Finding a way out and how to stay out

This part of the story is about finding, making and using tools. Once the tools are available and in use, the hero can survive her future.

The princess picked up the silver spoon and began to dig. She dug a stairway all along the edge of the hole. Step by step she dug out ledges and little outcroppings and shelves until she was most of the way up and out of the hole. Then she found herself surrounded by her shredded dresses hanging from the roots of the hearth. When she looked through the mirror at the threads of her shredded dresses, she saw the truth of what they could become.

She began to weave the cloth. It was hung to the walls of the hole all the around in a circle. She wove a garment hooded and flowing. It sparkled with the gold and silver thread. The princess wove protection into the weave and weft of this cape. The cape became a shield against all encroaching deceptions. The princess learned to block unhealthy attacks using the cape. Of course she first had to learn, as we all do, how to block unhealthy attacks from her own mind. This learning made the cape stronger and more protective.

When the princess finally got to the top of hole and back into the kingdom, she was able to use the mirror and see people for what they truly were no matter what kind of spell they had cast. She used her cape to fend off unhealthy attacks. The prince found his wife and the princess found her children, and they were able to be a family again.

Some tools come from friends and mentors and some come from the strengths of the past and some need to be created in the present moment in order to fill a persons protective needs.

The Mentor

Now we go back to the hero and her experience.

The princess bounced off the edges of the hole. From root to rock she rolled and fell. Finally she landed at the bottom of the hole. It was deep and dark and it felt like time itself had stopped in the slow stagnant place. The princess was so surprised, se didn’t even know for certain where she was. Se wandered around the small circle that was the bottom of the hole. Eventually she cried. Se cried for a long time.

Now came a time of struggle. The prince lost his wife and the children lost their mother. The prince held onto the children though it all.

This story introduces a new character. This fellow is common in traditional stories. He is the wise old man or the mentor. This character can of course be a woman. I just decided on a man. The mentor provides wisdom and gives gifts.

Their came a time at the bottom of that hole when the princess could see a warm red glow begin to form in the center of the hole. As her eyes adjusted and the fire grew larger, she saw that a dwarf was tending the fire.

The dwarf spoke to her, “Pick up all those pieces of mirror and bring them to me.” The dwarf said. So she picked up every scrap of that mirror. Each scrap was easy to see because they were reflecting the fire. The dwarf took the shards of glass and put them all into the fire. He wove a spell and with the magic of the deep earth, the dwarf pulled from the fire a mirror like no other she had even seen. This mirror was silver on the edges and had a silver handle but the glass itself was as clear as the truth. When the princess looked through the glass at the dwarf, she did not see an ugly little man, she saw who he really was in his heart. He was glowed with kindness and wisdom. Her heart was filled with gratitude. When she looked through the mirror at the walls of the hole, she saw the truth of what they could become.

The princess will find more gifts available to her and we will work on that part of the story next.

This story actually has two villains. They work as a pair but sometimes stories have a gang of villains and they are all the same character, or they can be a subset of the main villain. they are sometimes known as henchmen. As I said, this story has a pair of villains and this is how they disguise themselves to deceive the whole kingdom.

One day, a pair of jealous ogres came into the kingdom with a plan to make the princess miserable. The Ogres cast a spell on themselves. The spell changed the Ogres appearance so they looked like high officials from another land. They cast a spell on their voices so that everything the people heard them say would be accepted unconditionally. They came to the kingdom and told lies. They knew the most important part of the princess’s life was the children. They wove tales of the terrible disservice being done to the children. They must be rescued from the princess who was endangering them by imposing a false reality on them. They told the princess she was irresponsible and out of touch with her pretty clothes and silver spoons. The ogres sang a compelling tune and soon enough they were even able to push the princess into a deep dark hole.

Then we find out the true nature of their jealousy as they rub in their meanness.

She was still falling when they said laughing, “Take your silver spoon with you!” A shiny silver spoon fell into the hole after her.

Then she heard the shatter of glass as sparkling chips of mirror glittered and landed around her head. She could see glimpses of her anguish in the broken mirrors fallen reflections.

“Look in this mirror. This hole is a reflection of your self-loathing. Everything is your fault.” They were weaving a spell in her mind. The Ogres went into her closet and took out all the beautiful dresses that the princess was given when she was a child. The Ogres threw the dresses down into the hole. The gold and silver dressed were ripped apart by the roots and rocks that stuck out along the sides of the hole. The dresses became like webbing and strips of thread draping down the sides of the hole.

