became, much more than the degree of adversity they encountered.
For example, I have met people who survived childhoods full of
deprivation, cruelty, beatings, or sexual abuse. Moreover, they did
not become (as might be expected) like the adults who abused them.
Despite all the bad they experienced, they felt compassion for others,
both then as well as now. Traumatic experience left its mark; they
were not unscathed, yet an essence of trust, a capacity to love and
hope, a sense of self survived. As I surmised why, I began to under-
stand the difference between heroine and victim.
As children, each of these people somehow saw themselves as
protagonists in a terrible drama. Each had an inner myth, a fantasy
life, or imaginary companions. A daughter who was beaten and
humiliated by her abusive father, and was not protected by her de-
pressed mother, recalled telling herself when she was child that she
was not related to this uneducated, backwoods family, that she was
really a princess who was being tested by these ordeals. Another
beaten and sexually molested child, who as an adult did not fit into
the mold (that battered children eventually batter their children),
escaped into a vivid fantasy life where life was far different. A third
thought of herself as a warrior. These children thought ahead and
planned how they could escape their families when they were old
enough. They chose how they would react in the meantime. One
said, “I would never let anyone see me cry” (instead, she would
walk into the foothills and, out of sight, weep). Another said, “I think
my mind left my body. I’d go somewhere else whenever he started
to touch me.”
These children were heroines and choicemakers. They maintained
a sense of themselves apart from how they were treated. They as-
sessed the situation, decided how they would react in the present,
and made plans for the future.
As heroines, they were not strong and powerful demigods like
Achilles or Heracles, who in Greek mythology were stronger and
more protected than mere mortals (like comic book superheroes or
John Wayne characters). These children, as precocious human
heroines, were more like Hansel and Gretel, who had to use their
wits when they were abandoned in the forest, or when the witch
fattened Hansel for dinner. These children were like the rabbits who
followed a vision to a
The Heroine in Everywoman