THE ART & SCIENCE 0F BECOMING A WARRIOR QUEEN

Invoking Those Things We Do Not Yet Understand

For my children and grandchildren

The Legendary Role Of Real Stories

As we navigate this time of video games, banned books and the echo chamber of mass media what are the real stories we deem valuable to tell ourselves? One would think those stories which inform our daily lives.

Does a particular story stand the test of leading us to further understanding and better coping strategies as we cope with the daily grind? Or do they leave us cold - with no better information to apply to the daily grind than if we had not heard them?

It sounds rather out there to be speaking of being a warrior in any sense in these times of lockstep and mainstream thinking. After all what is the point when everyone just goes along on automatic pilot and cruise control? When even music is done using autotune?

Writing and journalism are easy when all we need do is check off the boxes of mainstream belief. Stories need only match what we are already thinking. No need to challenge our minds when no one else is thinking anyway. All we need do is go along. Software onboard and the boxes all checked. What could be easier.

This works fine until there is a wrinkle in the matrix which challenges us. In the real world these wrinkle arise everywhere. They demand original thinking. They demand an ability which goes well beyond lockstep.

We can live in an echo chamber for only so long. Then problems arise for us to solve. While we may not need to have the flexibility of a Sherlock Holmes to overcome these - it helps. Originality and the thinking of an outlier is highly prized in most of life’s situations. Only safely inside the cushioned world of the padded and insulated echo chamber are these things not important.

For the average kid growing up today this echo chamber of digital engagement becomes their world early on. This works as long as the imaginary, protected world of childhood lasts. But as we know it can only last for a short while. Eventually we must venture outside the echo chamber to encounter a very real world.

This may come about as we drive our first car or encounter our first love - or both. Suddenly nothing is quite so easy. The need to make decisions immediately confronts us. We are unprepared. The world seems cruel and unrelenting in demanding things of us. All at once we see the need for real thinking.

So what then are our choices? We cannot avoid the onrushing impact of reality - whatever this means for us. Each of our journeys as an individual is entirely unique. Since we must walk our own road there is only so much we can rely on from the outside world.

But it is the right stories - those which speak to us of quests dragon slaying and double edged swords which often become the best guides to the always changing, always challenging, real world.

The Quest Of The Warrior Queen

What is a warrior queen? A warrior queen is a woman. She is one who understands the core of her own strength - and the sources of her weaknesses. No heroes - male or female - were ever born. They are made. In the forged metal of time and circumstance they arise - unexpectedly to themselves and others.

Like the strong female cougar they understand the role of the wild and the wildness in themselves. They live lives which select for the wild and wildness. They have an inborn aversion to cities and the confining spaces of human settlement. The settled life where nothing is lost and nothing gained is foreign to them.

They are never those you would have picked out of a crowd early on. They exist among the outliers. They are of the wilderness and the wild. If they are born in a culture which honors these things they may rise to power earlier. But born in to a culture which fails to recognize the wilderness and the wild and they become targets. They suffer much abuse and pain before they recognize the path they must take.

The Combined Quest Of The Warrior Queen and her Warrior King

Warrior queens cannot arise separately from the power of strong men. No man can mate with a warrior queen who does not honor the wild in himself. In the recognition of their mutual power they rise from the blackest darkness into the light.

They are born to survive the metal-forging fires native to these struggles. They are made to survive and excel in difficult ”interesting” times. Fear is something they have learned to defeat before they can inspire courage in themselves and in others.

They recognize that living means to surf the various waves borne our way. To shrink in front of the largest waves would be unimaginable. Their youthful lives - often misspent - prepare them for the largest waves. No male or female hero came to be that without a misspent youth. Trouble forges strength just as comfort and the status quo feed weakness.

Those who chose this path are given signs along the way. Often their failure to at first heed the signs leads to a near death experience. They discover the true depths to be found in their own darkness. Being willing to travel there and to comprehend the monsters which lie in wait is the real source of their strength.

No male companion of a warrior queen ever survives a failure to comprehend these things in himself. Strong females and strong males spell each other in a lifelong battle to understand. They are born in the weakness of not understanding and only reach their own strength through suffering through the journey together.

Together they practice the difficult arts of not being defeated. Once their final strength is forged they are unbeatable. Becoming formidable requires them to suffer pain others would not. It is impossible to confront them with monsters they have not already faced in themselves.

You will never lose by choosing the path of a true Warrior Queen or a Warrior King.The real loss is failing to do so. Choose life - choose the difficult - embrace the pain and ecstasy of the well-lived life.

Because unlike the old kings and queens of privilege - born into families of power and wealth - the quest of the new warrior kings and queens is to use the ordinary, the mundane, to become relevant to this world as it is now.

It is precisely by invoking those things we do not yet understand, and by expecting the seemingly impossible, that we come to understand them. Rise to the occasion. Be the changes you wish to see.

It is precisely where the edges of this world confer - the realm between dream and reality - where we find the tough resilient relevance to live our lives fully. Seek out the right stories. You will know them when they appear.