Have you ever thought about working with your personal story and considering your story as a mythology? Janelle believes that we can heal and transform when we work with our personal mythologies instead of against them. Janelle supports creative, courageous, sensitive women + non-binary people in reclaiming their brilliance, vibrancy and strength via a transformation memoir-writing process called The Art of Personal Mythmaking.
A huge belief of mine is that we have the power to change our stories and that’s directly connected to our health and life experiences in our bodies. The work that Janelle does is navigating people through this personal memoir writing process that leads one through personal transformation.
Janelle also has her own podcast, The Personal Mythmaking Podcast, today she published my episode where we dive into a fairytale that I have loved since a little girl - The Little Mermaid!
Janelle shares her personal story and how she came to develop the Art of Personal Mythmaking process. Janelle discusses what she calls “the great forgetting” - the erasure of where one comes from and shares her exploration of family history of trauma, and discovering the multigenerational healing process through personal mythmaking. We also talk about the benefits of feeling stuck and powerful ways to move through flavors of resistance in all the ways it shows up.
Show Notes
In this episode, we discuss:
Janelle’s personal story
The art of personal myth making
Incorporating body, creativity, and fairytale
Grieving the loss of family history, language, culture, and meaning - what Janelle calls “the great forgetting,” the erasure of where one comes from
Janelle’s exploration of family history of trauma including addiction and abuse, and multigenerational healing processes
The internal silencing that occurs from this trauma and patriarchal conditionings, and the dynamic of denying the embodied self
Pain as a great motivator and how some of the ways that Janelle intuitively started seeking healing and shift were catalyzed by pain
Why creative self expression and reconnecting with body are exceptionally important
How language is critical in understanding our life experience and options for healing and understand the world
What is the “art of personal mythmaking” and how it has the capacity to change the way we understand our life
We can create our own mythology that is beautiful and shift the painful one
Our body as our only home and using our body as a physical ally
The significance of ancient tales, fairy tales, and the value of their existence
You don’t have to work alone when you have the gifts of cultural heritage through story
How to begin your own personal mythmaking and inviting your body into the healing process
How we might have pulls and interests in things that are in our lineage or history despite not being in our current life experience
The benefits of feeling stuck and powerful ways to move through flavors of resistance in all the ways it shows up (and the most common flavors of resistance!)
The power of a memoir writing process
The interesting difference that a study found between genders in aqcuiring new skills and perceived “readiness”
How overwhelm is connected to a dysregulated nervous system
How fiction is a wonderful way Janelle transports herself
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Connect With Janelle Hardy
Website | Instagram | Facebook
The Art of Personal Mythmaking - online course
FREE GIFTS:
PDF: 10 Gentle Yet Effective Ways to Heal Painful Memories Using Writing & Your Body.
Calm and settle your nervous system with gentle easy-to-implement guidance and writing tips so you can stop feeling overwhelmed by the more difficult parts of your lifestory.
10 trauma-informed tips so you can write and heal.
PDF: 10 Impactful Memoir-Writing Prompts for Healing and Transformation.
It’s time to stop waiting for inspiration to strike and get started now!
Resources + Links Mentioned
Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype by Jungian analyst, author and poet Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph.D
Somatic Experiencing Books - Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma* and In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness* by Peter Levine
The Colony of Unrequited Dreams: A Novel by Wayne Johnston
Note: Links marked with an asterisk (*) are affiliate links. Making a purchase through these links won’t cost you anything but we will receive a small commission. This is an easy, free way of supporting the podcast and production costs. Thank you!
Wildly Rooted Resources
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