Awakening Your Inner Goddess (Sans Fifty Shades of Grey)
When
I say girls need to awake their inner goddesses, I’m not referring to the kind
of inner goddess described by E.L. James in Fifty
Shades of Grey (though I’m not opposed to awakening that type either). What
I’m talking about is the warrior goddess of power inside each one of us, often
latent and unrecognized in girls who continue to live in a world where men hold
the highest offices in government, church, and the work force. Girls are less subjugated today than they
were fifty years ago, and although the playing field still isn’t perfectly
level, the real culprit holding back most girls is themselves. As Alice Walker
has said, “The most common way people give up their power is by believing they
have none.”
At
the beginning of my Gatekeeper’s Trilogy,
a young adult contemporary fantasy based in Greek myth, fifteen-year-old
Therese Mills believes she’s the least powerful person on the planet. Her parents
have just died. Her aunt has come to live with her in her beautiful home in the
San Juan Mountains of Colorado, but even though this means her friends and
school won’t change, Therese is ready to give up on life to join her parents. Death,
known as Thanatos, has other plans.
Thanatos
briefly meets Therese while she’s in a coma. Avoided by all gods and mortals
because of his job, he’s shocked when she throws her arms around him and calls
him lovely. He later makes a deal with his father, Hades, to go to the
upperworld to win her heart. In return, Therese must agree to avenge her
parents’ murder.
Throughout
book one, The Gatekeeper’s Sons,
Therese struggles with her feelings of ineptitude. Thanatos’s sisters, the
fierce and beautiful Furies, help her hunt for the killer, but their strength
and efficiency make her feel weak. She feels small and insignificant until she
learns her aunt’s life is in danger. The desire to protect her loved one helps
her rise above her self-pity to become the warrior she never knew she was.
In
book two, The Gatekeeper’s Challenge,
Therese is required to complete a set of five challenges designed by Hades, who
hopes to see her fail because he’s disappointed with the way things turned out
in book one. Once again, her desire to protect a loved one—this time
Thanatos—pushes her past her doubts and insecurities into determined action.
One by one, she faces each seemingly impossible challenge—including Ladon (the
one-hundred-headed serpent), the Minotaur, and the Hydra—because it’s the only
way to spare Thanatos from an eternity of torment.
The
final book of the trilogy, The
Gatekeeper’s Daughter (to be released December 1, 2013), once again forces
Therese to look inward. All gods and goddesses serve humanity or the world in
some way, and in order to remain at Thanatos’s side, she must discover her
unique purpose while protecting her loved ones against antagonistic forces. In
all three books, power isn’t something Therese derives from her environment,
but something she finds within her once she believes it’s there. Girls need to awaken
their inner goddesses and wield their power.
