Gifts & Wounds: Walking the Path of Genius with Michael Meade

Hi friends —

This week on Good / True / & Beautiful I sat down with Michael Meade—renowned storyteller, mythologist, and host of the Living Myth podcast—to explore what he calls the Path of Genius. If you’ve ever wondered how to find (or re-find) your calling in the noise of modern life, this conversation is a compass.

Michael’s story starts with a “right wrong book”—a mis-shelved copy of Mythology by Edith Hamilton that landed in his hands at 13. That night, he says, he “found the language of his life.” From there, myth and story became not just subjects to study, but a way of seeing—and healing—the world.

Why this episode matters

• Genius → Calling → Purpose. In Michael’s frame, we don’t show up empty. We arrive gifted and aimed. Calling isn’t a scavenger hunt outside of us—it’s the quiet resonance inside that pulls us into the world.

• Gifts and wounds travel together. As our gifts expand, our wounds announce themselves. Growth is learning to offer the gift and tend the wound.

• Stuckness is a threshold. Feeling stuck? The ego may be jammed, but the soul isn’t. Stuck places often mean you’re within reach of the next door.

• Initiation we missed. Modern life skips rites of passage; life supplies them anyway—through challenge, loss, surprise. These moments aren’t detours; they’re doors.

A few lines that stayed with me

• “Each soul comes into the world gifted and aimed. The calling calls to what is already inside us.”

• “The path is made of gifts and wounds. As the gift grows, the wound asks to be healed.”

• “When everything is collapsing, there’s an acceleration of calling. The world needs our particular gifts, given.”

If you’re asking, “Where do I begin?”

Michael’s counsel is disarmingly simple: go to what you love—or go to where it hurts—and take one honest step. Small engagement with the thing you love (or gentle attention to the place that aches) often reveals the next bit of path.

🎧 Listen to the episode: Michael Meade on the Path of Genius — Play the interview
(We talk myth as a medicine, calling in a distracted age, why the ego gets stuck, and how to hear the voice that keeps calling.)

If this conversation resonates, forward it to a friend who’s mid-pivot or mid-question. The path is personal, but we don’t have to walk it alone.

Grace & peace,
Ashton

About Michael Meade
Michael Meade is a storyteller, author, and scholar of mythology, anthropology, and psychology. He’s known for weaving spellbinding myth with cross-cultural ritual and practical wisdom. He hosts the Living Myth podcast and is the author of Awakening the Soul, The Genius Myth, Fate and Destiny, Why the World Doesn’t End, and The Water of Life.

P.S. Quick takeaway for the week: Treat stuckness as a threshold. Ask: what small, loving action can I take toward what I truly love—or toward the place that hurts? Then take that one step.