The Heroine’s Journey is all about claiming your self-worth and finding your voice. Today, hosts Barbara and Joan Perry continue with steps 3 and 4 of the Heroine’s Journey Roadmap – challenge and character revelation. Discussing their darkest moments, Barbara and Joan also share how they were able to figure out their next step and the importance of a circle of heroines to surround and support you in those moments. Are you in one of those moments? Tune in and discover how you can stand up, regain your strength, and come out fiercer than you were ever before.
This series shows you exactly how to:
- Navigate your way out of the darkness, of worrying and stressing.
- Ignite the Courage and Strength that propels you forward.
- Live a life of True Wealth, full of Joy, Freedom, and Prosperity.
- Fire up your Self-Worth and Voice to serve.
Get Your Free eBook:
The 4 Biggest Mistakes Women Make https://bit.ly/THJfreebook
Join Us! walkthejourney.com
Videos:
The Heroine’s Journey 13 Steps Overview. Walk the Journey with Us!
Walk The Journey Podcast: 4 Biggest Mistakes Women Make
#walkthejourney #wtj #ijt
—
Watch the episode here
Listen to the podcast here
Uncovering the Secrets of the Walk The Journey Roadmap: Challenge And Character Revelation
Steps 3 & 4
It’s so fun when we do this every week.
I look forward to it.
It’s a conversation that I want to have with all my women friends because it’s so much to the point of our lives and how we handle our lives, and so counter to so much of what the culture teaches us. I love the sisterhood of this conversation.
I wanted to tell you on the phone too that I’ve always wanted a sister, and I finally feel like I have one. You’ve been such a great support in everything with not just kind words, which you have a lot of, but the truth and the honesty of, “Get up and keep going.” That’s what we need. It’s family on one level or another. I really appreciate that. With that being said, I know that we want to keep these evergreen recordings, but it is important that everybody has a birthday. Everybody has 1, and 365 days, they’re going to have another. I wanted to take a moment and celebrate who you are.
Thank you.
It’s amazing. This is the day that the race was won for you. This is the day that Joan became a being on this planet as we move forward. It’s a day that each year, we get to honor you. It’s a day that you get to honor the Creator. Also, it’s a way for us to measure benchmarks in our lives, which is walking the journey, so it all comes back. Happy birthday.
Thank you so much. I believe birthdays are to be celebrated. Of all those things that swam towards the egg, one of them made it and created us uniquely. As we say in the course, as we were birthed and we came roaring down that birth canal, there were two things. One is when we got to the bottom, there was no reject or approve button that got stamped on our forehead. We were all fully approved. All of us were made with all the gifts, talents, and skills that we could possibly need.
Secondly, we came fully prepared. In my life, it’s so much more fun to have heroines around me. Thanks for being a heroine. When you step into your best self, when you step into wanting to do the next thing, and when you step into joy, aspiration, prosperity, and freedom, that brings it to my life too and it makes it so much more fun. We have a mutual admiration society going on.
As we’re doing this publicly, I hope other people see the truth too, not only the strength of what we are trying to create here and share based on the work that you’ve created. We’re creating an opportunity for other women to stand strong in their family, their community, and their culture, whatever that looks like, and have support.
You and I have also talked about the loneliest times in our lives when we’ve been at the top of an organization. There aren’t a lot of people at the top that you can confide in, women specifically, but people in general. When you’re in that role, you can’t be weak. You can’t have a common conversation, so the amount of friends around you or confidence or support becomes smaller. As we continue to talk, share, and grow, I’m excited by what we’re creating in our own lives as well.
You and I decided it was so much more fun to do a show together. Each of us tried to do it individually, but women have much more fun when they collaborate. Hearts are opened, and so are minds and spirits. We certainly welcome all the people who are tuning in to us, the women out there. Please come join us. We want to have a bigger circle of heroes. That’s what we’re here for, to teach, describe what it means to be a heroine, and inspire you to come join us in this thinking. We will lead the world. We will lead organizations. We will lead families. The heroine’s journey is all about claiming your self-worth and finding your voice.
On that, I shared with you the LinkedIn group, Walk the Journey, specifically The Heroine’s Journey, that we’ve created already has several hundred subscribers. In Facebook, that is growing quickly into the several thousands. That group is growing. You said around 5,000. It’s amazing how fast the word is getting out there and growing. This is really exciting. There is a need, and we’re here to help shine the light.
