Special Guest Blogger: Greek Goddess Hera

So. Here I am. It’s been a while, hasn’t it? You’re probably wondering what I’m doing here. Well, one gets bored. One has eternity to reflect. And let me tell you, when you have an infinite amount of time to think about your life, you start to notice things. Mostly, you notice what an absolute shambles the whole operation was.
My name is Hera but you might know me as Juno if you prefer the Roman interpretation, a bit more stoic, a bit more concerned with drainage and aqueducts, but essentially the same Queen of the Heavens. Goddess of Marriage, Women, and Childbirth.
Honestly, the reputation is a touch unfair. A bit of a hatchet job. They forget that I was, in essence, the CEO of a family-run, multi-universal corporation, and my husband was,well, Zeus.
Where to even begin with Zeus? Imagine the most charismatic, powerful, and utterly untrustworthy man you’ve ever met. Now give him the ability to turn into any animal he fancies and a thunderbolt. That’s my husband. Our marriage wasn’t a union of souls, it was a permanent crisis. My daily job was less about weaving the fabric of destiny and more about paternity tests, damage control, and trying to stop my brother-husband from procreating with the entire Mediterranean livestock population.
A swan, he said. It was for art, he said. Leda, apparently, was thrilled. I was not. Do you have any idea how much paperwork is involved when your husband incarnates as a bird and fathers a set of twins? Then there was the bull with Europa. The golden shower for Danaë. Let me tell you, when your husband’s primary method of seduction involves fraud, bestiality and what can only be described as meteorological financial crime, you’re entitled to get a little tetchy.
And yes, alright, I may have taken it out on the subsequent offspring. Heracles. He strutted about so sending a couple of snakes to his crib was a perfectly reasonable response in my opinion but what would you do if the man who swore to honour and cherish you kept bringing home illegitimate demigods by the dozen?
I was quite proud of my imaginative punishments. Io turned into a heifer, Leto chased across the earth so she couldn’t give birth, poor Semele burnt to a crisp. It all sounds a bit dramatic but someone had to be the adult in the room.
I was the one who had to enforce the rules. I was the one who championed women and not by simpering and encouraging them to be all soft and lovely, but by showing them what happens when you let a man run amok.
I guided the hands of midwives. I blessed the unions that were actually based on love and respect so I wasn’t just about tearing things down, I was about building strong, stable Zeus free families.
My end was a gentle, almost insulting, retirement as one day, the prayers stopped coming. Not all at once. They just thinned. The grand temples became dusty tourist spots and the offerings went from whole burnt oxen to a few wilting flowers and a fiver for the collection box.
Olympus grew quiet and the ambrosia started tasting a bit stale. We were still gods, of course. Immortal. But we were gods on a pension,  a profoundly boring ending imaginable.