The Hero's Journey
We are all heroes, you, me, our neighbors and our coworkers are all heroes within our own lives. And that’s because each life has a story and is a journey.
How important is our story?
It affects everything in our lives, from how we understand our past to how we control our emotions. This story begins to write itself from the moment that we’re conceived and determines the way we see life, the things around us and even our inner world. Our story guides us through the choices we make, in the people we allow into our lives and in those we choose to be our life partners.
And, eventually, we begin to write our story ourselves through the words we tell ourselves, the values that we choose to guide us and the beliefs we develop about both the world around us and about ourselves.
My story, begins with the family that I was born into – my father, who is a priest, my mother, paediatric nurse and my two older brothers. I grew up with the belief that family comes first, before anything else in life, and I’ve strongly believed in this my whole life. Sunday lunch with the family around the table were a must – ever since I was a little girl, we’d wait for my father to come home from church so we could enjoy eating together. My older brothers were my teachers and protectors, and I had to listen to them. When I won my first national championship both my parents and my brothers were there to support me, they’ve always been my biggest fans.
As family comes first, my parents taught me that marriage is for life, and whatever happens, no one should ever find out our problems and certainly divorce is never an option. At 21, straight out of university, I got married and took with me this belief.
I always wanted children, growing up fascinated by the babies my mother would check out at the clinic she worked at. Holding a baby in my arms was a miracle, I could watch and play with them for hours. There is no stronger feeling of love than that for the small and innocent being in my arms.
There is how at the age of 22 I gave birth to Vlad, and at 30 I had Viktor.
After the Romanian Revolution of 1989 happened my former husband chose the entrepreneurship path, leaving behind the teaching career. He asked me to follow him, and I blindly did so, happy to be able to contribute to build financial wealth for our family. At the time, this seemed like a logical and obviously important step to take in life, so it came first, before my own dream to be a coach.
What followed were 25 years of intertwined work and marriage that were both full of challenges and accomplishments. We moved between Romania, Canada and the United States, where we developed new businesses. We travelled every corner of the world from China to Indonesia to France to Mexico and India. We learned everything there was to know to turn our businesses into success.
We had years of uninterrupted work from 6 AM until late past midnight. I was constantly juggling the roles of a mother, businesswoman and that of a socialite. Due to my own preexisting values, I tried my best to take care of everything in the house, take my kids to school and after-school activities and spend as much time with them as possible, learning about who their friends were, what they dream and what they’re passionate about.
I never thought that the thing that would tear apart my relationship would be work, especially since my husband and I worked together. However, step by step, our marriage turned into a work relationship. All our discussions slowly moved from our lives to our businesses, our money and how to grow our assets. My husband and I developed in different directions, and worst of all we embraced different values and that eroded our relationship.
I allowed myself to get blown away by the carousel of life I was on and I forgot who I was. I forgot what my wishes were, what made me smile, but the one thing I would never lose and tie myself to stubbornly was sport.
At one point, I began feeling disturbed by the fact that my family was split in two, me and the kids on one side, my husband on the other.
The kids were grown up by this point, they didn’t need my supervision anymore, so I began feeling like I want to do something for myself. Something to fulfill me professionally. Our family was more than comfortable financially, so it seemed like the time to dedicate myself to a passion, has come.
I started conversations about my wish to do something else, that I want to find the passion that would make me want to jump out of bed early in the morning and fall asleep late at night willingly. I wanted back that fire that burned in me when I used to train for competitions. The reply to my wishes from my husband was: “That’s stupid! You can’t do something by yourself, you’ve got to worry about the family”. He knew that the most important thing to me was my family, and although our children didn’t need us to be workhorses for them anymore, it was still the perfect button to push to keep me in place.
How many of you got such a feedback when it comes about your wishes, your passion?
How many times have you given up to the fire within you just because it was not as important or simply because you shouldn’t have dared dreaming?
I wasted many years stuck in that place, and I know today that I shouldn’t have. I lost years to fear. Fear of loneliness, fear of failure, fear of not being good enough.
My daily internal dialogue felt straight out of hell, and I believed it to my core, after all, what I lived was my truth! Until the day that an even greater fear hit me like a lightning: what is going to happen to me if I stay where I am now? What if I’m in this relationship for another 25 years? Was this even really a relationship anymore? Should I wait to die without any will to live?
I realized that I only had 2 options: stay and live in the comfortable nightmare that my life had become or get over the fear, shame, and stigma of being a divorced woman and free myself!
So that’s exactly what I did, I chose freedom and peace!
Don’t get me wrong, my sons are my greatest treasure and if the price of getting the chance to raise these two amazing boys that I’m extremely proud of is to repeat this experience and be in the same relationship again, I’d do it without blinking. The joy of being their mom outweighs any hardship and bitter taste left by the failure of my relationship with their father.
However, I needed to move on. Saving myself from my brain was a long journey through a variety of forms of therapy, ranging from psychotherapy to art therapy, the Wim Hof breathing and ice immersion, holotropic breathing and vision quests, but it ultimately came to a head once I began learning about neuroencoding and practicing it under the guide of some exceptional mentors.
I turned my story from what felt like a depressing one into a happy one as years of research within myself and out, took me where I needed to be, to the meeting with my mentors. Under their precious guidance I learned how to enjoy life, how to look ahead and even how to start dreaming again!
I’m happy because I found the fire of passion in my heart, because I live my life exactly how I want to, and because I get to do exactly what I want professionally: coach.
And if I can do it, so can you! I know you can because I’ve tried everything and searched for every answer for you too! I know you can because I’m here to help you get over any difficulty you may find on your way!
I know you can because I’ll be here to challenge you, guide you, and I’ll be with you at every step you need to take until you fulfil your objectives.
The cold is an absolute doorway to the soul
About The Hero's Journey
The myth and the story of our becoming
Joseph Campbell devoted himself to the study oh myths – as Carl Jung, Mircea Eliade and Theodore Gaster did -, he chained together his conclusions in a theory called The Hero’s Journey. In his books, Campbell pieces together common traits he identified in myths and legends across many cultures.
The Hero’s Journey is an inner metaphoric trail shared by the heroes of various cultures at all times. It is always about a transforming adventure where the hero is facing dramatic moments, loneliness and fall, he has to overcome terrible experiences before he is – sometimes magically – emerging stronger, defeating the evil.
George Lucas created on Campbell’s model a series, Star War. Young heroes of an extremely technologically advanced civilization fought with demons, have been through challenges and miracles as heroes once had.
Over the universal pattern of the adventure and transformation that once signed the humanity’s myths, in Campbell’s writing is an overlay of a Cosmogonic Cycle, a circular story of the humanity’s continuous creation and dissolution.
Humans are making sense of the world and fight existential crises by telling stories