Stories

A constellation of stories

Posted by Diane Morrow on January 19, 2022 in Stories

Some years ago now I was leading a writing and healing group for recovering cancer patients. I asked them to picture what they saw in their minds when they heard the word healing. Healing is . . . what? “Healing is movement,” one woman said. “What do you see when you hear the word movement?” I asked her. “What do you see inside your head?” “I’m mulching,” she said. “I’m working in the garden, raking. I’m thinking about this T-shirt I have that says, ‘I’m not getting older, I just need repotting.’” I can relate. (Who of us wouldn’t love some days to simply be repotted?) “Healing is the apex,” another woman added. “Healing is eureka. I see myself throwing my hands up in the air. After I’ve gotten good news on the telephone. The doctor called. I was so afraid it was going to be bad news, but then it was good news.” Healing is mulching. Raking. Repotting. Healing is the apex. Healing is eureka—that longed-for good news on the telephone. “Healing,” N said, “is a taskmaster.” There was a pause after she spoke. I could feel a slight shift in the room. “Would you mind terribly?” I asked, “If I were to ask you what you see in your head when you hear the word taskmaster?” She answered immediately. “Ichabod Crane.” It was such a strong and vivid response. I could see the image clearly. That stooped and bony man from a book of childhood tales. The long nose. Those pointed shoes. Ichabod Crane is the schoolmaster in Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” He teaches in a one-room schoolhouse. When students don’t study properly he strikes them with a birch rod, the rod landing with a sharp thwack on their shoulders. Is healing really like that? Is it like that sometimes? Is it like that for some people? And if healing is Ichabod Crane, what might illness and trouble be? The student? The hard lesson? The inkwell? The wooden desk? The bony horse? The stormy night? The sleepy hollow? “Illness,” S says, “is a jagged torn place.” It’s another strong metaphor, and one that seems to open a door to a whole host of others. “Cancer is a grass-covered black pit,” someone says. “Cancer is a dragon,” someone adds. R pulls the images together. “Cancer is a dragon at the bottom of a grass-covered black pit.” It’s the beginning of another full and possible story. A hero or heroine has fallen into a pit and now she’s down there with the dragon, has looked perhaps into his yellow eye. And now what? So many possible stories. What if healing were, at least in part, a constellation of such stories? And what if some portion of the work of writing and healing was simply to consider this? To consider that healing might be less like fixing a car or a machine and more like (or at least also like) discovering and crafting a story? What if story could be a way to come to know something that we need to know? What if? ________________________________________________ Picture is from Penguin Random...

Instructions by Neil Gaiman

Posted by Diane Morrow on February 28, 2016 in Blog, Healing Poetry, Stories, Writing and Healing Prompts

I’ve for a long time been interested in poems and excerpts that can invite writing and I’ve recently come across this poem by Neil Gaiman that seems especially well suited for this. The poem is a set of instructions for “what to do if you find yourself inside a fairy tale.” It begins: Touch the wooden gate in the wall you never saw before. Say “please” before you open the latch, go through, walk down the path. I like the way the poem begins with such direct instructions—we’re in this new place—and already guided in how to interact with it. Gestures in fairy tales that will lead to good things: saying please; going through the gate; moving forward. He continues: Walk through the house. Take nothing. Eat nothing. However, if any creature tells you that it hungers, feed it. If it tells you that it is dirty, clean it. If it cries to you that it hurts, if you can, ease its pain. Yes. This is the way it is in fairy tales. This is what will work. The adventure goes on for many stanzas: A glimpse of Winter’s realm Permission to turn back An old woman beneath a twisted oak A river—and a ferryman. (“The answer to his question is this: If he hands the oar to his passenger, he will be free to leave the boat. Only tell him this from a safe distance.”) More happens: An encounter with giants, witches, dragons. An encounter with a sister The way back A wise eagle A silver fish A gray wolf Arriving home The poem is lovely in itself—and potentially wise. It also seems like the kind of poem that could open itself to become a kind of interactive poem—and I’ve been playing with this idea. I’m also playing with the idea of embedding forms into the site as a way to lower barriers to writing. The way I’ve set this up is simply to link writing prompts to forms with the notion that any writing done on the form will not be used in any way for sharing or publication. Please note that it will also not be linked in any way to one’s email address or identifying information. In the landmark study done by James Pennebaker, college students wrote for twenty minutes at a time, anonymously, and were given no feedback on their writing—it simply went into a vault for research. And still, it was of benefit. The act of writing was beneficial. That’s my intention in linking these writing prompts to forms—to lower a barrier to writing—and create a safe space for writing which could be of benefit. You, of course, are also free to use the writing prompts without writing in the forms. As I often say to my students in the morning when I provide a catalyst for writing, please use as you wish. The writing prompts and forms based on Neil Gaiman’s “Instructions” are here. See also: The full text of Neil Gaiman’s “Instructions.” Neil Gaiman reading “Instructions” An article on the Pennebaker study from this site. An article on the potential benefits of fiction writing from this site. A writing prompt on “entering the tale” from this site. The image is from Neil Gaiman’s picture book, “Instructions,” illustrated by Charles Vess...