The Ogres, well satisfied, went away saying the princess had given her power away and jumped into the hole all by herself. The spell they cast on their voices worked so well that everyone in the kingdom believed that the princess was responsible for all that had happened.

When you write your story, you can realize that the bad stuff that happens is the key to pulling oneself out of the problem. The princess will gather her tools about her in the next installment.

The princess and the deep dark hole

This story uses a fairy tale theme more like Grimms fairy tales than the last one. Here is another way to describe the hero.

Once upon a time there was a little princess. She was born with a silver spoon in her mouth. She had everything she could ever want and many things that she didn’t think of wanting were given to her. Her home was full of warm comforting belongings and her closets were full of beautiful gold and silver dresses. She was always respected and spoken to with kindness. She could feel the love of the people around her every day. Every word she ever heard was a kind truth. She didn’t know this was unusual. She thought everyone lived this way.

The day came when she had to leave home. It was time to go away and learn more about the world. So she was sent off to marry the prince of another kingdom. His father the king lived far away and he did not have as large a kingdom as the girl was used to living in, but she adjusted to the country and had three children.

This kind of idealic life is often the norm for a hero who has no problems until and antagonist enters the fray. It matches one of our oldest stories about the garden of Eden. All is well until the snake comes along and begins to play mind games.

Next I will tell about the villain in this story.

Using tools to overcome struggle

Now, in order to move the story forward, the hero must access her strengths. Tools must be developed to overcome the struggle of the situation. This is how Bear built her tools, she built them from her friendships. In the case of Bear, her strengths were her friends and the trust she had in them. She let them be the tools of her healing but also used tools to become rid of the negativity. These are tools like burying unhelpful thoughts. She learned to be observant and catch negativity and destroy it before it became a problem.

Bear lost trust for any of her friends because, after all, Coyote was very clear in explaining what everyone thought of her and her cubs. But Owl loved Bear beyond reason. He was dedicated to her and was infinitely patient. Bear had so much respect for Owl that she decided, of Owl could find nothing to hate in her then perhaps she was being unfair to herself and needed some perspective.

Bear asked Butterfly for help. Woodpecker also wanted to help. Bear found that may of the animals wanted to help her.

Butterfly danced up and down and used her wings to fan Bear into a deep sleep. Woodpecker dug down with her beak into Bears womb and carefully pulled out each shard and Rabbit ran away with each shard and buried them deep in the earth where they could be cleansed. Woodpecker dug the shards out of Bears mind, carefully twisting each one out. Rabbit ran with them and threw them into the river where they were washed away by the flowing waters. Torment and anguish would never get stuck in Bears brain again.

Owl searched and finally found Bears heart under the bush. He gently removed each shard from her heart and placed the heart back inside her chest. It was Porcupine who stitched up the wounds so that they would heal.

When Bear woke up, the pain was gone but the memory of pain was still grievous. She had lived without a heart. The guilt she felt from her heartless words and actions are a misery to live with even after the heart has been healed. Cubs take a long time to mend from living in this pain. The pain is deep but the cubs are resilient. They might travel trails that the wounded tend to follow. Bear works every day asking the forest to guide them on safe paths.

The animals worked with Bear to teach her how to catch shards and fling them away instead of taking them all in to herself. She learned not to take things personally. She grabbed any shards sent her way and buried them under the ground or tossed them into the water. She would sometimes throw them into the fire and watch their negativity burn away. She learned a new truth. Sometimes shards don’t hit you right away, they sulk in the corner and hitch a ride with other shards flung later.

She learned that animals that fling shards have not been able to walk in another’s shoes because walking in another’s shoes is the beginning of understanding.

She learned to see the quality of people and to know that condemners condemn and criticizers criticize. That is just what they do. She learned to grab shards with both hands, look at them and name them and let them go.

This is how Bear lives now.

Next we may work on another story with a more fairy tail like theme instead of a native American theme.

The struggle in the story

Bear did not deal well. Her nurturing self felt decimated and the frightened little girl that lives inside most of us took over. It can be very difficult to look at the struggles that come out in our story. They are not very pretty but the point of facing them in the story is to see them from the outside and not be mired in the pain that is living on the inside. Then you can hear your own story.

One of the key points of restoring your story is naming your struggle so that you can see it for what it is.

