A Reflection

I’m on a kind of runner’s high ー that euphoric inner glow, fed by adrenaline and endorphins, my brain’s reward to a body that has gone the distance. I’m just across the finish line of this past weekend’s Rise! Yoga and Writing for Transformation retreat, led by Molly Chanson and Julie Tallard Johnson. I’ve spent three days alongside poets, writers, and bloggers, each of us delving into the inner sanctum of our hearts to surface the truths we’ve buried out of fear, shame, guilt, and vulnerability. It’s this, the realism, that will form our best work.

As part of this discovery, we are instructed to find a myth that most clearly illuminates our writing intentions and aids us in wrestling with the dynamics that muscle us away from the important work of meaning-making.  I begin, reciting my own intention as a mantra: Listen to my heart. Listen. Listen. Listen. I name the equal and opposite force that works against this endeavor ー the silencing of my one and precious voice. I am afraid. My fear makes me hesitant, small, quiet. But out of the silence, I hear her name:

Echo.

What a tragic creature she was. Her voice reduced to a whisper in the quiet places. Her body rendered into oblivion not once, but twice from fickle men. Wanting her and not wanting her, each worked his violence upon Echo’s being ー her only sin having obeyed the order of Zeus.
It seems Echo’s life and legacy is centered around the punishments she endured; we use her now as an explanation for the reverberations of the songs in our own mouths. She still serves us. First employed by Zeus to distract his wife, Hera, from the god’s adulterous ways, Echo caught the full retaliation ー conscripted by the betrayed bride to a life of imitation. Echo would never speak her own sentences again.

The voiceless nymph then fell in love with Narcissus, a man who could only love himself. She had not the tools to express her heart. The effect was to reinforce that his was the view that mattered ー his voice, the one she repeated back to him. When Narcissus languished by a pool, she bound herself to him in an act of despair, wasting into invisibility for a prize she would never receive. The other stories tell of her suitor, Pan, who when rebuked, tore her limb from limb. Her body scattered from corner to corner, she only retained a facsimile of the song she once sang.

I dream of Echo ー she awakes me at night, starkly. Her story is the cautionary tale every mother tells her daughters. To raise a girl in a world filled with men who would relegate her as a foil to their own purpose, something to manipulate, rail against, obtain love from ーeach day of motherhood must feel like preparing a soldier for war.

And yet, here I am, having protected the message in my heartーnot perfectly, but with love. In the past I’ve emulated Echo in her loyalty to unworthy causes, trying to make it work out of my trepidation. In the past I’ve wrapped myself in the lie of “the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know.” In these moments, failure has been the truest miracle ー ended relationships, lost jobs, missed opportunities that were not meant to be. They’ve given me second chances, despite myself, to run across rocks, amidst fire, to push against those who would wield my voice as a weapon. To train for this moment.

So I set my intention deep within ー to sing where Echo cannot. I anoint her my patron saint, my mother martyr ー her story of self will live through the one I tell, her words amplifying my own. The gift I take from this story is edifying: I must be true for me in order to be true for her ー a voice for the voiceless.