knowing your own mythology: the life-saving act

icarus, pratītyasamutpāda, and the alternate shapes of 'mental illness' by Audrey Nova di Mola

i’m thinking about icarus. 

it’s daybreak and there is golden light spilling in— the kind of light that always made me want to continue living.

i realize now, some years on from this journey, from ‘proper’ ‘time in crisis’ 2015-2019, how vital Images have been in being able to make contact with others and communicate from inside whatever i was fighting through/assailed with.

two of the images first emergent were: icarus, for myself. and for what i was experiencing: the nothing, from the neverending story.

i wrote , in 2015 or 2016:

i still remember the blue sky. maybe that’s what i always remember about it- the thick jungly fog made of sweat and dissolving language.

i don’t want to be this pain anymore. i don’t want to become. i just want to be.

i don’t want to be afraid of myself, of my genetics, that living room pin of windowed daylight pushed into my brain- it broke something. it cut off something.

something i am feeding myself, something i am doing or not doing, something i- do with my legs i think it’s called running but now that doesn’t work anymore too.

i have been chased by the nothing my entire life.

my brain it spins into a coil snapping at my fingers, blood- when i try to move toward anything, complete.

my pain is bellowing like a snake ecstatically unhinged, open mouthed- snapped back, lucid.

even my body can’t remember how to belong to itself. how to please itself. how to sit with itself, look at itself, really SEE—

[…]

so much of this journey, i am seeing, Is about Seeing. is about building, trusting, engendering the capacity to behold or withstand what you See. not what you Want to see. not what Others Tell You that you see. but what is Actually there.

in a traditional ‘mental health’ or biomedical model configuration we are given the frameworks for what we see, perceive, experience. we are analyzed via a book, and given a ‘solution.’ something that has been really Important for me is to make the implicit explicit. the parts of these definitions, these frameworks, that our minds may glaze or pass over, but our souls Know, therein, that something is awry.

if we slow down the process we can really Look at some definitions of ‘psychosis,’ for instance— something part of my diagnosis and which by traditional standards i experience (and still experience):

* National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI): “Disruptions to a person’s thoughts and perceptions that make it difficult for them to recognize what is real and what isn’t. These disruptions are often experienced as seeing, hearing, and believing things that aren’t real.”

* National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH): “A person’s thoughts and perceptions are disturbed and the individual may have difficulty understanding what is real and what is not.”

* Mind UK: “Psychosis (also called a ‘psychotic experience’ or ‘psychotic episode’) is when you perceive or interpret reality in a very different way from people around you. You might be said to ‘lose touch’ with reality.”

* NHS- National Health Service, England: “A mental health problem that causes people to perceive or interpret things differently from those around them.”

* Good ol’ WebMD: “It causes you to lose touch with reality. You might see, hear, or believe things that aren’t real.”

* The Oxford English Dictionary: “A severe mental disorder in which thought and emotions are so impaired that contact is lost with external reality.”

‘what is real and what isn’t.’

‘what is real and what is not.’

‘contact is lost with external reality.’

‘perceive or interpret things differently from those around them.’

again— if we slow this down, really slow it down. we can see how this is Hugely problematic. akin to the Huge problem of The Myth of Normal. that there Exists Somewhere a golden standard of what is Normal, and what is Real.

in trying to hold the coincidentia oppositorum, the alchemical coincidence of the opposites— i was attempting to participate in the ‘normal world,’ appear Normal, play the roles and show up in the ways that were familiar to me, to maintain the all-important Belonging— and then also increasingly and continually experience this ‘Other World’ breaking in on the ‘usual world.’ 

i had grounding in this because in childhood and young teenage years that Was my world. on car rides and family trips and solo swims in our backyard pool and before i went to sleep and definitely in school while i was often anxious or overwhelmed— i was living in the worlds inside my head. whole other lives, whole other worlds. this was no unfamiliar thing to me. but to have it Breaking In— Bleeding Through— in the way that it was. and tangled up, Now, with other things— interfering voices, rushing torrents of thoughts, things telling me to jump off the triboro bridge or veer my bike into traffic, things that made me lash out or curl in on myself and not be able to communicate at all. 

