Woven: Telling the Heroine’s Journey
5th Edition Newsletter, April 2024
This is a FREE monthly newsletter of a venture founded by Kate Farrell, Woven: Telling the Heroine’s Journey.
Its goal is to explore the hidden terrain of the heroine’s unique quest found in the pre-literate, oral traditions—and how the age-old, foundational fairy tales, folktales, and myths can empower us, reframe our life stories, and inspire new creative work.
Upcoming Courses: Spring 2024
Multi-Session Workshop With Kate Farrell
Wed, May 8th – June 26th, 6:00 – 8:00 pm
Weaving Community Through Storytelling at Mechanics Institute
Unlock the power of your story in this multi-session workshop!
Hosted onsite at the historic Mechanics’ Institute in downtown San Francisco, our workshop is more than just a learning experience—It’s a journey towards discovering your unique storytelling style, whether for personal enjoyment or professional enhancement.
This interactive workshop series is $200 for non-members and $150 for members of the Mechanics’ Institute. The course is limited to 25 people, and the workshop price includes a copy of Kate’s book Story Power: Secrets to Creating, Crafting, and Telling Memorable Stories.
Workshop Schedule
The schedule includes 5 workshop sessions on Wednesday evenings from 6 – 8 PM in May and June, starting May 8. The workshop culminates with an optional Storytelling Showcase on June 26.
What You’ll Learn
Our multi-session workshop is designed to introduce you to the fundamentals of storytelling through a mix of step-by-step coaching and peer coaching. Here’s what you can expect:
· Seven steps to effective storytelling
· Storyboard techniques
· Crafting personal narratives
· Practice in small group
· Directed peer coaching
· Delivery and performance skills
Join us at the Mechanics’ Institute for a journey into the heart of storytelling. Together, let’s unlock the stories within us and share them with the world.
For more details and to purchase your spot for the workshop, visit the Mechanics’ Institute event page here.
Woven Celebrates Women’s History Month
Our Seminar was a success!
Learning the Heroine’s Journey in Her Suppressed History and Yours in a Writing Circle with authors Kate Farrell and Mary Mackey, Berkeley, March 16th.
Seminar Testimonials
“...Thank you for introducing me to the heroine living in me for years. My only regret is that I didn't realize this sooner."
~Joella Aragon
“…I had no expectations for the class, though I was hoping it wasn’t going to be a class that focused on the actual mechanics of writing and was pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t. The prompts were to imaginatively play inside the heroine story cycle and to brainstorm ideas and flesh them out and then share in pairs and as a group at a high level. Hearing the rich history and lore from these ancient times strengthens my/our resolve to be our most authentic selves, and only underscores the necessity of the heroine archetype…”
~ Nichola A.
In the Works: Upcoming Events
August 2024: Training for Woven Facilitators in a 2-session Workshop
Limited to 3 | 2 Saturdays, 5 hours | In person, San Francisco
Dates and times TBD
This is an opportunity to become a facilitator in the Woven Project, presenting the heroine’s journey content in a variety of formats online and in person: Talk/Presentation, Workshops, Seminars, and Retreats. The training will develop your knowledge of the process and its foundational tales, your skills as both a storyteller and facilitator in Telling the Heroine’s Journey—to be certified as a presenter in partnership with Woven LLC or within your own network.
If you are interested, contact: katefarrell@woventales.net
September 2024: Virtual workshop on the Heroine’s Journey
For writers and creatives | 3 virtual sessions
Dates and times TBD
With the ancient Greek myth, “Psyche and Eros” as the basis for our discussion and creativity, we’ll take a deep dive into its archetypes of the Heroine’s Journey, making them personal in our lives and in our creative work.
2025
Woven Winter Retreat: January 3rd, 4th, and 5th, 2025!
Our Winter Retreat, Telling the Heroine's Journey, was such a success in February 2024, that we'd like to offer it again next year in the charming, cozy Victorian in Suisun City at the start of the New Year! Save the weekend dates and stay tuned for more details.
The Three Mothers on the Heroine’s Journey
By Kate Farrell
Explore the heroine’s unique quest with two stories and a writing exercise!