Thanks for the birthday celebration. Nothing is a better present to me than seeing this work be out there for people to grasp it and join our LinkedIn and Facebook pages. That’s a birthday present.
Thank you. We talked about maybe starting off with reviewing steps 1 and 2 before we get into the further steps we’re going to go in here. If anybody didn’t read the episode we put out, it is posted about everywhere. We went over all of the thirteen steps but at a very high level. We didn’t dig in. We gave an overview. We opened up a little bit deeper into 1 and 2. Let’s talk about 1 and 2 briefly before we move forward.
The 13 Steps: A Recap
It’s the thirteen steps of the heroine’s journey. All thirteen steps are so important as we progress down the path of the heroine’s journey to being the woman and our best selves. The thirteen steps, I have outlined in the new book that I have coming out called The Heroine’s Journey, which I’m very excited about. What we talked about in the last episode was all thirteen of them, particularly the first 2 steps. In this episode, what we want to talk about is steps 3, 4, and 5.
Let me catch you up to speed. These are steps 1 and 2 on the journey. Step one is what we call the status quo. Think back at that time when you thought everything was going well in your life. You constructed it the way you wanted it to be. Maybe you had a house. Maybe you’d gotten married. You were setting up life.
You got it all set up and it may not have been satisfying to you on the inside, but the good news is that everything looked right from the outside. You did your best to hold it together and keep it because you found your place in the world, society, culture, or whatever you want to call it and you wanted to hold it all together. You were gripping at it. At the same time, there was this tweaking inside that said, “Maybe this isn’t everything,” but you certainly didn’t want to admit that to yourself at the time.
Step number 2 then comes along. In step number 2, while you think it’s the most horrible thing when it happens, as you look back on it, it turns out to be one of the best things that could ever happen. Step number two is called crisis appears. When the crisis appears, it knocks you off your rocker. It can come in the form of several different things. Primarily, it’s either going to be financial or relationship-related like divorce. It could be something physical. It can also be something that’s in the belief structure that you have about yourself. We cover all of that in-depth in the work we do in the books, the courses, and everything because all of that is so fundamental to understanding how you keep yourself going forward.
In the crisis stage, out of the blue, something comes. Do you remember that? It was out of the blue. I thought, “This couldn’t possibly be. I have a wonderful life. Why would you want to run off with a girlfriend?” I never ever thought it could happen. That’s what the crisis is. The crisis really unwraps you. The crisis stage is very important because it cracks open all the bonds, the duct tape, the scotch tape, the bubble gum, and everything that you’ve used to put your life together in some specific way. What you can’t see at that point is that life has a bigger plan for you. You have to go through the crisis so that you can start to emerge into the next steps of the heroine’s journey. That’s a recap of steps 1 and 2. Is there anything you want to add?
One thing. On page 5 when you were talking about the crisis in the 13 Steps book, and if anybody wants to grab a copy, they can go to the website as well and sign up and we can get them on the path for that, there is a wonderful quote that I wanted to read here. It said, “This is a calling to your inner heroine to embark on this journey. What awakens is a life that you love living. Although this comes as a surprise, knocks us off our feet, and runs us over with the bus and there’s another bus, it is this pivotal moment that we’re on the journey, whether we opted in or not. Here we go.”
I love that. Brené Brown says it, and I quoted it roughly in the last episode. She says if you fell down, got your butt kicked, and your heart broken, like it or not, you are on what she calls the hero’s journey. We know there’s a big distinction between the hero and the heroine’s journey. She says, “You’re on it. It’s part of the growth process. Whether you choose it or not, it’s part of having come into this world, stamped on your forehead fully approved, and ready to go. The world has something bigger in mind for you than maybe you had in mind when you constructed your life to begin with.”
Step 3: Challenge
We’re going to pick up with number three, which is challenge. The subtitle that you added to this is really something that, unfortunately, all of us on one level or another end up walking through. It’s the darkest moment.
You can’t say that without pausing, taking a deep breath, and having tears because going back to those memories and that feeling that you had when you were there and feeling like you’d lost control, you didn’t know how you were going to make it better. It feels so overwhelming that you have to pause, breathe deeply, and know that it’s a very painful place to be when you’re in the darkest moment.
In society, for those who are not in it at the moment, there’s a teaching that we have, especially in America, that you are responsible for the results of your life. This is a teaching that came out of the ‘60s. We don’t need to go into the individuals and the groups that have moved it forward, but it is prevalent in a lot of ways.