this is where the elders, the shamans, the guides— are sorely missing in our village. therapists can Help with this but it truly depends the framework and how they choose to work in their field. 

who teaches you how to Discern? because it is This discerning that, for me, has been crucial in continuing to live or choosing to die. it is This parsing out that allows you the tender and tremulous space in which to not throw out All the ‘alternate state’ experiences in ye olde ~one fell swoop.~ to want to quell All the incoming information and All the voices and All the discomfort and strangeness— instead of doing the alchemical dance and leaning further in to see What Is What.

sometimes it is or feels like an Impossibility. 

and it is why this work Always, Always, has to be in a context wider/larger than one’s singular self.

we need community. we need way-showers. we need those guides and elders. we need conversations and visibility. not one therapist or psychiatrist in a room where we go to ‘put this behind us’ and ‘get back to our lives.’ i have been Hugely helped by therapy. but/and— that is not the panacea. inherently, in the highly interwoven, ecological nature of these kinds of states/experiences— that is literally not the point. 

writing this brings to the surface for me, again, those questions of belonging and self-acceptance. how can you make yourself visible in states that bring in so much turmoil and so much shame? it is Why, in best case scenarios, the therapist’s office becomes the safe place. a different kind of relationship that can be built with continual showing up, with willingness, with Trust. (again, best case scenarios here because we all know the damage that can and has happened in these spaces, just the same). we remember what we have forgotten— the nature of containers and container-work. in an overculture in which we are blasted with information and notifications from all sides, in endlessly scrolling streams of content— nothing is contained. there is no boundary-line from that personal self to the world and to the inputs of the world. you can be contacted at any time, pull out your phone and have the equivalency of ‘All The World’s Knowledge’ at your fingertips. the movement of life has gotten faster and faster; more and more overwhelm; more and more lack of Safe Space; and again, i’ll take it back further— a lack of even understanding or knowing What That Even Is. and this is not because of ‘mental illness’— it is because of the lack of the village, of family dynamics and upbringing, of not having the tools or the resources and certainly not the old woman in the forest beckoning to you with whisper or torchlight saying, There Is Another Way.

icarus was that original mythic image for me— always the one flying too close to the sun and melting my wings. i thought that was what a great artist, a prolific poet, was. and everyone Blames icarus. it’s his own fault for Wanting Too Much. i find myself even now recoiling from the words. there is no actual sense of Why this happened, outside of icarus just being too young and too fucking stupid to fly along the way his father was, to survive their traversal over the sea.

icarus was entwined in my image of suicidality, as well. my image of Release was standing on the railing of the triboro bridge and leaping like a bird into the sky. crashing to the river just the way icarus crashed to the sea. i have always been enchanted by flight, flying— not in planes, apparently, ha— but the idea of being a bird, of having wings, of being a human with wings. and i could see myself, i could see it— and it felt so Good to see, this clarity— this jumping Out, and Away— sometimes all i could see was that jumping from the railing. and i thought i’d crack against the water’s surface, and that would be that.

strangely— earlier this year— held in a sudden-oncoming, a cauldron of mythic-image and primordial intensity, i felt one night, waking in the in-betweens, that that image was being Held to my vision in a way i couldn’t twist from. something wanted me To See— all these years past my ‘active suicidality’ or ‘active crisis’ time— myself jumping the bridge. every moment, the orchestration of it.

but/and Then.

i was also being shown the Rest of it. how much i actually wanted to Live.

i was being shown myself in the roiling river waters, fighting to stay Alive.

and in another variant of the image, i was shown the Verticality of it. 

that after plunging into the river the image Expanded— and i didn’t die or drown— but i went further downward, inward. the Kingdom of the Neath, i have called it sometimes. 

There Was A Whole Other World Down There.

there wasn’t just me cracking the surface, being knocked out, drowning.