Meet the “Three Mothers”
The heroine’s tales typically begin with mothers, a group of three distinct mothers. I’m sure you already know them: the good, nurturing, loving mother who predictably dies; the evil, critical, competitive stepmother who seeks to destroy the heroine; and the godmother, spiritual mother, or supernatural crone who aids the heroine in her escape, yet challenges and empowers her.
Since these characters appear in folk and fairy tales, the “mothers” are symbolic of certain forces and pressures in a woman’s life. As you listen to this pre-Germanic folktale, consider who those three characters are in the story and in your life. Determine what the challenges are for the heroine in this story and how she succeeds in her quest.
Folktale: Mother Holle
In some traditions, Mother Holle or Frau Holle is known as the feminine spirit of the woods; winter feasts are still held in her honor in Germanic cultures. Yet we’ve been taught to think of folktales like hers as entertainment for children, not as remnants of matriarchal culture and its beliefs in the power of women and the feminine.
This version of the folktale is based on the 1812 Grimm Brothers’ collection, Household Tales.
Once upon a time...
There was once a widow who had two daughters—one was her stepdaughter, sweet and industrious, while the other was her own daughter, sour and lazy. The stepdaughter did all the work in the house: Every day the poor maid had to sit by a well and spin and spin with a hand shuttle till her fingers bled. She often thought of her own sweet mother and their peaceful home before her beloved mother became ill and died.
Now it happened one day that the shuttle became stained with her blood, so she dipped it in the well to wash the blood off and…dropped it and it fell to the bottom. She began to weep, and ran to her stepmother.
The stepmother showed no mercy, “Since you have let the shuttle fall in, you must fetch it out again.”
So the girl went back to the well, and did not know what to do; in the sorrow of her heart she jumped into the well to get the shuttle. She fell and fell and when she came to herself again, she was in a lovely meadow where the sun was shining on many flowers.
Along this meadow she went, and soon came to a baker’s oven full of bread, and the bread cried out, “Oh, take me out! take me out! or I shall burn; I have been baked a long time!” So she went up to it, and took out all the loaves one after another with the bread-shovel.
After that she went on till she came to a tree covered with apples, which called out to her, “Oh, shake me! shake me! my apples are all ripe!” So she shook the tree till the apples fell like rain, and went on shaking till they were all down, and when she had gathered them into a heap, she went on her way.
At last she came to a little stone cottage, out of which an old woman peeped; but she had such large teeth that the girl was frightened, and was about to run away.
But the old woman called out to her, “What are you afraid of, dear child? Stay with me; if you will do all the work in the house properly, you shall be the better for it. Only you must take care to make my bed well, and to shake it thoroughly till the feathers fly—for then there is snow on the earth. I am Mother Holle.”
As the old woman spoke so kindly to her, the girl took courage and agreed to enter her service. She attended to everything for her mistress, and always shook her bed so vigorously that the feathers flew about like snow-flakes. So she had a pleasant life with her; never an angry word; and good meals every day.
She stayed some time with Mother Holle, and then became sad and homesick. At last she said to the old woman, “I have a longing for home; however well off I am down here, I must go up again to my own people.”
Mother Holle said, “I am pleased that you long for your home again. As you have served me so truly, I myself will take you up again.”
Thereupon she took her by the hand, and led her to a large door. The door was opened, and just as the maiden was standing beneath the doorway, a heavy shower of golden rain fell, and all the gold remained sticking to her, so that she was completely covered with gold coins.
“You shall have that because you are so industrious,” said Mother Holle; and at the same time she gave her back the shuttle which she had let fall into the well and a leather pouch for the gold coins. Thereupon the door closed, and the maiden found herself up above upon the earth, not far from her stepmother’s house.
The maid told all that had happened to her. As soon as the stepmother heard how she had come by so much wealth, she was anxious to obtain the same good luck for her lazy daughter.
But when the lazy daughter pricked her finger and jumped in the well, she returned covered in tar pitch.
_______End_________________
Make it Personal!
Example: My Three Mothers’ Story
My personal, true story has three important mother figures—when I left home for college in 1959.
