YOU ARE A HEROINE

This inspirational self-help book for women offers a cheerful yellow brick road to a new life.

In his famous 1949 book The Hero With a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell theorized that, in literature, all mythical heroes’ journeys have a similar structure. Organizational development consultant and executive coach Liller (Circle Power, 2010) details how women may start their own life-changing journeys in this accessible guide. Her inspiration for writing this book occurred while watching a speaker’s presentation that compared Campbell’s theory to Dorothy Gale’s journey in The Wizard of Oz. Liller sprinkles references to the wide-eyed girl from Kansas throughout the text as she urges readers to realize that, like Dorothy, they’ve been the heroines of their own stories all along. A heroine doesn’t have to leap over tall buildings in a single bound, writes Liller; instead, she can simply be a woman who dares to take risks and challenge herself even when it’s frightening to do so. This breezy manual begins by defining some terms; for instance, a person is in the “Belly of the Whale” when they find themselves in turmoil during a journey of self-discovery. As Liller urges women to begin their own quests, she provides basic rules of the road, such as “it’s OK not to know where you’re going next.” She also offers practical tools that are easy to use, such as a “Heroine’s Journey Map” for recording milestones. For readers who have no idea what they want to do in the future, there’s a hands-on exercise that involves free-writing ideas on sticky notes and grouping similar ideas together; the aim is to help women to see previously unknown patterns in their lives. Although the book is relatively short, Liller’s friendly voice is inviting, and her examples are often compelling. Comparing life to a journey is a cliché, and some of the exercises—such as affirmations—have been done many times before. But women who are searching for a first step to change will find some solid ground under their feet here.

An upbeat, if sometimes-familiar, manual for self-discovery.