Stories

The Handless Maiden: A Story for Difficult Times

Posted by Diane Morrow on April 18, 2007 in Stories

In Women Who Run With the Wolves, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, a Jungian analyst and storyteller, retells a story about a handless maiden. It’s a story that seems to me a kind of ideal story for a month in which I’m writing about ways in which a person can sometimes get stuck–hit obstacles–get bewildered. The story is one that I’ve found beneficial at crucial junctures in my own life, and it’s a story I have at times told in turn to patients or students when it seems that the labor that began so well—the first giddy success of creativity and vitality—has come to a grinding halt. The story begins when a maiden loses her hands. She really does lose them—her entire hands. They’re cut off. It’s a moment of initiation. A loss of innocence. Her first serious loss. She has these stumps where she used to have hands, and she wanders, grieving, for many years. Eventually, she comes upon a pear orchard. Here, she encounters a beautiful pear—then a king. He’s a good king. He makes her a pair of silver hands and he fastens them to her stumps. They fall in love. It’s a particularly sweet kind of love for the maiden, coming as it does in the wake of grief, when she had only these stumps for hands and when she had all but given up hope. And this moment could serve, in one particular kind of story–say, a romantic story–as an ending. The king and the maiden have fallen in love. Happily ever after. Those exquisite silver hands. But this, as it turns out, is not the ending. Estes writes: . . . this is still not the lysis, resolution. We are only at the midpoint of transformation, a place of being held in love, yet poised to make a slow dive into another abyss. And so, we continue. Complications arise. The king is called to fight in a faraway kingdom. While he’s away it happens that the queen gives birth to their first child. The baby is beautiful. It’s another one of those promising moments, a joyous moment, and, in her joy, the king’s mother sends a message off to the king. The baby is well. The baby is beautiful. But, as can happen, the messenger falls asleep on his way to the king and the Devil comes and intercepts the message, twists it to his own purposes: The queen has given birth to a child who is half dog. The king, on receiving this message, is horrified. But he is a good king. And, in spite of his horror, he sends back to his mother a message of compassion, and entreaty. Please care for the queen and the baby during this difficult time. Yet once again the messenger, overly complacent, falls asleep, and, once again, the Devil intercepts the message. The king’s mother receives this twisted, and tragic, directive: Kill the queen and the child. This is the abyss. This is the time of the twisted message: The writing (or some other creative endeavor) is malformed. It’s ugly–without worth. It’s time to kill it—whatever it is. These kinds of twisted messages can arise inside one’s own head or they can arise out in the world. If such messages do arise out in the world, in...

Writing and Healing Idea #28: Consulting with the Wizard of Oz

Posted by Diane Morrow on March 23, 2007 in Stories, Writing Ideas

I had a dream the other night that a patient came to me and she asked me if I thought that it would be a good idea to bring her illness to the Wizard of Oz and ask him what to do. Inside the dream I thought about it for a while, and then I said, yes, I do think that’s a good idea, but I need you to tell me more about what that would be like for you. What would it be like? Say, that you were the one caught up in the tornado, landing in an entirely new and strange place, and you told a good witch in a lovely dress that you had just been diagnosed with an illness—or another problem had befallen you—stress—loss—some new and thorny problem—or an old and thorny problem—any one of these will do—and say that you told her that what you really wanted was to get back home (as if maybe you suspected that if you only got home you could deal with this—you could figure out what to do next) and the good witch said, well, the smartest one in these parts is the wizard—and I would suggest you follow this road here. . . What would happen next? (And, let’s say, for the sake of the argument, that if this were an illness of some sort you’d already done the usual things—consulted a doctor, seen a specialist perhaps, started some sort of treatment. Say that you were looking for a little more help—not so much with medical care at this point but with the process of healing—figuring out what else you could do, in addition to medical treatment, that might augment the healing inside your body, that might make a difference. As if medical treatment were only the beginning of the quest—say, the crossing of the first threshold—and not its end.) What might the road be like on the way? Would there be helpers? Someone as kind and bumbly as that scarecrow? As innocent as the tin man? And say you made it to the Emerald City? What would you find when you got there? What would you ask? (Would you want to ask something about purpose? Your quest? Your next task? Or maybe just something about getting back home?) What would you hear in response? And then what would happen next? Photo from Telegraph–where photo is sourced from the Everett...

Is the Struggle to Make Meaning Good for Your Health?

Posted by Diane Morrow on December 18, 2006 in Research, Stories

There are two pieces of research I’ve been thinking about this month. Both are about the struggle to make meaning through language and both, I think, are relevant to this whole question of what writing and rewriting our stories. The first study, conducted by James Pennebaker and colleagues in 1997, shows that when people used increasing numbers of insight words or causal words in their writing they showed improvements in health. Examples of insight words are realize, understand, think, and consider. Examples of causal words are such words as cause, effect, reason, and because. In a discussion of this study, Pennebaker writes: “The present analyses indicated that changes in thinking patterns—as opposed to static thinking patterns, which do not change over time—predict improved health.” I find this study terribly interesting. The researchers weren’t trying to measure how insightful these narratives people wrote were, or whether or not they were “good” narratives. What they were measuring—and what seemed to matter—was this process of finding meaning—this indication that, over time, thinking patterns changed. And this process of finding meaning is suggested by sentences that included cognitive words and that might look something like this: I’m beginning to realize . . . I think perhaps . . . I thought I understood what had happened, but now I’m considering . . . Changes in thinking patterns—as opposed to static thinking patterns, which do not change over time—predict improved health. It’s the kind of statement that’s worth considering, I think, and coming back to. It’s the kind of finding that has implications not just for writing and healing, but for healing itself—–...