[…]

back to icarus.

this image returned to me in winter ‘22 into ‘23, especially while i was writing/attempting to write a solo show called ‘grace period.’ it was accepted into the festival i had long-wanted to be a part of, but i decided after the fact that it would be emotionally harmful for me to actually ‘perform’ it at that time, although i am still hugely proud of the work and its process.

here is the blurb i had written for it:

A storyteller and adult child of a dysfunctional family is inspired by the myth of Ariadne to trace threads back through the labyrinthine complexity of her intergenerational trauma. In familial narratives and patternings of pain that feel so inextricable, what happens when we venture into the darkness in attempt to individuate, to heal, to Change? An autobiographical solo show offering an honest glimpse into the tangles of what tracing the secrets and “reasons Why” is actually like, examining the inter- and inner-weavings of love, shame, violence, and unprocessed grief.

in spending time inside the myth of ariadne you begin to see that it is not only about ariadne at all. there is king minos, there is the queen pasiphaë, there is the minotaur, there is the labyrinth, there is theseus. there is daedalus. and there is icarus.

fittingly in a myth that so centrally features Thread is an interweaving and entanglement of myth-beings (as i don’t enjoy calling them ‘characters’) that, much like in ‘real life’ are all Affecting each other. as i mined my own familial history and the trauma therein there was a want to find Who Was At Fault— how the fuck this happened— how the fuck we got here— but as in the labyrinth myth, we are following a movement of energy, a current, and not a singularity.

i bring this up here so specifically because i’ve realized that this is what happens in traditional mental illness diagnoses, especially when received by a psychiatrist aiming to prescribe you something. (i should mention here that i am not ‘anti-medication’— i am anti lack of choices and education). you become a Singularity. you become targeted. you are diagnosed and ‘solutions’ are prescribed that further disconnect you from the ecosystem that co-created the instance/situation you find yourself in. in my own experience, as kind as the psychiatrist was, there was no stretching back and into trauma, into all the complex subsets of intertwining behaviors that create conditions for ‘mental illness’— including concepts as ‘rudimentary’ as sleep habits and nutrition.

i wrote this list out for the myth and mental health talk i did for dr. sharon blackie’s substack and it is reproduced nowhere else but in my voice, so i will share it here. these are some/most/many of the Actual factors contributing to ‘My State’— the wider/larger aperture from which to view the pinhole i was given via my 2018 bipolar II and anxiety disorder diagnosis.

this comes direct from my talk notes:

the litany of ‘what this actually is’

THE FACTORS THAT ARE ACTUALLY IN PLAY HERE:

guilt and shame

codependency

narc abuse and emotionally immature caregivers

being a parentified child, meditator, witness, secret-holder

enmeshment

attachment patterns

relational trauma

intergenerational trauma

coping mechanisms

dysregulated nervous system

nutrition

sleep

community or lack thereof

patterns in relationships

cumulative effects of destructive behavior

rugged individualism

purpose and belief

workaholism

saviorism

self-worth

heartbreak

ungrieved grief

inherited grief

lack of actual safe spaces, lack of spaciousness in general (because everyone’s always ‘trying to survive’)

HIGHLY SENSITIVE PERSON / empath

energy / absorption / porosity

predatory energy / malevolent entities - WHOLE OTHER THING!

resources / living conditions

BELONGING

absence of the village, of elders, of mentorship

lack of rites of passage

BOUNDARIES- i didn’t even really start learning what those were until i was 31

a sense of ‘ENOUGHNESS’

cultural, societal, overcultural narratives- ‘NORMAL’

being a griefbearer (as expressed by my friend oscar of tending the fires)- being given an unequal amount of the unprocessed pain of generations

LACK OF CARE

the responsibility targeted and directed toward THAT SINGULAR PERSON ONLY as if these symptoms or behaviors manifested in a vacuum ‘out of nowhere’ and this thing needs to be FOUGHT KILLED TAMPED DOWN CONQUERED

this is the ecosystem of LIFE.

this is what is dismembered, sawed off, by the overculture when we look through a pinhole at folks via the narrow lens of a diagnosis or the biomedical model or even through our own judgment of ‘difference’

[…]

