A Hero's Journey & Your Healing Journey
A story worth telling...
by Liliana Hughes, Master’s Level Counseling Intern
February 7, 2025
I am a big Lord of the Rings fan. For those of you who are uninitiated, the central plot of the story revolves around Frodo, a tiny Hobbit, making an epic thousand-mile journey to destroy the one Ring and save the world. For those of you who are familiar, you know that that one-sentence description doesn’t nearly do the story justice.
Unlike some who grew up enjoying Tolkien’s work, whether in book form or as movie adaptations, I didn’t come across Lord of the Rings until I was in my college years. My boyfriend, now husband, roped me into watching the movies – pausing frequently to bring to my attention every excruciating detail that he promised me would be important for later. I didn’t enjoy them at first. It could have been his constant intermissions or any number of other things, but it wasn’t until reading the book that I was able to fully appreciate the story that being told.
When I began reading Lord of the Rings, a few years after I saw the movies, I was at a point in my life where the daily problems that I was facing seemed insurmountable. An unending litany of my own emotional struggles, relationship issues, and health problems combined with the rigors of completing a graduate degree had me feeling helpless to my circumstances. And in that moment, I found comfort in Frodo’s story.
Keep going…
If you aren’t familiar with the book, don’t stop reading this blog (please) – Frodo’s arc is probably the most repeated trope in storytelling. It’s called “the hero’s journey” or the “monomyth”: the hero leaves home on a quest, faces and overcomes obstacles in their way, and returns home a changed person. I’m sure that one of your favorite stories goes this way too. We can’t get enough of them – Why is that? There are certainly multiple reasons, but I think we are so drawn to these stories because these characters and their journeys give us kindred spirits that make us feel like maybe we aren’t so alone in our struggles.
Part of what makes the hero’s journey so compelling is the journey itself. It is the obstacles in the way that make the goal at the end significant. If Frodo had been able to walk up and casually destroy the One Ring without any loss or consequence, there wouldn’t be much of a story. Insert your favorite character… you get the point.
And yet, when it comes to our own stories, we usually have a lot less patience for the obstacles in our way. I hear from my clients: “I just want to heal so I can move on with my life.” I say to myself: “I just need to get through my degree so I can start my real life.” I even say this stuff when I’m working with horses: “I just need to learn this groundwork exercise so I can get to the cool stuff.” Whatever the obstacle might be in your way right now, you probably say it to yourself too. I’m not trying to deny that some parts of our stories are deeply painful – that we would rather have walked a softer path that didn’t leave us wounded. Unfortunately, those choices aren’t always ours to make. But when we find ourselves in the aftermath, with the long road ahead of us, we get to choose how we view the path forward.
What am I trying to get at here?
The story of the hero’s journey is valuable to us not because of the end result of whatever the hero achieved. It’s because of the challenges they encountered – things that seemed impossible to overcome – that they conquered. When we view our lives, our challenges, our healing, as boxes to be checked so that we can move on to what we are really supposed to be doing (or rather, what we think we really are supposed to be doing), we suck the meaning out of our own stories.
Maybe this is a trite point to make. “The joy is in the journey!”, she says. But, as long as we continue to struggle to view our journeys as important – and we always will – it’s one that needs to be made. The everyday experiences, the healing, the slow trudge to Mordor – it’s all important. It gives us a story to tell, one worth telling. And our stories are worth telling. Because while I found comfort in Frodo’s story, you don’t know who might find it in yours.
If telling your story and finding meaning in your healing journey is something you want to start doing in 2025, we would love to walk with you on that journey
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