At first it was so sudden that she felt nothing. She was mesmerized. She was in shock. Bear looked within searching for each shard. Each shard screamed that she had disappointed everyone. She found one shard that said her children fight and remembered a time a couple of weeks back when they did have a fight. It was over a pinecone that was lying in the meadow. Who was there that day? Could some of those animals be the ones Coyote said talk about how bad my cubs are? She looked at the cubs. One had a stick and another came and snatched the stick away.

“It’s true!” she said, “my cubs fight all the time and no one likes me because they are so terrible.” So the shard wriggled its way deeper and deeper under her skin and began to fester. She felt terrible and screamed at the cubs to get into the cave but they were playing didn’t want to go inside until they finished their game.

“It’s true!” She cried, “ They wont do anything that I tell them to do and all the other animals think I’m reprehensible. I will not have it! I’ll make them do what I say right now!” So she went and screamed at them. The words from the shards came right out of her mouth and were filled with hate toward her cubs. But she was more filled with hate for herself since the shards had mesmerized her into believing that she created little monsters. She was separated form the truth. The truth was that they were just healthy normal cubs.

The truth was that Coyote was generally unhappy with himself. Bear could lot see the truth because the shards cut so deeply into her.

“No one likes my cubs and they are going to end up in a cage.” She thought, “They would be better off without me. It is my great shame that I birthed them. If I could just leave now, they will be better off.”

Of course Bear couldn’t actually leave her cubs because if she left them, they would starve. So, Bear stayed and her heart left instead. Her heart was filled with sharp pointed flint and it crawled out of her chest and then went into hiding under a bush. Bear was quite sick without her heart. She never had a kind word for her cubs and she began to hate foraging for food for them. Speaking to them was a chore. They were the symbol of her failure. Of course this behavior only made things worse and worse. The cubs became filled with self-doubt and anger. The other animals began to stay away. No one could stand to be close to any of them.

Bear noticed more shards in her every day. Coyote had flung them into more places than her heart. She looked into her womb and saw more shards of her failure festering. She felt disconnected from her ancestors. Instead of settling into the wisdom of the crone, her womb shut down and died deep inside her. In Bears mind and thoughts, the shards twisted and turned her into a frightened embarrassed child who was afraid of everyone because they all knew what a bad mother she was.

When, Bear saw Coyote walking in the woods, she would begin shaking. Her breath became wild and erratic. She couldn’t speak or run. She was paralyzed with fear.

Telling your story provides you with a chance to be heard. Everyone needs to feel heard. This is why people yell. They don't feel heard. Writing your story and using traditional tales as a template provides a platform for being heard like so many tales in the past have been heard.

Next we will look at how Bear finds her way out of this situation and becomes restored.

The Villain acts on the Hero

This part of the story is very difficult for the teller to describe, but it is where healing begins!

If you are telling your story, this is about telling when the damage is done. This is where your heart felt the injustice. Give yourself some time to feel and move through the event. Notice that you can learn to distance yourself from it and move forward with your life. This is when you get to rethink the event, but it is important to make the story tell the tale in fantastic way that allows you to have some distance from the pain of this experience. Give yourself the gift of metaphor. With a metaphor, you can know what you are talking about without reliving the experience.

Bear was sitting on a rock scratching and resting and watching her cubs play in the sun. The cubs were romping in the field near by.

Coyote slinked by and began to chide Bear. “ Your children are awful!” he said. “ Look at them! They have serious behavior problems. They are big and loud and disruptive. You don’t control them and they are going to get into the wrong places and get stuck in a zoo. This is all because you don’t do right by them. You see them through rosy glasses. It is time for you to take them off. Take them off for the sake of your cubs!” Coyote was just getting started and the flint started flying everywhere. His paws were full of flint and Coyote was in a roll. “Your children are so wild that they can’t learn anything about how to get along in the world. You haven’t made them learn the important stuff and they fight with each other. In fact, I talked to all the other animals and they all told me that they believe you have completely unacceptable child rearing practices.”

Flint flew everywhere!

“The other animals are not as honest and truthful as I am but they are all thinking the same thing. I am filled with courage and they are not courageous enough to tell you the truth. You need to understand that I am your only true friend. As your only true friend, this is an awesome responsibility. I am the only one who will speak the truth to you.” Flint flew everywhere.

Bear was a big target and since she needed to stay close to her cubs, she couldn’t run away and anyway, she didn’t want to hurt Coyotes feelings. The whole situation was confusing because words and shards were so unconnected and bewildering. The shards hit her painfully. This weird ordeal happened fast.

Next we will look at how Bear dealt with the trauma.