When I was seventeen, I left my new home in California for a women’s college near Chicago. The night before, my thoughtless mother had already given my small bedroom to my younger brother and I’d slept on a hard mat on the floor in my parents’ room. I took the Silver Zephyr express by coach from San Francisco to Chicago, with a stopover in Kewanee, Illinois, since the train ran right through my dad's hometown.
My grandmother greeted me at the train station in Kewanee with hugs and kisses. I was transported to her cottage home on Main St., a comfy, sweet place with a vegetable garden in the back. Grandmother was a charmer who loved me with a deep-hearted devotion, her only granddaughter. Days later, I left the only stable home of my childhood, with grandmother’s confidence in me, the wind at my back.
On the short train ride to Chicago, I thought of the letter I’d received from my great aunt, Sister Georgina, on my mother's side, just before high school graduation, encouraging me to apply to Rosary College, a respected liberal arts college for women run by Dominican nuns. My great aunt was part of their motherhouse based in Wisconsin. Sponsored by her, I’d applied and was quickly accepted as a freshman in a stunning turnaround of good fortune. But I was to live off campus as a day student and be a maid of all work, a mother’s helper to a wealthy family in Oak Park to pay for my room and board.
One fall Sunday, I planned to take the train to Milwaukee to visit Sister Georgina where she was a math teacher at a downtown girls’ high school. Anxiously, I waited for the Oak Park elevated to take me to Chicago’s Union Station. At last, an L arrived just in time for me to sprint down the stairs from the platform and run to catch the train for Milwaukee.
But when I’d raced down the steep stairs, I grabbed the railings with my white gloves. After I caught my breath inside the train, making it to a seat with minutes to spare, I noticed that the inside of both my gloves was stained with dark soot, the filth of Chicago. It was 1959, when young ladies were expected to wear white gloves, certainly to church or a convent. Ashamed, I clenched my hands into fists.
The nuns at the convent where my great aunt lived welcomed me and brought me to an inner parlor, treating my aunt with deep respect, an elderly nun. She wore the full habit of a Dominican, a black veil and starched wimple with a full-length, white robe, and sat at the head of a dining table. I sat to her left, politely waiting for her to speak.
As we were served a light lunch, she quizzed me about my studies and the campus, my work in the family home.
With a twinkle in her blue eyes, she asked, “Why are you hiding your white gloves in your lap?”
Shamefully, I showed her the stain of soot in each glove’s palm and told her of my race to the train.
“Never be ashamed of something you can’t help,” she said. “You were running and needed to hold on. I’m proud you ran to visit me.”
Later, as I stood to leave the parlor, she called out, “Wear your white gloves!”
I put them on as a badge of honor and wore them all the way back to Oak Park. I understood what my religious, demanding great aunt was telling me: to wear with grace all the times when things didn’t go right, when I made mistakes, because my heart was in it.
____End________
My Commentary
· In my personal story of the three mothers, I was amazed to discover them so clearly present. The loving mother is my grandmother in Kewanee, distant yet ever present in her unconditional love.
· The destructive stepmother is my own birth mother, neglectful and resentful, often abusive. Little did I know that I was leaving her and her overriding influence in my life that year.
· My spiritual mother is my great-aunt, Sister Georgina, who gave me her blessing and the means to escape the influence of my destructive mother at Rosary College.
· I was further surprised to see a repetition of the staining motif of blood and soot in the folktale and in my personal story, both seem to represent coming of age in puberty and exploring the world beyond home without shame.
To view the Storytelling the Heroine’s Journey episode with both of these stories on YOUTUBE, click HERE!
Tell Your Story!
Share your personal story of “Three Mothers” in the comments below. I can’t wait to read them.
Exercise:
· Imagine yourself as the character of the maid in this story, at a turning point in your life, on the threshold, leaving home perhaps, or another life-changing event: graduation, a new job, a wedding.
· Look around you in your life at this transition point: Who are the three mothers or mother figures?
· Identify them in your life: the loving mother, the destructive stepmother, the magical godmother.
· Tell the story of what happened and the role each mother played.