Hero's Journeys and Grief Cycles: Parenthood Is Both

Both a grief cycle and a hero's journey share a similar structure of stages, encompassing departure, trials, and return, though with different contexts and emotional tones. The hero's journey, as outlined by Joseph Campbell, follows a character who leaves their ordinary world for an adventure, faces challenges, and ultimately returns transformed. Similarly, grief can be seen as a journey where individuals experience a loss, navigate its emotional landscape, and eventually integrate the experience into their lives, finding a new sense of self and purpose. 

Both models describe deep personal transformation. The Grief Cycle helps understand the emotional stages of processing loss, while the Parenting Hero’s Journey frames the upheaval and growth of becoming a parent as a mythic transformation. They overlap in themes like resistance, suffering, surrender, and eventual growth—but where grief often ends in acceptance, the parenting journey may repeat cyclically, with each new phase (toddler, teen, empty nest) initiating a new call to adventure.

Read Why A Hero's Journey?

By Lisa Reagan

1. Denial / The Call to Adventure (or Refusal)

• Grief Cycle: In Denial, a person shields themselves from the reality of loss.
• Hero’s Journey: In parenting, the Call to Adventure (or its refusal) is the initial tug—feeling overwhelmed or ill‑prepared. Parents often think, “I can’t do this,” echoing denial of the change ahead

Read The Dangers of Refusing the Call of the Hero's Journey in Parenthood

By John Breeding, PhD

Read The Quest for Wisdom: The Elixir of Innersight

By Kelly Wendorf

2. Anger / Emotional Ordeal

• Grief Cycle: Anger emerges as frustration, blame, or resentment.
• Hero’s Journey: Parenting triggers deep psychological reactions—anger, resentment, shame—when children reflect unresolved wounds. The site describes this as being “yanked into the underworld of the deep psyche”.

Read Inner Child, Inner Wisdom Unmasking The Mythology Of The Modern, Uber Parent

By Robin Grille

3. Bargaining / Surrender & Seeking Support

• Grief Cycle: Bargaining involves attempts to regain control (“If only…”).
• Hero’s Journey: Parents seek mentors, methods, rituals (like yoga nidra), and communities to regain balance and inspiration—echoing the bargaining impulse but channeled through surrender and tools for resilience.

Read The Baby is in the Shadow: How Going Back to Heal Our Earliest Life Trauma Can Help Us Go Forward 

By Kate White

Read Transcendent Mentoring of This and Future Generations

By Michael Mendizza

4. Depression / Dark Night & Transformation

• Grief Cycle: Depression marks the profound grieving, an abyss of sorrow and introspection.
• Hero’s Journey: Parenting leads to the “Dark Nights of the Soul”—times of despair, isolation, crippling self-doubt, yet opening doors to transformation and surrender.

Read Parenthood as a Rite of Passage

By Ellie Taylor

Read Parenting in the Shadows of the Soul: Reclaiming the Hidden Treasure

By Meryn Callendar

5. Acceptance / Elixir & Integration

• Grief Cycle: In Acceptance, one reconciles and adapts to life without what was lost.
• Hero’s Journey: Parents emerge with new wisdom, habits, and inner alignment—they return bearing the “elixir” of self-awareness, relaxed presence, and deeper connection to self, partner, and child.

Read Mindful Parenting: The Spiritual Essence of Attachment

By Barbara Nicholson and Lysa Parker

Read The Well-Rested Parent: Surrendering to the Call, Chucking Perfect and Awakening Your Vital Force

By Karen Brody

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Note: The Heroic Grief Cycle, Heroic Grief Journey, Parenting as a Hero's Journey, and any variation on these themes are the copyrighted, intellectual property of Kindred World and their creator, Lisa Reagan.