Introducing the Villain

It can be quite fun to introduce the villain in the story. The story of Coyote and Bear uses a villain who has fallen from grace. He used to have it all and now he is the but of jokes. This villain resents his new place in the world and want to bring everyone else down.

Coyote used to be the guy who could create stars and brings things into being and now all he seemed to be able to do was run around getting into predicaments. Coyote was not generally happy and because of this he tended to go around behaving quite peculiarly. This made him difficult to deal with. He didn’t ply well with others. He looked at Rabbit and cursed her for running so fast.

“You are so week!” He said. “All you ever do is run away.” Coyote reached down and picked up flint rock chips. Coyote liked the way flint felt because it was sharp and dangerous. Coyote threw the flint with great strength at Rabbit because he thought this emphasized his point. Rabbit ran and the shards missed their mark.

Coyote looked at Woodpecker and he said, “Only an idiot would spend all day banging his beak into a tree!” Then he picked up the flint and let it fly. Woodpecker would fly to another tree and never got hit by any shards either.

Butterfly was chided for not having perspective since his head was always in a flower. Porcupine was snubbed for being a prickly mess. Coyote was filled with bad feelings for all the other animals and most of the animals didn’t pay any attention to this nasty behavior because when he threw flint, they moved fast and he never really aimed he just threw. He usually missed hitting anyone. So no one bothered much about him.

This kind of villain aims at everyone until he gets a hit. He just wants to hurt someone. Causing pain makes him feel powerful.

In the next installment we will see what happens when Coyote and Bear cross paths.

Mother Bear as a hero

In order to begin a traditional story, We start by clarifying that this is a story.

Back in the days when the animals talked and the people could understand them,

In the process of restoring ones story. This helps the teller to get outside of the story and paint it in colors that make sense to her.

Here is an example of a hero who is a mother and a caretaker. Heros need to have flaws to make the story work and her flaw is that she takes her job so seriously and owns it so completely that she becomes overwhelmed when she is criticized.

Bear lived in a warm cave in the center of the woods. Her life was filled with her cubs and their energy and antics. They were a fun vocation. She spent her days teaching them to forage and play. This was the most important work and Bear felt happy and filled with love for her cubs. She felt like her life was full of purpose and meaning.

Of course this is the authors ideal self. It is somewhat like the movie the Matrix where everyone is kind of grubby in the real world, but in the Matrix they are super cool.

This little description provides a step into the story and identifies the main character. Next we will put the villain into this story.

The Villain

A narrative is driven by the behavior of the villain. The villain defines the nature of the conflict. Every story has a villain. When you can identify your villain, this nasty character who tricks you into being less than yourself, then you can begin to defeat him.

I was going to write about the Trickster archetype. But when I did some research I found that he is an anti-hero who wins the day by using wise deception. The prominent example is Prometheus. Prometheus is the Greek God who stole fire from the Gods and gave it to human kind. Much good came from his actions.

So I am not talking about Tricksters, I am talking about villains. Villains mean you no good. We have all had interactions with a bully and some have met with the Devil. This guy is charming and gives people what he thinks they deserve. There are also outcasts and others with malevolent motivations.

To write your story using traditional stories as a template. You can make your Villain be anything you want. He or she can be a dragon, troll, queen or black wizard. The important thing to remember is that the motivation of your villain is key to his power and your struggle. The Villains motivation is part if the concerto that is your narrative. Villains are motivated by feelings of being outcast. This is often combined with a fervent belief in a cause. Many times villains are just mean because they are mean.

If for example, your story was about a struggle with drug abuse, the villain might be a dark magician who a skilled at slight of hand. He offers glitter and joy but delivers only smoke and mirrors. Often a villain will begin by providing a needed service and end up trying to take your most precious possessions. Just as Rumplestiltskin help the hero spin straw into gold but then demanded her first-born child in payment. Sometimes he villain is just greedy and wants what the hero has.

Bringing the Villain into your story brings the narrative to life and provides you with the chance to identify the problem without identifying with the problem.

The next challenge then is to identify and develop the tools that the hero needs to overcome the villain.

The Hero Enters

As you enter the circle of your own true story, Take a moment and notice who you are and where you are and how you perceive yourself in this moment. Stand and face East. This is the direction of the rising sun. Close your eyes and picture the light of the rising sun, orange and warm entering your heart and honor this opportunity to begin a new experience.

Your first step in the circle is to identify who you are in your story.

You know that you are the hero of your own story, but traditional tales provide you with a way to see you as the hero anew.