However, my belief is a little bit different, and I’d like to hear your side of it. My belief is that I’m accountable for my actions. I need to take responsibility for my thoughts, words, and actions. I also need to apply discernment to avoid people and events that will have a negative influence. That being said, sometimes, there are bad actors. Sometimes, there are intersections of life that may truly be seen on our side as an accident.
Going into the, “Why me?” or the specifically, “How did I create this?” isn’t often the best solution. It’s more about being accountable for what I did in the process, how I don’t do it again, or I repeat it by talking positive, and then, “This is the reality of where I’m at today.” When you’re in that darkest moment, it’s difficult to figure out that question that’s going to be empowering. What are your thoughts on that point when you’re in that darkest moment?
I agree with you. We said it was unexpected. It might be unexpected because you didn’t see how some circumstances were adding up or you were in the wrong place at the wrong time, or you thought that what you were choosing was going to work out. I certainly didn’t enter marriage thinking that it was going to be destroyed in the process.
What happens is that part of the process of the heroine’s journey is that it is unexpected. All of a sudden, you have to deal with and account for things that you weren’t prepared for or weren’t ready for. I don’t think we can take it too hard on ourselves. You can look back on it and say, “I can see how all this added up so I ended up where I ended up,” but that’s something you do way down the line in the process of the heroine’s journey. At this moment, in the darkest moment, you’re trying to survive because you either had a financial crisis, a health crisis, a relationship crisis, or your own sense of self is so weak that you collapsed. All of those things are there.
What you’re saying too is important. That’s why we have to put a spin on it to say that this is for you, not against you. If you’re incriminating yourself for something that has happened or punishing yourself because you got into some place, you are also not seeing the other side of the coin, which is that this is a time when you are stripped of all the things that you thought made you up. It’s an opportunity for you to open up and new things to become.
At this moment, you don’t have any energy to maintain your false self. All of that sense of what we were talking about in the status quo where you are making it look good for everybody else out there goes away in the darkest moment. If you want to be the skinniest, the sexiest, or whatever, in the darkest moment, you’re not thinking about that. You are thinking, “Can I make it? Could I be taken out here?”
If you’re standing at the top of a big cliff and all of a sudden, you look down and you see the surf crashing on the rocks below, you think, “I could fall forward on my nose and land on those rocks below.” You’re gripping onto the cliff at the top. You are trying to figure out what your next step is at this point.
Another thought that I had that we talked briefly about was the learned helplessness of this phase. First of all, we’re in grief or either still in mourning or sadness or we’ve gone into complete numbness out of survival mode. Anything that comes along, whether it be a wind or a brush, can knock us off our feet because we’re not stable.
That learned helplessness, they did a lot of studies on this, unfortunately, on dogs in 1967. That is when the articles started to come out. We’ve all heard the story about the elephants in the circus that start out with a little rope around their ankle. As they get bigger, they could certainly break that rope, but they’ve learned that they can’t pull against it, so they don’t even try.
That darkest moment isn’t about something that happened to me and I’m in this moment that I can’t see the light, but there are other hits that keep coming and seem to push us down or break us down further. At some point, it isn’t that we are broke because finances come into that, but as individuals, we can be broken at this moment.
It’s fair to say not only are you broken, but you’re very vulnerable at this moment. There’s no energy to maintain that false self. You start to ask new questions because you’re really concerned at this moment about your survival. You’re concerned that you don’t have what you need to get off that cliff. It’s a very treacherous, darkest moment. Yet, we don’t want the heroine to stay here. What we want the heroine to know is that after the 3rd step of the darkest moment, there are 9 more steps and this is a part of the process. You are not going to fail here. Part of what we are encouraging is a circle of heroines to support heroines in this darkest moment.
For Christians, we often turn to the 23rd psalm, which refers to the shadow of the valley of death, the darkness, and crying out when we don’t know if there’s anything or anyone to hear us. Yet, for many in that moment, we’ll continue to hold on knowing that there is a light out there and we can eventually step back into that. That darkness can be more than a blanket around us that can be suffocating where we’re at.
I wanted to mention, too, the physical aspect. For so many of us who can get into this dark moment of change, we feel it in our bodies. Deep into the bones, they can ache, or we cannot wake up. We can’t open our eyes. It really affects our whole body as our bodies go into what I call a walking coma in order to preserve us as best we can until we get enough breath to move to that next step.
