Unearthing the Archetype
and fueling the flame
Per my usual holiday travels, I left my hometown with more than I arrived with. This year’s boxes included my childhood collection of journals and writings. In one diary, the first entry features a page long description of a stuffed animal, a yellow lab named Sal. My Storyteller Journal, filled with prompts for early writers, hosts some gems, including a couple Westerns starring rugged cowboys. In one entry, responding to the prompt “What are some of your favorite words?” I wrote down the names of all my pets and family members.
Having read through my early stories, I’m less confused and startled by the shadow work that shows up in my poetry now. In my early writing, I’ve encountered an archetype of myself, a distillation that still exists within me. I see this “intensity” has always been a part of my writing. Take this excerpt, written when I was six years old. (Original spelling and grammar has been kept in tact).
The next day the horse and the pegasus were running on the beach then a shark came up and tried to drag the horse down and eat it. The pegasus yelled HELP! HELP! HELP! The whale tried to help but the shark bit the whales tale. The wizard came and tried his best but it was no good the shark left the deed body. everybody came to the horses funeral. The pegasus cried and cried but it was no use the horse was deed. the pegasus cried day after day.
Aaaand that’s how the story ends. I laughed myself sick when I read this story because it’s so absurd, and also because I felt connected to this humorously morose writer. I hold a tender kinship for them.
The concept of archetypes is sitting fresh in my mind, as I’ve been making my way through Douglas A. Burton’s The Heroine’s Labyrinth, an anthropological exploration of heroine-led fiction. Burton makes the case that the labyrinth offers an alternative story structure to Joseph Campell’s Hero’s Journey. In the labyrinth, the protagonists (often heroines) navigate challenges within a familiar world in which they experience challenges caused by societal expectations and internal conflicts. Driven by their Sacred Fire—a passion, goal, or drive— the protagonist learns to navigate a complex maze of cultural rules, pressures, and expectations. The hope is that they learn to negotiate this confusing space without losing their individuality.
Stay with me here, but I can’t help but think this bears a funny resemblance to New Year’s resolutions…
At the end of each year I develop a series of goals to carry me into the next. Pretty standard stuff. The habit started in 2021 when my friend Kailee guided me through her own rituals. She’d ask a series of questions, we’d journal, and slowly a vision of the coming year came into sight. The following year, she released a guided journal, and it’s been shaping my goal practices ever since.
As an infrequent journaler, I now have three goal cycles recorded in a single notebook. Looking back, some of the goals feel like they belong to a faraway version of myself, while others remain resolute. The list of returns is perhaps unsurprising. I set my sights on reading, writing, outdoor adventures, walks with Marc and Fitz. Some I complete, others fall by the wayside. And in the following year, I decide whether to recommit to those goals or instate new ones. Oftentimes I tweak my goals. In one year, I read 4 books per month; for another, I reread some of my all-time favorites.
What I find more interesting than these micro evolutions, is the core that sits inside. Each year I pursue learning opportunities, time in nature, moments with loved ones. In my reflection entries, I always write about moments with animals, the importance of making soup, and my commitment to hosting others in my home. Perhaps Sacred Fire seems an absurd word for these mundane habits, but these practices are what keep me anchored to my values, to myself.
Over the course of a year, it’s easy to drift from the early ambitions I’ve set in January. And over the years, it’s easy to forget who I was as a child. These past days, I’ve spent time with both of these figures and realized the same fire I carried at age six still blazes within me. I carry those that I love tight and close. My heart extends to each animal I see. And I cannot stop creating stories. Each year offers a new labyrinth to disappear into. The walls change, and while they do not hold any malice intent, their effect is the same. The deadlines, drama, and malaise risk a dim flame.
But here we are at the top of the year with a flame renewed. I am ready to enter the maze.
Gotta love the ghosts we find in holland. Especially in our old stories.
That pegasus story hits diferent knowing it came from a six-year-old, the intensity was already there. The Sacred Fire concept lines up with those goals that keep reappearing year after year, those ones feel less like resolutions and more like anchors. I had a similar moment going through old notebooks and found I'd been circling the same three obsessions for over a decade, just with diferent vocabulary. The labyrinth framing for New Year's makes way more sense than the hero's journey anyway.