Let’s learn a little about who the hero is. Heroes begin as themselves and become more than they were. Here are some of the ways that Heroes begin.

The Hero often lives, initially, in paradise. She is cared for and loved until an event occurs that shatters her world, The ship sinks, the mother dies, something in life breaks and must be mended. The ego is asked to reevaluate everything it ever knew.

One of the most interesting categorizations of the hero archetype can be found in the Tarot. The Tarot begins with the fool. The fool has set out on a journey and is about to step off the edge of a cliff. This is how the journey begins. The first several Major Arcana cards represent steps in the hero’s journey. The fool is at the beginning representing a state of innocence. The next archetypes are the Magician, the High Priestess, the Empress, the Emperor, and the Hierophant and they represent the development of personal power. The next Major Arcana card is the Lovers and this represents the development of relationship power. The Chariot and Justice represent power that is responsible to the larger community.

Another way to experience the hero is as an innocent. The hero is often young or at least untested. At first she is easily tricked and naively reacts to whatever is thrown her way without being a proactive agent in her own life experience. This newborn hero is unaware that she is experiencing anything out of the ordinary. She flits through life unaware that the precipice is all too near.

In the beginning the role of the hero is reactive. She has an experience and then reacts to it, or she has an experience and is victimized by the experience because she has no power at this point in her life. She has not developed the life skills needed to cope with the experience.

Sometimes the Hero is defined by her lack of something. Something has been lost. This is usually wealth, health or a parent. Sometimes, something needs to be found. This can be a sibling or a magical elixir. It must be found for the sake of the kingdom, family or the community. Needing to seek the water of life, for example, to heal the ailing king.

Sometimes the hero is an innocent victim of circumstances. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time. The people around her made the wrong decisions or told lies as if she could perform magic.

The hero is a dynamic force in the story. From beginning to end the story is her story to tell.

Next I plan to talk about the antagonist in the story. The Trickster.

A Story Template

Everyone has a story to tell. In fact everyone has many stories to tell of their journey. One of the many wonderful things about traditional stories is that they all follow a pattern. It is a wonderful pattern that lets us know that we are participating in our journey.

They begin with a scripted invitation to enter a world of change and growth. Here are some of the words we recognize as that invitation.

1. Once upon a time
2. Back in the days when animals could talk and the people could understand them
3. In a certain kingdom there lived
4. Way back in the old days when the creatures were all people
5. Once there lived…
6. In the beginning...

The word “once” is often the word that pulls our imaginations into the old world of stories and victory.

Once the invitation is out there, we get to meet the hero of the story. She is often a character that is not her self but is told in relation to others. In this story, she is the daughter and the person who quickly finds herself in a situation.

Once upon a time there was a young girl who was the daughter of a miller. One day the miller had to go in front of the king and in order to make himself appear important, he told the king, “I have a daughter who can spin straw in to gold.”

The King told the miller that he would like to see that and told him to bring his daughter to the castle the very next day. When the daughter was brought before the king, he showed her a room filled with straw and told her she must spin the straw into gold by morning or he would have her killed.

Now this is definitely a situation! The girl did not ask for a lying self-important father who would put her at risk. She isn’t portrayed as doing harm in the world but she finds herself in a room asked to do the impossible or die.

At this point of the story she has not developed skills or strengths to help her survive so she falls into a hopeless depression. This is the part of the template that works on the level of struggle. She must struggle with being tricked and trapped and tested. And how can she know who is helping her when all she has ever known is harm?

Since the girl knew of no way to spin straw into gold she grew miserable and began to weep.

But suddenly into the room came a very little man who said he could spin straw into gold and would do it for the girl. He would do it for a price. The girl gives him her necklace. After all, it is a small price to pay for her life. He quickly spins the straw into gold but the girls’ troubles have only just begun.

The struggle part if the template continues as tricksters take control of the story. In life we take many small steps toward disaster. The hero of this story had very few resources and abused by her father, she finds herself allying with awful characters. The little man is little in the story because he is not fully developed morally. His greed will become devastating. The king is just another version of the father. The repetitive behaviors so common in traditional tales hold true to this one as well. Our hero ends up giving away more and more of her power until she gives away her power of motherhood itself and risks losing her firstborn child.