‘The Lament for Icarus’ by H. J. Draper (1898)

icarus— the beauteous, tragic figure many of us can easily call into our mind. we feel like we know his story, the ‘cautionary tale.’ and, And, we love exalting the artists, musicians, poets, writers, actors, People— who live out his story ~in a blaze of glory~, dying tragically but after leaving a prolific and deeply affecting body of work. how we, how our overculture, loves to sit in the glow of the flaming comet of a person who Makes Beautiful, Powerful Art— and we Still don’t have enough conversations about why this person is unsupported, uncontained, unresourced, ‘in danger.’ why, as i noticed many years ago now— how the bios of some of my favorite artists were pinpricked with a quickly jotted line referencing ‘time in a sanitarium’ or ‘a nervous breakdown.’ what if i want to Pause, what if i want to Zoom In— what if i pull myself out of this tragi-beautiful lineage of martyred artists, as robert bly said in his exploration of ‘the maiden king,’ thinking they are riding the firebird but ending up on a thanatos trip—?

icarus was ‘flying too close to the sun’ because he had been trapped in the darkness of the labyrinth with his father daedalus, Who Also Designed It. can you imagine, architecting a prison so cunningly that Even You can’t get out of it—?

with intentionally, grossly broad strokes:

the labyrinth was constructed, by decree of king minos, to hold the minotaur.

the minotaur came into existence, unintentionally, because of king minos’ own actions. because he did not want to sacrifice a white bull to poseidon, but instead to keep the creature for himself— he was blighted by the gods and his wife, queen pasiphaë, became destined to fall in love with/lust for that bull and to procreate with it (daedalus the inventor also created a costume/apparatus of sorts for this to be possible …) and the minotaur was born. he was not slain, he needed a place for holding.

the minotaur— king minos’ half-son. ariadne’s half-brother.

in a certain arrangement and with varying frequency, youths were brought to the labyrinth and offered up to the minotaur— theseus was one of these, who was bent on having a different end to the story (slaying the minotaur)— ariadne sees him, falls in love, and wants to help him survive his traversal through the labyrinth— she seeks the counsel of (yep) inventor daedalus who offers a ball of string, twine, yarn— the Clew— to help him find his way out …

[cut to] daedalus and icarus are imprisoned in the labyrinth as punishment after theseus navigates the maze, slays the minotaur, and he and ariadne escape.

even with these broad strokes, can you see the overlapping circles of responsibility and action-taken and hubris and (i say this in the theatrical sense) drama— that lies beyond just ariadne’s story, or beyond that of icarus? he wasn’t just flying into the sun because he was young and stupid or impetuous. he was flying ‘too close’ to the sun because he had spent too long in the dark. he had spent too long— not being or feeling Free.

from a poem of mine from 2015, called ‘somewhere else’:

someone said

michelangelo said

lord, grant that i may always

desire more than i

can accomplish-

why am i always

icarus?

at least i had wings.

once.

this summer

has been the sound of

wings crashing

into sea

did they even

make a sound?

or did

daedalus’ eyes

absorb everything

after the fall-

hide the sound

of the sea

inside every shell

so he could never

hear it again,

the irreparable

calm.

i like picking up

the shells

i like noticing

what’s different

i like comparing

what my presence

has done.

if you could be

somewhere else

right now

where

would you be?

and if you finally had

the choice to go

would you?

the winged maybe

want to crawl

while the coiled wish

they could fly

or is that just

us?

human awareness

always wishing

for some other life?

someone told me

there are only two

choices,

no and

fuck yes.

but what do you do

with all the damn

gray?

all the damn

moments.

there is no such

thing as

duration,

she wrote

with the shells

on the beach.

everything is

always

changing.

maybe icarus has

a fin now

maybe it’s better to

force some

resolutions

when there

are none.

[…]

the first page in my third book, WILDLIGHT, self-published in 2018— which spans most of my time in crisis in poetry and prose— reads as follows, with a photo of me on the opposite page, on my then-roof wearing a blue-green and brown winged shawl i still have; a self-timed photo of myself, open with outstretched arms:

after crashing to the sea, icarus returned as the messenger.

this one’s for me.

[…]

to Know Your Own Mythology, for me, feels like the key in the prison cell. 

