The Golden Fleece of Freedom
The old stories tell of Jason and the Argonauts, sailing into danger to claim the Golden Fleece. It was never just about gold — the fleece symbolized courage, legitimacy, the right to step fully into one’s life. Jason faced fire-breathing bulls, clashing rocks, and monsters waiting in the shadows. And when he returned, he was not the same man who had left.
I did not set out to chase myth. I set out to break away, looking for freedom from a life that had grown stale. Yet when I packed my car and drove north with Sadie curled beside me, I was unknowingly boarding my own ship. The sea I crossed was not made of water but of asphalt and winter miles. My destination was not adventure but a cold, unfamiliar place where trials waited like unseen dragons.
But that kind of freedom always demands a trial. I thought I was only shedding a role, but soon I found myself facing the darker tests. The monsters appeared quickly. There was a beast of a job that devoured joy in sterile corridors and fluorescent light. The zombies of death and decay were everywhere. There was the many-headed hydra of debt, always hissing at the edges of my peace. There was the siren of memory — a love that once felt alive, now only a hollow echo, pulling me toward rocks of indifference. And there was the serpent of despair, coiled tight, whispering that I was finished, that I would never again feel whole.
Each day was another impossible task. Work that left me empty. Loneliness that threatened to gnaw my life out of existence. Bills that multiplied faster than I could strike them down. Like Jason, I feared being consumed by the adversity.
But like Jason, I found allies along the way. My journal, my brushes, my words became my Argonauts. I wrote. I painted. I created Savage Grace. I planned retreats. I spoke into a microphone and birthed a podcast. Each act of creation was another oar in the water, pulling me through the dark straits.
Slowly, almost imperceptibly, I realized the fleece I longed for was not hanging in some far-off tree. Thread by thread, it was being woven within me, a fabric of resilience, bright with the gold of survival and the shimmer of becoming.
When I return home, I will not be the woman I was when I left. Jason carried back the golden fleece as proof of his quest; I bring no glittering trophy. What I carry is rarer: freedom. Freedom from work that drained me, from silence I once mistook for rejection, from the shadow of despair that nearly convinced me to give up. My fleece is invisible, but it is mine—hard-won, stitched from courage, persistence, and grace.
My fleece is proof of my own mythic journey. I step into the next passage not with gold to display, but with freedom hard-won—woven from grief, endurance, and creation. As I return, I know this: I am resilient and I am brave, and that is more than enough.
#ResilientSpirit #MemoirWriting #SoulFreedom #GoldenFleece #SavageGrace
#HealingJourney #ShareYourStory #LivingAuthentically #InnerWisdom