After the king discovered the room filled with straw, he took the girl to a second room and demanded that she spin this room full of straw into gold as well. When the king left the room, the weeping began again, and again the little man entered the room. This time the girl gave the man her ring and he quickly spun the straw into gold. Of course the king was overcome with greed. He took the girl to yet another room. This room was filled with more straw that the other two rooms put together but the king offered her the reward of becoming his wife if she could spin this straw into gold. When she began to weep again, the little man appeared again. Unfortunately the girl had no more jewelry and now the little man asked for the child she would have with the king. The girl thought it was unlikely that she would actually have a child with the king and she agreed to the tiny man’s terms.

When the king found the third room filled with gold, he took the girl for his wife and she became queen. Some time later, she gave birth to a beautiful child who she loved more than anything in the world.

When the little man returned for the child she begged him to take all the gold the wealth of the kingdom instead but he told her that a living child is worth more than all the treasures of the world. She began to weep and the little man agreed to give her three days to find out his name. If she could find out his name in three days, then he would let her keep the child. He H

This particular story is a good template for a person who is victim of spousal abuse. Often the parents are abusive and women escape that abuse by marrying another abusive person. They lose their dignity, self-respect, strength, trust and hope. Many often lose their children to the abuse even while learning that a living child is more important than all the riches in the world. Climbing your way out of abuse means being able to name it, identify it and pool the resources of the larger community to find your true self and save your child. The hero is challenged to identify the truth of her situation and the truth of her will to change the situation. She needs to

1. Change her perception of her ego
2. Have the courage to redefine herself
3. Change her relationship to the problem
4. Have the will to sacrifice an unhealthy relationship for the sake of those she loves.

The queen thought of many names and sent her messengers out over the land to help her discover the miniature person's name. Each day the little man came to her and the queen recited many names but each time he would say, “No, that is not my name.”

On third day one of her messengers returned and told a tale of the little man living far away and high in the mountains and dancing and chanting around a fire. The man said, “Today I bake, tomorrow I brew, the next I’ll have the queens child. Glad I am that no one knows that Rumpelstiltskin is my name.”

The queen was happy to know the name and when the tiny man returned on the third day. She said, “ Is your name Rumpelstiltskin?”

The angry man yelled at her, “The devil told you that!” He was so angry that he plunged his right leg into the earth and grabbed his left leg and tore himself in two.

In order to find the true name of things, we need to find our true self. The final part of the template teaches that real changes in behavior create new outcomes. This means regaining our self-respect and our connection with our authentic self. This means watching while others tear themselves asunder because you changed your behavior.

This story is an example of a template for losing ourselves through no fault of our own and then finding ourselves by connecting with our resources and seeking to know real growth. Next I will show how you can use a traditional template to write your own story of growth and healing.

repetitive behaviors

I was thinking about the many ways we get trapped into repetitive behaviors that do not serve us. Traditional stories address this theme again and again. It seems that everything the hero does is done three times. “Three” in folk tale terms just means that the character is stuck.

Sometimes it doesn’t appear to be the same character but it is actually just different aspects of the same character. He has not yet shown his worth to begin the journey. In one story the eldest son goes off to find the water of life. He meets a man on the road and refuses to share his bread with him. The eldest son finds himself on his horse walking into a ravine which becomes a cleft in the mountain and eventually becomes such a tight squeeze that the rider can’t turn his horse around or even back up. He is stuck and suffers a cruel death. This happens all over again with the second son who also ends up stuck on his horse in a cleft on a mountain.

The youngest son goes out and he is able to break the chain of repetitive behaviors. He shares his food and the adventure begins! Breaking the chains of repetitive behaviors is challenging. It means that you are ready for the adventure that comes from interacting from a place of generosity of spirit. It shows the hero’s willingness to trust in the universe. Giving away a piece of your bread in a fairy tale is synonymous with giving away a piece of your ego. This is a big step.

For writing our own story, it is essential to recognize and name the ego part that has held you back and created repetitive negative events in your life.

Here are some examples of common ego stuck places.

People get stuck in

1. Needing to be right
2. Needing to win
3. Needing the other person to recognize that they’re wrong
4. Needing to be in control of what happens

But all of these motivations are about needing to escape scary feelings. We have volumes of scary feelings. Some of them are feeling humiliated, vulnerable or isolated. Everyone wants to feel validated. When I work with people on identifying their feelings, they easily recognize the big three, happy, sad and angry. It is always challenging to sit with those surface feelings and allow the underlying emotions as they rise to the surface. This challenge is the trick to having the insight needed to actually change our relationship with those fears and move forward with our story.

If you were, for example, and alcoholic, giving away your bread would be synonymous with the first of the 12 steps of Alcoholics anonymous. This is admitting that you have become powerless over alcohol and that your life has become unmanageable.

