A 2018 Silver Nautilus Book Award Winner, The Mythmaker is a personal myth, a fiction, based on author and depth psychologist Dr. Mary Harrell’s life. After the sudden death of her mother, seven young children and an overwhelmed father were left to figure out what to do. Acknowledging that seminal happenings enwombed in our past seek re-membering, and in the tradition of personal mythtelling, Dr. Harrell, began a writer’s journey, to re-collect the meaning of her story. She proceeded in a series of spiralic returns gathering meaningful shards of symbolic experience.
Dr. Harrell, as we all do, found herself asking, “Who or what is here right now, to inform this long ago, and also, present moment?” Such self-reflective activity took her back to memories, not as they were, but as she perceived them to be. With each return, she found a different fiction, an echo, a fabrication, and also the better truth that brought her closer to coherence, that soulful state best described as wholeness. Through this process the past emerged and the full story found its way to the pages of this book. Beyond the death of Dr. Harrell’s mother, an additional reality within The Mythmaker story is irrefutable. An angel, an imaginal figure, began entering the author’s life when she was fifteen years old. The angel’s aim was to be an ally, thereby transforming grief into a story of healing. Her presence reminds us that preposterous aspects of our own myth may inform the deeper truth of our experience.
Mary Harrell unflinchingly greets a cast of imaginal figures who inhabit her life, and encourages all of us to welcome their wisdom into our own inner landscapes. These very real beings dwell in a realm between matter (nature) and mind (reason), appearing in dreams, intuitive callings, visions, feelings, and sometimes frightening events.
