I’ve had a handful of heroes. In childhood they were fictional: Anne (of Green Gables) and Jane Eyre. Anne’s early life, like my own, was marked by starvation and neglect. Jane, to whom I also related, was unwanted. Both believed in their inherent right to exist and, ultimately, to thrive. I gobbled these stories repeatedly; they nourished my soul.
In my late teens I was mad for Carl Jung, the Swiss psychologist who took dreams seriously and spun, filament by filament, a model of the unconscious mind and its symbols as a magnificent, connective web of universal meaning. Through him I began to believe that I was not, existentially, alone.
For a brief time in my early twenties it was Fritjof Capra, author of The Tao of Physics, an early arrival signalling a wave of literature that would strive to integrate ancient Eastern wisdom and twentieth century cosmology and quantum mechanics. During this time I completed a degree in mathematics.
Then came the years when I raised my children and the heroes in my life were the other mothers (sometimes fathers) without whom that time would have been less stimulating and less rewarding. The books I read were mainly those selected to nourish the developing minds and hearts of my girls.
My heroes these days are mainly women writers and creators, past and present, who enlarge what it means to be human and female, with mammalian nervous systems and all that means with respect to our animal needs, and minds and hearts prepared to seek the divine in a multitude of forms and expressions. Virginia Woolf, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, and Terri Windling, in particular. Like shamanic guides, their words expand my universe and lead me to the deepest chambers of my soul.
More recently, I’ve added Maria Popova to my list. Since 2006, she’s been busy recording what she reads and her reflections as she does so. (If this sounds like small potatoes, you really need to check it out). Her site, Brainpickings, is “…an inquiry into what it means to live a decent, substantive, rewarding life, and a record of [her] own becoming as a person–intellectually, creatively, spiritually–drawn from [her] extended marginalia on the search for meaning across literature, science, art, philosophy, and the various other tentacles of human thought and feeling.
Maria Popova never fails to inspire me, and I often read her before delving into my own work. To celebrate the 10th anniversary of her site, she listed ten learnings to live by. A few days ago, she added three more. In addition, she lists the 13 posts she most enjoyed writing during the past 13 years.