5 Powerful Quotes About Personal Transformation From ‘Circe’

Enclosed: thoughts and reflection questions to hone that growth

Book: Circe Author: Madeline Miller

Circe is a book that changed my view on fiction.

Before this, I had a narrow taste in fiction, preferring mystery or fantasy something with an intense, moving plot. The excitement from these genres was predictable — it came from the surprise culprit reveal or the otherworldly concepts that I could lose myself in.

I suppose Circe still fell in the realm of fantasy, telling the story of a character woven into some classic Greek mythology, including Prometheus and Odysseus.

Her story is one of resilience and transformation, one to inspire our own reflections on our growth.

“That is one thing gods and mortals share. When we are young, we think ourselves the first to have each feeling in the world.”

This quote speaks so clearly that experience of having adolescent mood swings for the first time, thinking that we’re the only person to ever experience such a thing this strongly. For the longest time, I remembered these teen moments as my “cringe era”.

I cringed about how big my teen emotions were and the thing I did to stand out against the crowd or to blend it and not be noticed. I cringed at how much I pretended not to care about being loved, but spent every moment building and working for love and worth in the wrong places.

A lot of the time, I cringe about these things because I knew what terribly obvious consequence was coming in hindsight, and I knew how I acted in those days was dumb.

I wish I had been smarter.

But, in reading Circe’s story of growing up, I came to forgive myself for these classic experiences. As this story unfolded, I realized I had moved past the era of cringing about my adolescence.

It became enough of a distant past that I could see myself in the teenage version of Circe without cringing. Yes, we both yearned for love, thinking that if you’d sacrifice the world for this one person that they’d necessarily reciprocate and do the same for you. Yet, I no longer find shame in it, knowing that I know better now and that at the time, there was no way I would ever know better.

In reading about her fictional journey, I forgave myself. That’s the power of a story, fictional or real, in highlighting past experiences and indicating changes in how we relate to those experiences given time and air.

Reflection questions: Did you have a cringe era? Are there aspects of your past you try not to think of because of the negative emotions (especially shame) associated with it? What is the source of that shame? Has anything changed since then? Do you currently feel comfortable or safe enough to view this era in a different way?

“I thought once that gods are the opposite of death, but I see now they are more dead than anything, for they are unchanging, and can hold nothing in their hands.”

This book portrayed the classic Greek Gods as lazy and hedonistic, chasing feasts and beauty and luxury and perfection without truly knowing pain or suffering.

Circe, daughter of Helios (the Sun God), though borne from this history did not follow these footsteps. Her story of being exiled for a dumb teenage mistake shows a stark contrast, with elements of loss and pain and betrayal even though (and perhaps especially because) she had magic on her side.

Though not necessarily human, Circe’s characterization is really close to being one, if “being human” means the full spectrum of deriving joy from existence but also from stumbling awkwardly through loss, pain and betrayal.

And maybe this links to the previous quote. Being human means to have been quite naive for a lot of our lives, and then to become a tiny bit smarter, smart enough to know just how naive we’d been in the past. That naivete likely led us to pain and suffering. Without pain and suffering, there was no growth, only hedonistic chases after meaningless dopamine hits.

Reflection questions: How has pain, loss and betrayal shown up in your life? What role did they play? What part of the healing process are you in from these events? What kind of support might be helpful to you in this current stage?

“You are wise,” he said.

“If it is so,” I said, “it is only because I have been fool enough for a hundred lifetimes.”

That foolishness, repeated day in, day out, became wisdom in Circe’s story. In a way, phrases like this embedded in Circe’s character arc helped me heal as it helped her character in the story heal.

With a safe distance from the dumb things I did in adolescence, I was able to learn from that pain and suffering. And that took a lot of tripping up and bandaids over scrapes and cuts.

With this revelation comes this important caveat that often this message is twisted such that others push us to heal even though we’re still bleeding. It comes from others’ urgency to not have to tolerate this distress from witnessing your pain. It’s this weird twisted form of empathy that is superficially applied to remove pain, but in the attempt, stabs you deeper.

We often sweep people into forgiveness because forgiveness, in theory, is a virtue. It’s something that acts as glue so that wounds in the past can scar over, strengthening connections as we move forward. That is if the wound heals in due time, and there have been changes in behaviour made.

This tells the other side of this nuanced story. Wounds can be healed when we satisfy the criterion of having enough distance and to be in a context where you can safely behave in a totally different way. It tells the story that wounds can be healed by listening to the stories and experiences of others healing accompanying me on this journey as well.

It reminds me of Jee Young Park’s response to my article Four Ways that Therapists Can Be Racist that really touched me:

I completely gave up on therapy as a result of these problems which you so gracefully put into words. This article alone helped me heal in ways I could not have with a trained therapist, no matter how many times sessions I “work through”. Thank you.