What you’re saying is true. That’s it. We’re at the mercy of the new reality, and we haven’t digested. We don’t know what to do with it. Our emotions rage. Our hormones rage. It could be anger raging. It’s all sorts of stuff because you got dumped in something new and you haven’t even begun to try to figure it out yet.
In this step that you mentioned, step 3 we’re still on, you wrote down the wave that crashes in on you. That is really where you’re at. Those waves come in one after another.
Both you and I could cry here because we know how that felt. It felt like those waves of the ocean were going to take you under. On the heroine’s journey, it’s part of the process, and it doesn’t have to take you under. In fact, it may be the start of the greatest adventure of your life. That’s what we’re here to tell you about.
What is the next step?
Step 4: Character Revelation
The next step is step four, and that’s character revelation. I didn’t know that I had a heroine’s voice until you pissed me off so badly in step three of the challenge. I thought of myself as a smart, capable, and talented woman who could be a superwoman. All of a sudden, when I was smashed to the ground, I didn’t like it much.
Here’s what I learned. What I learned was that there was this voice inside of me that had to speak. I didn’t understand it at the time, but that was my heroine’s voice. My heroine’s voice came from way deep inside of me and said, “I’m not going to be a victim of this. I don’t know what I’m going to do, how I’m going to do it, and where I’m going to do it, but I am not going to be a victim of this.”
In fact, I had a rally cry that said, “I’m not going to be measured by my fall. I’m going to be measured by my rise.” It was really the moment when the phoenix in me started to blossom. What I can tell you at that moment is that I had to commit to claiming my self-worth. That’s more of what we’re going to talk about because, without that self-worth, I was handicapped from going forward on the journey.
Self-worth will make you look at the rocks down below you and say, “No.” If your self-worth isn’t strong enough, which is much of what we talk about in this course, you’ll follow your nose right down to the rocks. That is not what we want for a heroine. Character revelation is when you claim, “I did come here perfectly. I am fully approved. I have skills, tools, and talents that I need to deliver.” I didn’t know all of this at that time, but it was that feeling that emerged in me that said, “We got to turn this ship around.” How about you?
I was thinking back to one of the many times because we don’t end up in this area once. I was sitting there on the curb crying. The wind has been knocked out of me. Everything has been taken. Having planned my whole life and realizing that people can take what they want. We’re seeing that a lot nationally, but in California where people are policing and implementing a mindset or a value that we don’t always have.
Here I am sitting on a curb and all I have is me. There’s nobody there to support me. There’s nothing. It’s me sitting there. I have to realize that there’s something that we don’t stop halfway, and life is one of them. You’re still here. You’re still on the journey. There isn’t an off button, and there isn’t a way back to the way life had been. I’m still here, and I have to figure out, “What am I made of?”
This is the point where I say how wonderful life would be if we all had a theme song. There are those old comedy 30-minute sitcoms you would watch and there would be a theme song. This is what rings through my head, whether it’s in the darkness of a night and I’m scared or the whole rug of my life has been pulled out. I look at songs. We’ve heard, “I get knocked down and I get back up again.” We’ve heard Neil Diamond say, “I am, I said, to no one there.”
For me, I sing Jesus loves me. This Little Light of Mine is on a cycle over and over again even when I don’t believe it or even when I feel I’ve been forsaken, or I truly am hanging out there all alone. Yet, somehow, by grasping onto something, I know that the sun will come up again, but it sure is hard at that moment. As I’m sitting there, I take an assessment, “Who am I? What skills do I have? What path can I create out of this?” I look at myself as being in a cocoon. I wouldn’t even say that I’m a caterpillar. I’d say I’m more of a worm at this point. I’m finally forming into a butterfly, but I’m still stuck in this, trying to figure out what is going to be my strategy or roadmap.
That aloneness was so important because, at that moment, it was not possible to look to somebody else and say, “Fix my problem.” It forced us internally to say, “What’s in here? What is my character revelation? Do I have courage? Do I have strength?” You couldn’t pass it by or think that someone else was going to do it.
It really pointed to me and said, “What’s inside of you?” That aloneness was very important in that part. I felt that too. It was a lonely time, but at the same time, hearing my heroine’s voice for the first time proclaimed that I wasn’t abandoned in the process. There was this energy and this fierceness inside of me that was going to go onward. Life didn’t end right there.