The hero needs to cement this new relationship with the ego because we easily slip back into old comfortable patterns. The hero needs to gift herself with recognition of the new pattern on a physical, emotional and spiritual level. This is where a personal ritual is effective. Alcoholics do this by attending a meeting and making a patterned statement. “Hello, my name is Mary and I am an alcoholic.” There are physical reminders of sobriety, a key chain, something a person will touch several times a day. There is a recognition of a “higher power” The pattern of the meetings are about engaging in the ritual. Thirty meetings in thirty days is the saying. The ritual needs to be repeated in order to stick in the mind, emotions and spirit of the hero.

Using traditional stories as a template for writing your own story provides clear examples of places in your story where the rituals are needed so that you can cement the physical, emotional and spiritual parts of your hero’s growth.

Hero

Hero

The hero archetype is the main character of all traditional stories. Historically, the hero is often a man or a boy but for the purposes of the project I plan to refer to the hero as female. This is because my current vision of the project begins with groups of women working on writing and telling their story.

The hero travels an arc through the story that provides insight for her so she can link to and embrace her strengths while she becomes a leader of her own life.

The hero begins as an innocent and leaves the story as a wise leader who has solved the challenges presented during the story and can succeed again and again if she needs to.

Everyone knows the story of Cinderella. So I will use it as one example of the arc of the hero. In the version presented by the brothers Grimm, the story follows this basic outline.

The hero lives with her mother and father and all is well until her mother dies. Life limps along until a year later when her father marries another woman. This archetypal character is the evil stepmother and she has two selfish daughters who take after her. (Archetypal adversaries will be the subject of other posts.)The hero is quickly demoted to servant and renamed Cinderella. The false family throws Cinderella’s lentils into the ashes and she is forced to pick them out of the ashes or starve The greed of the step daughters is highlighted when the father asks each child what she would like him to bring her when he goes on a trip. The stepdaughters ask for expensive gifts but Cinderella asks for a tree branch. Upon the fathers return, Cinderella plants the hazel tree branch and waters it with her tears. Over time the branch grows into tree and Cinderella develops a daily ritual of going to the tree and praying. The tree is magic and a magic bird lives in its branches. When Cinderella has a need, the bird lets fall gifts from the tree branches. During these daily rituals, Cinderella befriends the bird living in the tree and this in turn creates allies for her of all the local birds.

Then the prince enters the picture. He is looking for a wife and holds a series of parties so he can meet potential wives. Cinderella asks to go to the three-day festival and is told that she can only go if she picks a bowl of lentils out of the ashes in two hours. With the help of the birds, she completes the task in one hour. But the stepmother is evil and instead of allowing Cinderella to go to the festival, she forces her to separate two bowls of lentils out of the ashes in one hour. Cinderella receives help from the birds again and retrieves the lentils in plenty of time but the stepmother still refuses her.

After everyone leaves for the first day of the party, Cinderella goes to her tree and the bird tosses down a dress. Cinderella cleans up well and when she goes to the festival, the prince has eyes for no one but Cinderella. But she runs away when the prince attempts to find out who she is. This goes on for three days and on the last night of the festival, Cinderella loses her shoe and the shoe is the only clue the prince has to find her.

The prince searches the land for the woman whose foot will fit into the shoe. When he comes to the home were Cinderella lives, the stepdaughters hide her and try the shoe on for themselves. The shoe does not fit but the first stepdaughter takes a butcher knife and cuts off her heal. Now the shoe fits! The prince is easily duped and rides off past Cinderella’s tree with the false bride. The bird has to tell him that blood is seeping out of the shoe and at last the prince realizes the deception. He returns to the home of Cinderella and repeats the process with the other stepsister who cuts off her toes to make her foot fit into the shoe. Again the prince is easily duped and the bird flies down to point out the bloody shoe. The prince returns a third time and Cinderella is produced. The shoe fits Cinderella and as the stepdaughters try to take their place as family along side the true bride, the birds come and peck their eyes out so tat they are punished with blindness all the days of their lives.

In the beginning, the hero is innocent. She lives an Eden-like existence with her mother and father in a happy state. This happy state quickly unravels as the drama of life takes over. The hero’s mother dies leaving her lost with a father who remarries and then fails to even notice that she needs protection during the rest of the story. She develops allies and strengths by being good, persistent and hard working as she works her way through the dark part of her story. When the time comes for her to break the pattern, she is ready.