Sometimes, in others’ stories, we heal. That is the power of writing.

Reflection questions: What mistakes do you still think about from time to time? What is your relationship with this past mistake? In whose stories do you find comfort? What is most comforting about their stories? Which stories are you ready to tell? Who do you think might take comfort in your stories? What other meaning do you derive from sharing these stories?

“It is a common saying that women are delicate creatures, flowers, eggs, anything that may be crushed in a moment’s carelessness. If I had ever believed it, I no longer did.”

Circe’s transformation was a powerful character development arc, particularly of her spending her time in exile.

Though not exactly the same, spending a lot of time alone during the pandemic, I saw growth in myself too, reflecting on past decisions. In building a space that was truly my own and being comfortable within it without external intervention, I learned a lot more about myself than I did when constantly bombarded by messages from the outside world.

I learned that like Circe, I was perfectly fine on my own sometimes too.

I also reflected on the many “norms” I clung to help define value in various ways.

As a kid, particularly as a teen, there were such cookie-cutter narratives about what it meant to be “popular”. A lot of imposing expectations of being in a “successful” heteronormative relationship as a way of showing that she was desirable. A lot of these expectations were related to attractiveness and sometimes disgustingly sexualizing girls. (Like, why did I constantly worry about my boobs being too small and saving up for a push-up bra when I was 14???)

Discarding the notion that you have to be pretty or sexy to be worthy as a human being seems obvious in retrospect, but honestly not so much to my teen self, bombarded with photoshopped models crafted towards a certain image.

In other words, I do not have to be a flower to be valuable as a woman. If I choose to be, because art and beauty give me joy, then that’s my choice. But no one else gets to decide that for me.

Reflection questions: What “norms” did you hold yourself to, or felt pressured to assimilate to? Where do those norms come from? To what degree do you find meaning in those norms? (Or, which parts of the norms do you find valuable vs. meaningless?) In an ideal world, which aspects would you bring forward in your life and which aspects would you leave behind to be forgotten?

“Only that: we are here. This is what it means to swim in the tide, to walk the earth and feel it touch your feet. This is what it means to be alive.”

When you finally wash away these external narratives imposed on us on what we “need” to be in order to be loved and worthy, you find the essence of what it means to exist.

In this quote, I see presence and mindfulness. Her moments spent alone could be summed up in this quote, describing the experience of being present. Of being able to feel the earth and have it speak back to you. Speaking the words of what it means to feel alive.

Disconnected with the world (particularly by turning off all my digital devices for at least a few hours each day) helped me feel more connected with myself. Sure, these pieces of technology were key during the pandemic to connect with the outside world, but sometimes they were … let’s say… a bit much.

These moments I had alone were tiny versions of Circe’s exile, where she spent her days honing her witchcraft and connecting with the ingredients she worked with.

For me, my witchcraft was cooking, and I found mindfulness and presence in quite ordinary things, including making popcorn.

I also found such adventure and fun in diving headfirst into weird cooking experiments.

In a time where I felt pressured to “use all this extra time” to do more readings, attend more virtual conferences, write more papers, I disconnected from these expectations and formed my own on what truly gave me joy.

Sure, I still do like research, but I only like it enough to do it for 40 hours a week, and I’m keeping it that way. To rekindle my curiosity in the world I also experiment with art, writing and cooking as forms of self-care.

While it seems like some others can dedicate their every waking hour to academia (though I often wonder if that’s true), I found my own balance in showing up equally to my job as a grad student and also having enough left at the end of the day to be myself.

Reflection questions: What does it mean to you to be present? What is an example of an instance recently where you’ve felt present and calmed by what you were doing? What did you like about it? What would you change about it? What is an example of an instance recently where you’ve felt presented and excited by what you were doing? What did you like about it? What would you change about it?

Takeaway

Circe was an incredible work of fiction that helped me reflect and grow alongside the main character’s transformation.

• I grew out of the shame I felt from my teenage “cringe era”.
• I reflected on how pain, loss and betrayal often make us human.
• I found comfort in someone else’s stories, finding myself in their footsteps and healing alongside them.
• I rejected existing norms that were marketed to me and possibly led me down that earlier mentioned path of the “cringe era”.
• I found meaning in presence and mindfulness, genuinely enjoying who I am in the present and building myself space where I love spending time.

What were your thoughts on the book?

Hi I’m Lucy Dan 蛋小姐 (she/her/她) and I’m finally on the roll of reading books again, after a long post-high school hiatus. In spending time reflecting on these books, I also find deeper meaning and relationship with the things I’ve read, instead of feeling like I’ve simply consumed and discarded those experiences.

Hop down the rabbit hole? 🐰🕳