Dragon Slayer?! Isn't that a little presumptuous?

These are excerpts from an e-mail exchange with old friend and one of my favorite people in the Universe, Eric Deggans. He just read my chapter in Become Your Own Great and Powerful and here's his take on it and the whole dragon slaying metaphor and my thoughts on epic, myth and our every day individual lives.

Read your essay in the book -- very revealing and brave. It is tough to define ourselves outside of what family, friends and society expects from us. I think sometimes that is the toughest thing about being a parent; not really having the time or emotional resources to define yourself outside the roles of wife/husband, provider/homemaker, mom/dad.

Beyond instant status, those roles can provide instant comfort -- you always know where you stand when your place in the scheme of things is so clearly defined.

Not sure how I feel about the whole Dragon/Superhero metaphor. I'm afraid I'm a little too much of a cynic and realist to feel comfortable using such mystical-sounding terms. But I sympathized a lot with your journey. When you are a parent, especially, much of your life can feel like a series of obligations -- take this here, buy that there, feed this one here. So reading your story of learning to let go and find fulfillment in yourself alone was interesting.

i'm glad you learned to discover the creativity in yourself, as well. that's one thing I have also tried to indulge more recently. Playing music has always been a part of it, but i've challenged myself to learn new things -- playing bass, singing lead, composing a drums and spoken word piece for a recent fundraising event -- that raises my confidence as a creative person.

More than anything, what angers me these days is people who kill that kind of spirit in others. It bothers me to see (other people's) talent stillborn, and bothers me more that the people stifling them know better.

My response:

Thanks for the compliments on the chapter. Yeah, there were times I was thinking "am I going to really tell them THIS?!" But it's all part of what made me who I am and part of the human journey, so I can't be ashamed of it. And, it's making me popular with the fallen woman niche... : )

I hear you on the dragon slaying thing. Could be a bit pretentious. HOWEVER, it is a metaphor that all my clients resonated with immediately so it's become part of our common language with each other. And, considering that mythology came to us through the ages from one person to another, these really are human stories. And knowing how scared and stressed and overwhelmed people get in the face of major change I think dragon isn't too big. Working in the hospital I heard people talk about accidents and illnesses being the results of stresses and conflicts and turmoil in their lives. Heck, a friend told me she believes her pancreatic cancer was triggered by her son's suicide. A mom not being able to save her son...that's a dragon if there ever was one.

I've come to see that the stories we are living out, when we look at them in metaphorical terms really do parallel the hero's journey that Campbell talked about so extensively. After I wrote my chapter I read Hero with a Thousand Faces and was amazed at the parallels in the way my chapter unfolded...right down to the blood sacrifice before facing the first dragon.

When you see things metaphorically, it actually helps you depersonalize your struggle in some way...see it as a dance that humans have been doing for millennia. There's a freedom in that.

When I see clients now ask of themselves "what is this dragon? I can't see the face of the dragon yet, let me figure out which one this is..." and then when they say "Oh, it's THIS dragon" they get to work slaying it. It's pretty fascinating. Like there is something to engage that is trying to rip them down, or keep them stuck or keep them scared or lock them in but it's something that can be defeated...there's something false about the dragon and once the person sees it they can engage more productively.

Plus, it's fun to feel like a superhero when you kill one of the suckers. It's something to celebrate. It feels like a victory and there's a power in that. We don't have those kinds of rituals anymore and this is a way of introducing that mentality again and it's pretty incredible to see how it shifts people.

To read my chapter from Great and Powerful, visit my article series starting here.

Need help moving from insight to integration and implementation of these concepts? Visit Laura Young at Wellspring Coaching.

You may reprint this article as long as you retain full attribution for its content to the author.  Thank you.

Comments

[DigitalRich]

Laura-

Thanks for participating in the first edition of the Carnival of the Storytellers.

http://digitalrich.blogspot.com/2007/01/carnival-of-storytellers-1st-edition.html

[Laura Young]

Thanks for including me!