Woven: Telling the Heroine's Journey
3rd Edition Newsletter, February 1, 2024
Welcome to the Third Edition of the Woven Newsletter, February 1, 2024!
Happy Lunar New Year of the Dragon!
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. We are starting 2024 with a wide range of classes and more in the works!
Upcoming Courses: February 2024
Storytelling: A Workshop Series with Kate Farrell
Join Kate at the San Francisco Public Library, West Portal Branch, this coming Saturday, February 3rd to continue a monthly series. Develop your creative voice in telling your life stories.
Personal, ageless, inclusive, the art of storytelling is for everyone. If you are a parent, grandparent, teacher, librarian, author, or speaker, this workshop is for you. With step- by-step coaching and partner sharing, you’ll find your own storytelling style for personal or professional use. All it requires is your authentic voice and a love of stories. More information on the entire series: https://woventales.net/in-person-classes/
ALL WORKSHOPS: SATURDAYS, 2:00 – 3:30 PM | FREE and Open to the Public.
Sign up for each workshop or for the entire series! Due to limited space, registration is required. Call 415-355-2886 at the West Portal Library to reserve your seat. Email: wpomgr@sfpl.org
Romancing the Feminine: A Virtual Valentine Conversation
Pathways to Self-Love in Real Life and Fairy Tales
Join Life Coach Karen C.L. Anderson and Storyteller Kate Farrell, Tuesday, February 13, 2024
3:00 – 4:30 pm / PST | 5:00 - 6:30 pm /CST | 6:00 – 7:30 pm / EST
In this special conversation, Kate and Karen will weave together their respective areas of expertise: How age-old fairy tales reveal patterns in the heroine’s journey and how having a difficult or troubled relationship with a mother impacts the real life journey of her adult daughter. All daughters go through passages in maturing, but the experiences an adult daughter goes through when she has a difficult mother can be more challenging. What happens when the stages of her heroine’s journey has no loving mother?
This insightful, parallel conversation will be followed by Q&A.
This event will be live and will not be recorded to respect the privacy of participants.
For more information and to register: https://woventales.net/online-classes/
Telling the Heroine’s Journey Winter Retreat
Deepen your quest by reserving your place for the Telling the Heroine’s Journey Winter Retreat, February 23-25, and join us in the historic delta town of Suisun City, CA for three days of sharing ancient stories of the heroine’s journey and relating them to our own life stories, hosted by the dynamic storyteller, Cyndera Quackenbush, in her cozy Victorian home with co-presenter, Kate Farrell.
Registration is limited. Learn more HERE https://woventales.net/winter-retreat/
There are ONLY a few spots left, so sign up today!
The retreat will encompass creative storytelling, writing, and sharing old and new tales of the heroine’s journey. Learning from the stories and one another, we will gather in a spacious Victorian home to listen, create, and leave with a better sense of our path forward.
You will emerge with fresh perspectives and meaningful insights as we venture on the Heroine’s Journey—telling it together!
Barbie and the Heroine’s Journey
By Kate Farrell
Wonder why the movie Barbie is a “particular ripple in the universe” as Greta Gerwig, its director, describes it? How did the movie hit deeper than the average chick flick and become a runaway box office success, breaking records worldwide?
Neither its political message of feminism nor its massive brand marketing are adequate explanations for the film’s widespread appeal.
To my discerning eye, Barbie, in its plot, characters, and tropes is the universal story of the heroine’s journey based on ancient folk and fairy tales. Beyond the plastic and tinsel pink, this layer of cultural bedrock persists in the film’s compelling understory.
I’m not alone in finding a mythical layer to this über commercial movie: Others have compared it to the Sumerian myth of Inanna or to the 17th century Milton’s poem, Paradise Lost (a retelling of Genesis). And in a BBC interview, Gerwig revealed that the sources of Barbie include medieval and Renaissance poetry.
Fragments of metaphor and archetypes, cinematic images of pop culture, all create a compelling mosaic that reassembles the shape of the feminine quest. What are those essential elements that draw us in?
To break it down to its most basic element: The feminine quest is all about mothers.
Most of the foundational folk and fairy tales begin with mothers: loving mothers, evil stepmothers, godmothers, magical mother figures, jealous mothers-in-law.
When Barbie stops the dance in the nightly disco and says, “...ever think about dying?” she’s asking what the human mother, Gloria, is feeling. It’s a bleed over from the human world to Barbie Land as the human mother mourns her death or her loss of influence over her teenage daughter, Sasha. Barbie “feels” the mother’s grieving and must find the mother/daughter characters on the human side to resolve it.
It’s almost incredible that the movie begins with the first motif of the heroine’s journey found in most fairy tales: that the “good mother” dies. If you recall “Snow White” or “Cinderella” or “Vasilisa the Brave,” you’ll recognize that losing the loving, birth mother is the first challenge in these stories. And it is the rite of passage for all modern daughters, to separate from their mothers in order to discover their independence.
In the ancient tales of the feminine quest, you’ll also recall the “fairy godmother,” the older, magical mother, or the spiritual mother who appears to assist, mentor, or challenge the heroine. When Barbie meets the real Ruth Handler, the creator of the Barbie doll, she sees her mother/daughter love—Ruth named Barbie for her daughter. Later, when Barbie meets the “ghost” of Ruth in another dimension, we see the magic of transformation, from doll to living woman, given by the old, ghost mother.
These are but a few parallels of the heroine’s journey found in this blockbuster movie!
About Woven
The idea for WOVEN grew from Kate’s memoir, as she blended motifs and archetypes of the heroine’s journey with events of her first forty-two years. Kate became aware of the power of the heroine archetype, but also realized that it was hiding in plain sight. She began teaching classes on the heroine's journey, finding a rapt audience in translating its ancient motifs to modern women and to one’s life story. Encouraged by partners and co-presenters, Kate established Woven to more effectively share the wisdom of feminine quest tales.
Women live in challenging times. Digging deep, hitting the bedrock of our shared journey through the mythic language that Joseph Campbell gave to the modern hero, we will explore our own heroic path through the suppressed and almost destroyed archetypes of the feminine quest.
Visit woventales.net and be transported to another world that blends ancient and modern in a richly textured and brightly colored journey of its own. This magic was created by Kate with the help of a brilliant graphic designer, Nichola Americanos: elationbydesign.com
Woven LLC
Thankyou Kate, the setting is researched, to add to the knowledge picked up over a long and adventurous life in many countries. I study ancient etymological connections between EU tongues, My family have been multilingual nomads for thousands of years with a tradition of stories passed down orally, so I guess there is a racial memory in all my genes / cells....... I fantasize a little too, but only what my gut tells me is probably right. Then when I am really stuck, I refer to the G.Y. Dragon......
Hi Kate, In my Ancient Legends, based around 13000 years ago, I play with similar themes. That Women mostly hold the intellectual, spiritual side. Wijkens get more attention than others. She is descended from a line of women skilled in medicine and the first written language.... cave painting.
Still to be published is :- After her death the tribal spoken lore gradually drifts from the original, eventually turning her into the first acclaimed goddess - pre-Mesopotania . Peace, Maurice