Knowing, here, which also implicitly speaks to the kind of Knowing that also inherently holds space for the Not-Knowing— which is drastically different from avoidance of/ignorance to/lack of awareness of something. it is an ability to dance with, bear or meet or hold, the void-space. the Mystery.

my journey through the mental health/mental illness landscape has been following My Own Clew/Clue Down, and In. it has been literally life-saving to not stop at the threshold of the biomedical model, the DSM, the well-meaning friends and family, the psychiatrist, the boss, the ‘family history’— stop at the threshold of Everything Else That Could Possibly Be, and Be Realized— and turn back.

My Whole Life has been here. here, in the beyond. beyond what i was given or provided. not only in diagnosis and ‘mental illness’ framework but from my family, from the overculture, from my learned/inherited/absorbed patternings and orientations. from the Myth of Normal, and What Is Real and What Isn’t, and the all-pervasiveness, the destructiveness, of Shame. from the lack of acknowledgment and uplifting and bowing-the-head-to the Actuality of the sanskrit term pratītyasamutpāda— the interdependent co-arising that is the Actuality of our Lives.

do not allow yourself to be viewed through the pinhole. 

do not allow the Truth and Fullness and interconnectedness of your story, your Own sacred ecology, to be dismembered, tossed into the refuse of the exiled as if it doesn’t exist.

do not feel like The Only One, because you are not. you Are the Only One— in your own blessed uniqueness; yes, and thank the gods for that. but you are not the Only One Suffering in the midst of throngs of ’The Normal, Healed, and Healthy People.’ you are not the only one Struggling. you are not the only one wrangling and wrestling with voices, angels, terrors, and revelations.

do not allow yourself to be shamed by the overculture, by your family, by your peers or colleagues. by practitioners. by Your-Self.

do not believe that in Being Yourself you are destined to Never-Belong.

do not allow your Difference to destroy you.

[…]

there’s a Whole World Out There, for you, i Promise. 

teeming with the interconnectedness that can reweave us, Wounds and All.

Wounds and All.

And, as the greatest and gentlest and most courageous and most sensitive explorers and seekers, teachers and learners, of This time and times past, have discovered:

as it has Always been— 

The Way Out is The Way In.

<3

---

Audrey Nova di Mola traverses the wilds of the deep heart. She is a New York City born and based soul-led + earth-centered artist, oral tradition storyteller, and writer/poet– continually evolving! For over a decade (15 years and counting?!) she has dedicated herself to exploring inner and outer landscapes as sacred space-holder, creative facilitator, interdisciplinary event curator, and community organizer. She is a devoted tender (of hearts and spaces), a Listener to primordial energies, and a psychopomp/medial being offering adventurous, care-oriented gatherings, 1-on-1 journeys, mythic support and accompaniment. 

She is part of the teaching faculty for the Institute for the Development of Human Arts’ recent Transformative Mental Health Core Curriculum with a module called ‘The Mythic Lens: How Context Changes Story,’ and has facilitated creative mental health events/presentations such as: ‘How We Create & How We Cope: Intersections of Art & Mental Illness,’ and ‘A Prayer To See & Be Seen: Creative Reframing for Mental Health.’

She is honored to assist in carrying forth the legacy of her late great storytelling teacher, Daniel ‘3D’ Deardorff, with the Mythsinger Legacy Project , and is involved in international mythopoetic communities like The Fifth Direction and Dr. Sharon Blackie’s Substack, ‘The Art of Enchantment,’ where she gave the June ‘24 talk: ‘Myth + Mental Health: Wulf Speak + Heart-Eye Vision.’

You can find Audrey on Substack at the Angel; for wrestling , on Instagram @wildbodydreaming, and more on her heart-work here . 

Stay tuned for the stars aligning for a re-launch/re-birth of her 2019 4th book, THE BOOK OF LEGEND , called its ‘own unique unrepeatable genre— a new species of book,’ a crystallization of the teachings and adventures that saved her life, around Autumn Equinox September 2024.

She is hugely grateful to Chaise Levy for the opportunity to share these words and his facilitation/welcoming of such a rich discussion on the podcast (which is available now here on the Northern Spirit House). <3