Finding Your Inner Goddess: Introduction First Draft

This was for the week 4 project assignment. It did not require a blog post, but I decided to make one just to see if I could get some initial feedback.

Introduction: 

My name is Clara and I just got back from a journey around the world where I saw the sights, heard the stories, and met some of the most amazing and powerful goddesses and honorary goddeses (those who may not technically be ranked "goddess," but are one in their own right) in all of mythology and folklore. I traveled to Rome, Greece, Egypt, Japan, and England on a journey of self-discovery. I dedicated my time to learning about the culture, values, and mythology of each location I visited. I immersed myself and was humbled when the people shared their stories with me. I let loose, got out of my comfort zone, and  had one hell of an adventure. Most importantly, I learned about what it means to find your inner goddess. After hearing the stories of the region and recording them on my blog, I interviewed the goddesses themselves and learned some ways to empower myself and integrate the ways of the goddess into my life. 

Experience, as I did, Egypt and it's goddess, Isis, the mother of all. She is the goddess of nature and magic. Isis exudes power and divinity, and her story shows how she came to be the goddess she is today. She teaches us to be both mighty and embrace our gifts, even if they can't be as awesome as magic. Then travel with me to Japan where we meet Izanami, the goddess of love and mother of the gods. From her we learn the importance of being confident and embracing our womanhood. After all, only women can create life! Izanami knew this and gave birth to the world and all of it's deities according to the Japanese creation myth. Continue on to find out what she wanted to say to women today.

After I met Izanami and learned the stories of her land, I continued on to England where I heard stories of a female knight named Britomart who became known as the faerie queene. She is a pillar of female strength who went on many adventures during her quest to find her lover, a man she'd seen in Merlin's mirror. Her dedication, brawn, and strength make her an icon and her down-to-earth personality makes her a delight. Britomart teaches us how to embrace our strength an honor our bodies by being dedicated and healthy. 

This is the story of my experiences as I explored the world, interviewed it's strongest women, and invoked the goddess in my own life. Join me and be empowered as we learn how to find our inner goddesses. 

Finding Your Inner Goddess: Brainstorming Styles

Topic:
This will be part self-help, part storybook. I'm going to use examples of strong goddesses to teach others how to find their inner goddess and become more confident, powerful, and strong. It will tell of these amazing, powerful goddesses and would choose a story for each goddess to use as an example of their awesomeness and why someone would aspire to be like them. Each story will aim to teach a lesson and help guide the reader to empowerment. It will be fun, but include some of the ways self-improvement could positively impact your life. It would be mostly geared towards women but would also be both insightful and (hopefully) entertaining for the males in this class.


This will also be a fun way to do some self-evaluation and soul searching for me. I have to think about what aspects of goddesses are positive and important and how I want to incorporate that into my own life.

Bibliography:

1. The Journey of Isis  from Egyptian Myth and Legend by Donald A. Mackenzie (1907).
2. Britomart the Faerie Queen  from Stories from the Faerie Queene by Mary Macleod, with drawings by A. G. Walker (1916).
3. The Japanese mythology unit from the un-textbook, taken from The Romance of Old Japan by E. W. Champney and F. Champney (1917).

Possible Styles:

• Interviews
• For this style, each story would be an interview with the goddess who we'd be learning from. The site would be set up like a self-help blog/magazine and would literally give a voice to each different woman but would connect the stories together because they'd be interviews with attached articles written by a writer who hopes to change her chaotic, unfulfilled life. The writer would have her own story which I think would really pull the stories together and make readers connect with the writing. 
• Narratives with instructions for how to integrate teachings into your individual life
• This storytelling style would be written more like a self help novel or book with chapters and third-person stories. I would use lots of pictures and diagrams as well as some possible "quotes" from the women being featured. It would be a pretty simple style but would allow for continuity in my project. It is probably a little bit of a cop out, because it's not a difficult way to write but I think it would still be a lot of fun and would make it easy to read for the other people in the class that would have to read and critique it. 
• World traveler
• This style would be written like a scrapbook/travel journal with lots of pictures from the places the women come from as well as art from those places. It would be a coming of age tale of sorts; a story about a woman who decides to go on a trip around the world to find herself and learn the type of woman she wants to be. It would be enlightening for her and would include an over-arching story about the female narrator.
• Writings from the goddesses
• This would be written as if each story was a letter from the woman being featured. Each would tell her story and what she thinks we could learn from her experience. They would each be written differently to try and show the personality of each woman. After each letter would an author's note of sorts that gives my learning and tips for how to interpret and integrate each goddess's story and teachings. 