It is no wonder that the prince she finally marries reflects the father’s role by being unable to recognize the shoe imposters not once but twice. He is not the point of the story. The prince is just a symbol of becoming connected to accomplishment. Cinderella struggled with her grief and loss and made powerful allies that helped her throughout the story. She now has access to her inner strengths and the necessities required in culture to function as a producer rather than a consumer. She can now create her place in society instead of begging for scraps. She has in fact matured emotionally physically and sexually and is ready to leave her troubled existence behind her in favor of a world where in she controls the outcomes.

This is just one example of the way that traditional stories can provide a template for working through ones own story from innocence to struggle and finally to a strong healthy outcome.

Ritual and Narrative

A good friend of mine, Greg Griffey mentioned the relationship between our narrated lives and ritual. One of the many ways that our culture works to help us to satisfy our need for order and understanding is by providing moments of ritual. We are all aware of the large rituals of our lives like christening our children or getting married. We also have many less noticed rituals. For many this is a small daily ritual that helps a person to feel on track and solid for the day. The ritual I like in the morning after waking up, is brushing my teeth and having a cup of tea from my favorite mug while I feed my cat Morgan.

What I have noticed is that our culture is full of missed opportunities for ritual and because we miss them, our brain does not solidify the event and we often lose it. Missed opportunities for ritual cause us to lose our moments of insight and understanding. Their are times when we realize that we are moving into a new awareness of the way we think about our learning but we cannot grasp the moment because rituals are not available.

In learning to tell your story, there are several places that call for moments of ritual. If the ritual is missed, then the story gets stuck.

The story can get stuck in the beginning and never get told.

It can get stuck in the place where you acknowledge the tricksters that you struggle with, but fail to follow through because your deep understanding was not solidified with ritual.

It can get stuck if you are prepared to give up the struggle and embrace being in relationship with the moment, but forget to let the ritual bind your mind to the new you.

Rituals need to have personal meaning and personal power. Some of the big rituals like a graduation tend to feel like an overwhelming experience being imposed on the graduate. It seeds real change in self-perception from outside the self.

Rituals can be personally meaningful and empowering even when they are small family rituals. For me, when I was a child, each year, late in august, my mother and I went out and bought new pencils and notebooks and paper and a few new outfits too. This ritual provided me with a fresh clean slate for a new school year where anything can happen. This was a wonderful ritual of beginning. The smell of the new paper in those fresh spotless notebooks filled me with images of a year filled with bright clean new ideas and numbers. Even the other children would be washed anew after a summer full of sunshine and vacation.

As adults we often don’t honor a new idea or mindset with enough ritual to keep it from fading into old habits and into a sea of no change. Ritual helps us to grasp the awesomeness of a new adventure. Ritual helps us to be empowered to act on our new agency.

The final ritual from learning to write your story is the telling of it.

More about this later.

We Are a Storied People

We all need to make sense of our lived experience. from the earliest days of human development, we have told each other stories of what happened and what will happen. This process organizes our reality and links us with our concept of who we are. It links us to our place in space and time and in our community. A healthy story helps us to be our authentic self and grow through our trials with resilience and strength.

When we narrate our story, we can sometimes get stuck in patterns that create unhealthy self concepts. Sometimes our personal stories turn into a deep loss of our authentic self. Sometimes they become a testament to a perception of self that is dictated by a larger story. This kind of story is imposed into the psyche by families or cultures.

A common example of an imposed story is the one that tells (mostly girls) that their bodies are abnormal because they don't fit the privileged form of modern advertisers and media stars. people become compelled to fit into a skewed image and employ all kinds of unhealthy tactics that can end in death.

An unhealthy story comes from a couple of different places. Sometimes a person life experience is confusing and so chaotic that the story patterns and organization get lost in the chaos. Sometimes things happen to people during a time in their life when they are at a loss for words to describe the experience.

This holds true if the experience happened when the person was a child. As a child a trauma can be especially difficult to overcome because the youngster does not know what words to use to describe most encounters let alone chaotic and traumatizing ones.

This also happens with adult when the experience is so out of the ordinary that forming words around the situation seems impossible. An example of this might be living through the tornados that recently ran through my little county in Southwest Virginia. The devastation of so many homes and businesses is difficult to organize mentally because the sights and sounds feel otherworldly.

I use a system of templates to help people rewrite and organize their story. This helps them move forward and grow while identifying with healthy perceptions.

I plan to use this blog to describe the templates and patterns as I tweak and improve them throughout the next few months.