By Ana Thomas

I will be reading this book for ages and quoting it a thousand times in each life. WOW. This is a masterpiece.

Trista Mateer expertly weaves her own message with Adphrodite’s divine perspective to show how timeless the uphill battle that women have faced when healing from their traumas truly is. The imagery Mateer uses in written form and through other expressive media enables her audience to dream along with her for a chance to heal, forgive and love; to sympathize with Aphrodite’s grief for Medusa’s death and all the other torment that generations of men have caused her; to find the courage to feel our own pain and then let it go.

I am always careful when I begin down the path that leads to generalizing men and blaming all for the horrible things that some have done. I treasure the men in my life and I deliberately speak highly of them and what they are capable of. However, I still understand the rawness of Mateer’s message; not to be confused with hatred for men, but disgust for what they can do to undermine and hurt women. When Aphrodite airs her grievances, she recants, “Men did what they always do, they don’t try to understand, they try to explain…. Couldn’t even bother trying to comprehend it all together — that I could be bloody and beautiful, that I could be divine and approachable” (14). Humans are dynamic, women can be complex. We don’t need to be simplified, we need to be understood. Aphrodite and Mateer speak to my masculine energy with their reminder to take a step back and listen before I speak. They remind me that I can survive tragically one day and dominate the next. I can speak assertively and lead a force; and other days I just need a friend to sit and accompany me through my grief. I can have both highs and lows; sometimes I walk on water and sometimes I must freestyle like everyone else.

When women raise their voice, or show passion and emotion, I’ve noticed men don’t take too kindly to it. Men can throw objects or curse words, they can roar with dignified strength, but the minute a woman raises her volume beyond the preferred tone of politeness, she’s unprofessional. I’ve noticed that we don’t have the same liberty in showing emotion that men have. When Aphrodite described the continuous violation of Medusa’s right to privacy, I couldn’t believe how much I related to this ‘villain’, “[They] hated how loud her trauma was. Couldn’t believe she had the audacity not to take it lying down” (110) Wow. Ain’t that the truth. How dare she fight back and stand up for herself. I realize trauma and professional passion aren’t necessarily the same. But, they both involve a public display of emotion. God forbid such a thing be public. The ability to speak is a blessing and we must be intentional in how we use our voices. We should not abstain from using it.

Lately I’ve been struggling with restraining my anger. I told my therapist that anger is ugly and I’m angry, so I must be ugly. I truly believed that my anger corrupted my insides and was afraid it was going to spillover and show on the outside. I tried to bury my anger and it felt like a war within. Through Mateer’s collection, Aphrodite shed a new light for me on anger when she says, “There is nothing inherently toxic about anger. It is hard not to be angry. There is no reason not to be angry” (114). She empowers women to feel that anger. By one definition, ‘Inherent toxicity’ is “whether a substance is harmful by its very nature to human health or other organisms.” Mateer suggests that anger itself isn’t harmful in nature, which leads me to believe that what we do with our anger is what can lead to the intoxication. We can feel it, but we must not lose our inhibitions to it.

Sometime’s its harder to remember the good times than it is to remember the bad times right before it all ended. The bad times, the burning pain, that’s easier to let go. But that doesn’t mean we don’t forget the deep laughter, the moments of feeling seen and understood, the dreams that were once shared. I have been feeling so guilty for blocking out the good parts and giving myself a chance to completely heal from it all. Mateer eased my guilt with one reminder, “Even a match remembers the moment before it was struck.” (134) The antagonists in our stories were not always our antagonists; they were once our muses, our desires, our passions, our fuel. It’s okay to remember, but you can’t defuse a match and expect it to be the same ever again. It’s okay.

Don’t we all want to know why we’ve been put on Earth? Every day feels like another chance to find our purpose, and once you find it you spend the rest of your life aiming to fulfill it. What a relief it is that as a woman, my beauty isn’t all I should seek to offer. Beauty is a subjective standard we would all live in misery trying to achieve, yet it is still valuable. Aphrodite lightens that burden off our shoulders when she says, “If you were only meant to be beautiful, we wouldn’t have put you down here in the dirt” (140). I didn’t realize how much I needed to hear this. There’s so much to do and so much to be; a message of hope.

I hope you decide to check this book out. Please come back and share your thoughts, because I definitely have more of my own. I enjoyed Trista Mateer’s collection and I can’t wait to read it again.

References
https://setac.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/etc.4881