.

The women in the story called out in encouragement, ‘You’re She-Ra’.

But I didn’t want to be She-Ra. He-Man was the one who had the adventures, She-Ra just followed along. I thought.

Today I realised that I didn’t even know her real name, and so I looked it up. Wikipedia brought a wry smile to my face. Adora…

Adorer? WTF?!

The one who loves. Might this subversively be identifying She-Ra as the true source of all power? Adam might be the first man, but his sister embodies love itself, even without transforming into her alter-ego She-Ra.

But the critical question is, who does she adore? It would be a true heroine story if the fallible woman can be the adorer of herself, as well as others. Again, Wikipedia supplies the answer.

Adora / She-Ra breaks the spell that was making her serve the Horde and releases the captured He-Man. She then jumps from a window, landing on her horse Spirit, who is transformed into what every child surely wants, a talking winged unicorn. They warn The Rebellion and prevent harm. Then She-Ra returns to Eternia with her brother, but decides she must return to Etheria to help free the planet from the Horde oppression.

So, it seems She-Ra’s the real hero of the story. She frees herself, her brother, and then an entire planet. No wonder she didn’t stand with her arms aloft claiming the power of Greyscull every episode- she knew she already had the power, and was busy getting on with things, not chasing the glory!

Willow blooms

The Willow Song recognises the type of story that women are often invited to play out, and represents a place from which many of us might still be growing.

Willow is alive, and reminds us that we can create new stories for ourselves. Willow grows fast, it looks beautiful when it blooms, and when it is growing, it has many potential uses. It can be woven into many forms. It invites transformation into our fully formed heroine selves, both the SheRa and Adora parts!

I don’t know how many books I’ve read over the years looking for a heroine or hero journey that fits me. Perhaps after all my searching, it was her arriving with the moon energy last Sunday night.

She was there in the shadows all the time.

The hero or heroine story is ours to write.

Today’s final inspirational song is from the unexpected source, Mariah Carey. By golly, she’s got power and passion, and wisdom. She tells us that we do not need kisses to take away the sorrow- the answers are inside our hearts and souls.

We need to look inwards with the type of eyes we look at Enrique, and see our own beauty.

Look inside you and be strong

and you’ll finally see the truth

That a hero lies in you

(Lyrics by Mariah Carey)

It’s up to us which heart song we choose to listen to, and where we choose to look.

Our own hero lies inside.

What a story it will be when we allow ourselves to bloom.