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.
- Once upon a time
- Back in the days when animals could talk and the people could understand them
- In a certain kingdom there lived
- Way back in the old days when the creatures were all people
- Once there lived…
- 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.
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
- Change her perception of her ego
- Have the courage to redefine herself
- Change her relationship to the problem
- 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.
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