Apr 7, 20212 min read

and the good witch said . . .

In the film The Wizard of Oz, the good witch Glinda tells Dorothy that she had the power to go home all along. It was within her all the time, but she wouldn't have believed it until she found it out for herself.

Dorothy: Oh, will you help me? Can you help me?

Glinda: You don’t need to be helped any longer. You’ve always had the power to go back to Kansas.

Dorothy: I have?

Scarecrow: Then why didn’t you tell her before?

Glinda: Because she wouldn’t have believed me, she had to learn it for herself.

Confronted with conflict and loss and unhappy with her life, Dorothy wishes to go somewhere over the rainbow. With a heart and soul full of conflict and sorrow, she is knocked unconscious by debris from the tornado.

In the story, all of Dorothy's experiences happen in the realm of dreams and the unconscious. It's in this magical realm that she has her adventures. Some of them are frightening, and some are inspiring. She finds helpers along the way that could be seen as archetypes, models, or characters that represent aspects of all of us. One has no heart, one no courage, and one no capacity to reason. All of these attributes challenge us at one time or another in our lives. Despite their weaknesses, together, they each face their own "missing parts" and, in the end, come to a new level of self-realization.

The journey itself, its trials, and its challenges brought Dorothy to the level of self-understanding that she needed to see that the answer was within. The answers were in her life, her story, the relationships that she treasured, and her place in the world.

There is the same power in your story too. When we look at our life story through the lens of myths, fairytales, and folktales, we can see how our story fits within the great tales of humanity. Discovering your personal myth is a powerful way to understand where you are in your life and where you want to go.

Here is what a client who recently completed my 12-week private coaching wrote this week about the program. She's an artist. The painting she created is a symbolic image of her personal myth. Not everywomen is an artist, but every woman has a personal myth and within it are the maps, mile markers, and guideposts that can help you find your way home.

"Thank you for helping me find my myth, even now it comforts me in times when the illusions of disappointment weigh heavy, and I reach back to the core that carries me through. . . .The process was an amazing gift, Andrea."