Week 2 Project Brainstorming: Topics

Bad Girls of Mythology

• The word "bad" in this sense would not mean evil, corrupt, or wrathful. Instead, it would mean awesome, in-control, and owning it. This storybook would take the more modern usage of "bad" (as often is used in songs to describe bad b**ches) and relate it to seriously cool goddesses who know how great they are and expect to be worshipped. I might up the drama and make it similar to "Bad Girls Club," a television show where bossy, entitled women are thrown in a house to party together. I might have them live together and throw in some drama between them, but I don't want it to be full of catty behavior and rudeness like the TV show is. I want them to find a camaraderie in their shared boss-status and fierceness. 
• I feel like Persephone would be good for this storybook because she has a crappy fate, but ends up being a very powerful player. I think she would be an social media queen if she were a modern woman. I'd use her story from the un-textbook to show how she got where she is but use outside sources to show that she's really a bada** who is here to take the world by storm. I mean come on! She's the queen of the underworld! Her Wikipedia page along with information from Theoi Greek Mythology and Mythic Arts will allow me to give her more character, personality, and sass. Plus, it would help me characterize her in a more modern way.
• This storybook would likely be set in modern times and so I would have to do some real alteration to the stories, but it could be a lot of fun. 

Animals

• This would focus on gods/goddesses and their animal companions. It would highlight the relationship between animals and divine women. It would pain loving pictures of companionship, love, and awesome power. It would be like if you took the Disney princess Jasmine and her pet tiger, Raj, and gave her divine powers; sort of like princesses with powers, pets, and personality to spare. The Egyptian goddess Bastet would be a great example of someone I could include in this storybook due to her binding relationship with cats. In fact, most Egyptian gods/goddesses would be great to write about if focusing on relationships with animals. 
• The Santal Folktales and Khasi Folktales units of the un-textbook would be really great for this storybook. 

Finding Your Inner Goddess, A Guide Through Examples

• This would be part self-help, part storybook. It would use examples of strong goddesses to teach others how to find their inner goddess and become more confident, powerful, and strong. It would tell of these amazing, powerful goddesses and would choose a story for each goddess to use as an example of their awesomeness and why someone would aspire to be like them. Each story would aim to teach a lesson and help guide the reader to empowerment. It would be fun, but include some of the ways self-improvement could positively impact your life. It would be mostly geared towards women though, which could be boring for some of the male students in the class. 
• This would also be a fun way to do some self-evaluation and soul searching for me. I would have to think about what aspects of goddesses are positive and important and how I would want to incorporate that into my own life. 
• Isis might be a really good goddess for this. I could use her story from the un-textbook, The Journey of Isis , as well as further information about her from Egyptianmyths.net , Wikipedia , Britannica , and Goddessgift.com. After all, Isis is the Egyptian mother of all! She would be a great goddess to highlight the best of womanhood. 
• Britomart from the un-textbook might also be cool for this storybook and would become an honorary goddess. She was a female knight and faerie queen, but i'm not sure yet. Here's her Wiki page just in case though. 
• I bet I could also find some cool goddesses in the Japanese mythology reading unit too! 

Women Scorned

• This would be similar to a documentary-style TV show that is both entertaining and based on "true" events. It would profile the women/goddesses and what led up to them freaking out and exacting revenge or otherwise demonstrating their wrath and ending up in jail. It's kind of like the TV show, "Snapped" which is about women who just snap and kill someone, but with goddesses who demonstrated both their power and their fury after being mistreated.  
• One story that would fit in this category would be Venus and Psyche from my week 2 reading. Venus feels she has been wronged from the beginning by Psyche after people start worshiping her as an incarnation of Venus due to her beauty. However, things really go sour when Venus tells her son Cupid to screw Psyche over and instead, he falls in love with her and marries her in secret. I would use the Cupid and Psyche reading unit and tell the story of Psyche and Cupid's love affair and Psyche's beauty in third person, then have a section where Venus gets to give her input on the situation. I would pull information from Wikipedia, the Ancient History Encyclopedia, and Theoi Greek Mythology to ensure that I get Venus's personality right and can include more information about her in order to give some background about why she did what she did (her motive). 

The Bro Code 

• This would be a humorous storybook that would tell the tales of "true bros" and what all bros should learn from their stories. It would focus on friendship/brohood, how to treat your fellow bros, and what men of the past can teach men of today. I think it would be a pretty funny storybook and it would feature such names as Poseidon, Zeus, Rama, Sinbad, etc. 
• My knowledge from being in Indian Epics and reading The Ramayana will help me a lot, plus the Ramayana reading unit will refresh my memory. Rama would be a good person to include in this because he's seen as a great example of honor and manliness, but he is not devoid of emotion. Hanuman would also be good for this, maybe a story with him and Rama, a story of their strong friendship and loyalty, would be good! 
• Another male character could be Sinbad the Sailor. His Wikipedia page paints him as a great hero who goes on many wondrous adventures. Surely, he could lend some insight and advice to this storybook.