the heroic journey

(as i open my laptop to write this blog post my eye catches the news headline "kobe among those killed in helicopter crash". i'm not the biggest basketball fan but years of teaching middle school boys and even i know that bryant was an LA Lakers legend.  it seems fitting somehow, for what i was about to write, the hero's journey come full circle.)

my mentor's office (top right)

today i was supposed to be working on my guest lecture (teaching future teachers in the continuing education department how to teach art) for later this week at my alma mater.  i did everything else instead until i found myself wandering the same alma mater campus with a nagging feeling in the back of my mind you feel when you've forgotten something.

our final classroom

when i saw the date "january 26, 2020" it finally clicked:  the anniversary of my friend and mentor's death 13 years ago.  the only real space i have to visit her is the campus where i was a student in the first English Literature class she taught and where i taught her last class with her until she passed away during the unit on Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice.

mailbox that began a literary
correspondence of a lifetime

and for a week or more i've been pondering the heroic journey (as first outlined by joseph campbell). it's the archetype that makes every great film and novel memorable; everyone instinctively knows it when they see everything from star wars to the hobbit.  and, tonight, standing in the rain looking up at the building where i closed the door one last time on her office, i felt as if a season of my life too had come full circle.

beautiful new lights in
the student courtyard 

recently at a community event hosted by my new work place, i chanced to run into a former professor who put his arm around my shoulder and said, "well if it isn't lanette!  you've had your adventures out in the world and come back home to us."  his words could not have rung more true.

we may make this journey several times throughout our lives; it being more than a linear one time event and rather a cyclical, spiral staircase:

1) the call to adventure, crossing the threshhold
2) trials, temptations, facing the shadow self & need for a mentor
3) transformation
4) the return home, becoming a mentor

this typed, i think i will be able to work on my guest lecture now.  having walked around a campus where so much has changed (a football stadium in place of the old bleachers i would take the class out to on sunny days) but where so much is the same (the camellia tree where roommates and i would string together flower necklaces).

i will always miss my friend and like to have a place i can go to say thank you and mark gratitude with each passing year.  a place i can become a mentor, giving back what has been so generously invested in  me.

where do you find yourself in your heroic journey?