Stepping Into Our New Reality
It’s interesting that we’re taking into account and figuring out who we are. Not everybody wants to hear our new voice. It’s not necessarily welcome in the world in general because we’re figuring out the tones, the vocals, and how we’re going to stand, but certainly not the person who did this to us or created this. They want to knock us down and move on. If we stand up and try to regain our strength, that can’t be the place that we look back to in order to move forward. We have to turn and face what we outlined here for the character revelation. The next step is the new reality that we’re stepping into.
I love that. You sometimes see it on a poster. It says, “Don’t look back. You’re not going that way.” At this moment, it’s a new reality. Whatever the change in your circumstance costs, there is a new reality that you have to look forward to seeing. You have to source that energy inside of you. You have to let that heroine’s voice speak because that heroine is the one who’s going to take over the journey.
I wrote it down as we were talking here. I’m taking every moment to take notes when I’m with you. I love your conversation from a couple of minutes ago that we want to be measured by our rise, not our fall. That’s so true and hard to understand as we’re coming out of this moment.
Your heroine’s call can be many things. It might be, “I am a heroine.” It might be, “I am worthy.” You might come to that conclusion for the first time in your life when all this happens. You’re like, “I am worthy. That’s a new concept. That’s not what I heard from my school teachers or my parents,” or any number of other people who’ve influenced you along the way. Maybe you’ve been compromised about your sense of your own self-worth, but in that moment when everything’s at risk, you’re like, “I am worthy.”
You’re like, “I matter. I’m worthy.” For me, mine are, “I’m a powerful, passionate, and committed woman.” That is something that I, even with those three words, had to dig deep to own back into who I was after being knocked down. A lot of the time, I’ll repeat that to remind myself of the four strengths that I have forgotten.
You can’t look to other people around you to confirm that. At the same time, you’re saying, “I am worthy,” or, “I am a heroine. Watch me rise.” You’re going to probably have other people around you who are saying, “You are not any of that.” Part of the difficulty is listening to that inner voice and trusting it because it’s calling forth your best self.
In the past, what you’ve probably shown people is not your best self. You’ve probably, in some ways, let them believe that they could take advantage of you or you would be weak, or any number of things depending upon what you’re going through. In this very moment, that heroine’s voice that speaks inside of you is the true voice. That’s the one you listen to.
I was thinking when you were talking about this true voice how it would be wonderful at this moment if anybody is stretching and identifying who they are if they want to give us a little bit of feedback on one of the channels or here and give a comment about as they step into their strong self and realize their character and who that is.
They can also give a comment on maybe the next step if they want to be a little more vulnerable. When they first shared that with the world, how was it received? Maybe it was excellent. Maybe there were challenges. This would be a great process for somebody to participate in and start to jump into and be real with themselves.
Can you think how wonderful it would be if we saw our Facebook blow up with a heroine’s proclamations?
I would love it.
It would be like, “I’m wonderful. I’m strong. I’m worthy.”
It would be like, “I am a woman needing more.” Is there anything else you want to talk about on the fourth step, which is the character revelation?
No. The only thing to point out is while we’re doing the overview on this, we have a number of resources for you if you’re reading this for the first time. You can go to our website at WalkTheJourney.com. We called it WalkTheJourney.com because the heroine’s journey was a little too close to the drug. I don’t understand that part. Go to WalkTheJourney.com. You’ll be able to get our free eBook called The 4 Biggest Mistakes Women Make. That’s a great start because it clarifies for you, particularly if you’ve had some upset, where it might be going awry for you.
You can also get our thirteen steps of the heroine’s journey eBook. It goes over the same thirteen steps that we’re talking to you about here but in a little more depth. Down the road, we’ll be talking to you about some courses we’ve built to not only walk you down the path of the heroine’s journey but also to make more focus on your heroine’s proclamation and the work that you’re doing to proceed as a heroine. Know there’s lots coming from us. We welcome you. Go to our website and come join us. There, you’ll also find our Facebook. Join us on Facebook in our Facebook group and tell us what lights you up.
I love that. What lights you up? That’s amazing. Everybody’s light will continue to shine. Have a blessed week. We’ll be back again with another episode.
Thank you all. Journey on.
Important Links
- Walk the Journey – LinkedIn
- Facebook – The Heroine’s Journey, LLC
- 13 Steps Every Woman Takes to Become the Heroine of Her Own Life
- The 4 Biggest Mistakes Women Make
- Episode – Uncovering the Secrets of the Walk the Journey Roadmap
- Walk the Journey: 4 Biggest Mistakes Women Make
- @theheroinesjourney – YouTube
