How Transformation Works

All of the main characters in Grey’s Anatomy annoyed me when I first watched it.  I didn’t like any of them.  Izzie was my favourite but only because the actress – Katherine Heigl – was Isabel in Roswell and I absolutely loved that programme.  I first watched “Grey’s Anatomy” when I lived in Japan.  I borrowed the boxed set DVDs from “Tsutaya” – the Japanese equivalent of Blockbuster. I finished the first series and got as far the episodes where Izzy fell in love with a patient, but I cringed so hard at how stupid and overly emotional the doctors were, I had to stop watching. 

But in 2021, something happened that completely changed how I saw it all.  It made sense why they were so annoying.  I started watching again in 2021 and reached a point that I considered to be end of what I wanted to get out of the series.  Well, a part of me is embarrassed to have spent so much time watching it. I have to admit I did question whether I was just addicted to the drama or whether there was something going on.  

Why the characters were so annoying

What shifted for me was learning about a good protagonist in the Save The Cat! story writing methodology.  A good story hero starts with lots of flaws and what makes their story interesting to us is the transformation that they go through.  Once I knew that, then I got what the attraction to Grey’s Anatomy was.  All of those main characters that I didn’t like were flawed heroes.  They had so many problems going on that it was annoying, but it also created a fertile ground for transformation. 

Meredith Grey is the one I’ll focus on here because she has the most obvious transformation.  Not only is actress Ellen Pompeo smashing standards for women in real life by demanding equal pay, the show explored issues of what it is to be a woman and live all of these different roles. 

• She’s daughter to a sick parent
• She’s lover to an unavailable man
• She has a successful career
• She’s a close friend
• She becomes a mother 

When we first meet Meredith, she’s the daughter of a brilliant, renowned surgeon who is in a home suffering with Alzheimers disease. She’s always had a strained relationship with her mother.  She’s naive.  Her love life is messy when she gets involved with a man still married to his cheating ex-wife.  She’s estranged from her dad.  She’s at the starting point of her career, straight out of medical school and will have plenty of learning and growing to do.  She’s the perfect flawed hero. 

Over the first 11 series, she comes close to death and faces an almost laughable number tragedies.  Drowning, hand on a bomb, death of a good friend, survived a fatal shooting, survived a fatal plane crash – far more than a real human would face in a lifetime.  But ridiculous levels of challenge aside, the journey of Meredith is a subtly powerful one for people who identify as female.  In later series, we find out that she called the emergency services when her mother had slashed her wrists in a suicide attempt – partially explaining why some of her brushes with death have had tinges of suicidal thoughts with them.  

Meredith’s Transformation

By the end of series 11, she’s become an accomplished, well-respected surgeon.  She’s changed the course of her children’s lives by making different choices from her mum – balancing the demands of motherhood with the demands of being a surgeon.  She’s lost her husband and she’s alchemised that experience into using supporting people more, giving sage advice to doctors she mentors and caring support to her patients.  Right after Derek dies, the young doctor who failed to push for the CT scan that could have saved Derek’s life cries and apologises to Meredith. Instead of being a victim like she could be, she mentors the young doctor with sage advice saying that Derek is the one loss that will make sure she’s a better doctor from now on. 

She’s embodied the mother and she’s embodied the crone – the 2 more mature feminine archetypes.  

The child in her that was wounded by her career-obsessed, suicidal mother became more and more healed through her different choices and secure relationship to Derek her husband.  The Meredith who emerges after the tragedy of losing her husband is the wise elder Crone.  She’s centred.  She knows who she is and what she’s lost.  She’s not a victim to the awful things that have happened to her and she no longer has the suicidal urges that she witnessed in her mum.  

Coming Home to herself

Series 11 closes with her surrounded by people she’s close to – a wedding party at the spectacular house Derek had built for her and their family.  She’s found herself and through finding herself, she’s found a sense of belonging, community and family with the people already there in her life.  She’s dancing.  Touched by multiple tragedies and wounded, she’s alchemised it all into embodying the mother and the crone, while keeping the free-spirited energy of the maiden – a younger archetype.

There are lots of aspects of Grey’s Anatomy that us regular people who aren’t surgeons can’t relate to.  It’s the deeply human story of a wounded little girl who found herself through relationships and genuine connection.  A little girl who starts off as maiden and grows into mother and then crone – the wise elder woman.     

What it means for you and me

The biggest takeaway from this view of storytelling is to embrace your flaws.  You’re on a journey of transformation – whether you want to be or not.  We can relate to stories and drama series because they reflect back a deep level of soul development and growth that we instinctively understand.  You can pro-actively heal and make improvements in your life and that will get you ready for bigger challenges, but your soul has its own timing and an inner path of development that unfolds.  Through good connections to others, you can reach deeper inside to activate the more mature archetypes within – like the mother (regardless of whether you have children or not) and the crone.  And when you’ve done that, you’re more and more guided by your soul’s guidance and wisdom and become the wise elder to others.