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...

Toni Morrison on Beowulf and Grendel: Two Very Different Quest Stories

Posted by Diane Morrow on March 15, 2007 in Stories

The evening before last, I got a chance to see, in Greensboro, a lecture by Toni Morrison, Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Beloved and Song of Solomon, among other novels. I’d never seen her speak before. She’s a natural storyteller—dramatic, funny, pausing in all the right places. She held the audience in her hands. And the stories she happened to tell were, interestingly enough, quest stories. She began with a brief introduction—her belief in the importance and power of story. She then proceeded to retell the ancient story of Beowulf—an epic narrative about a monster, Grendel, who ravages a Scandinavian kingdom. She told, first, the original story in which Grendel is depicted as the epitome of pure senseless evil, devouring the citizens of the kingdom for no reason other than because he can. A hero emerges—Beowulf. His quest entails defeating the monster, and he manages, in battle, to cut off Grendel’s arm. But then the story becomes a bit more complicated. Grendel returns home to his mother and she turns out to be a yet fiercer monster–and vengeful. She launches her own attack on the kingdom, slaying large numbers of citizens and placing their bodies in her pouch. (Here Ms. Morrison added one of her nice touches. “How wonderful,” she said, “How perfect that the mother was carrying a pocketbook.”) Beowulf’s quest continues. He follows the mother to her lair, engages her in battle, and manages to take her sword and, with this sword, defeat her by cutting off her head. The original Beowulf is a bloody quest story—the hero’s quest ends in violence and conquest. But then, as a counterpart to Beowulf, Ms. Morrison offered another story–a shift in point of view—a different kind of quest story. Drawing from John Gardner’s novel, Grendel, she offered a retelling of the story from the monster’s point of view. There’s not enough time or space here to do Gardner’s novel justice—and I haven’t yet read it!–but her comments about Grendel are at the heart of what I took away from Ms. Morrison’s lecture. In the retelling of the story, Grendel has an inner life. He is no longer a beast, Morrison told us. And, unlike the original story, he is capable of some degree of transformation. This transformation occurs, at least in part, via a character in the novel, Shaper, who is a poet. And, she suggested, it is through language—the comprehension and use of language (rather than his former bestial sounds)—that Grendel is transformed. This second story offers what Arthur Frank might call a post-modern quest—a quest that has to do with inner transformation rather than with conquering. Ms. Morrison suggested two things near the end of her talk that separate humans from other creatures—that separate us, she said, from, for instance, asparagus. First, love—namely the ability to care for creatures that are not our own and from which we may not receive any immediate or apparent benefit. And, second, language. Ms. Morrison proposes that language is capable of transformation. As I understand her, she is proposing that language is capable of transforming evil. Of transforming individuals. Of transforming kingdoms. Of transforming countries. Of shifting stories from violent ones to stories in which something new happens. And she said this the other evening with such a confident and august presence—it was inspiring—- ______________________________________...

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