Zora Neale Hurston once wrote, “there is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside of you.” Hurston knew the psychic distress that stems from the visceral need to tell our stories. She reminds us too that, if we listen closely, the “agony” acts as a catalyst for the quest to know the narratives that give us deeper knowledge of ourselves and of each other.
Throughout her life, Dr. Oropeza has been preoccupied by a restlessness to be near the feminine, to bridge the gap of her knowledge of women’s voices, and feminine instincts and histories of resistance. While she cannot transcend the ambiguities and pinpoint the precise moment when the heroine sets out towards a deeper sense of her matrilineal, she does know that it is this yearning that landed her at Pacifica.
In this talk, Dr. Oropeza will share the ways that grappling with grief stemming from the wounds that have been inflicted on the feminine, especially in her lineage, led her on a deep search for the stories that have given her greater access to a matrilineal heritage, symbolic and personal. She will discuss how the critical study of mythology and depth psychology has settled at the intersections of both her professional and personal lives. We hope you will join her to explore the crossroads of our journeys of self-discovery.