RE-BALANCING THE PSYCHE THROUGH STORYTELLING

       

Yesterday I told a Scottish fairy tale at the November gathering of the Peterborough Storytellers. As the story was long, I broke it into three parts and placed discussion and Jungian theory in between the parts. The story remains with me this morning. Parts of it come to my mind and begin to reach out to parts of my past that need re-balancing.

         

The boy in the story is abandoned as an infant in the forest. His mother is powerless to stop her child being taken away. She dies soon after from the sorrow of loosing her child. As a young girl my own mother died of multiple sclerosis. She was powerless to prevent this death and I felt abandoned without her. An old woman who lives alone in the forest finds the infant boy. This old woman takes the boy to her cottage and cares for him. She loves him like nothing on earth. When I stopped the story we discussed the difference between the boy’s first mother, the queen and his second mother the old woman in the forest. People said that the first mother was powerless to keep the boy but the second mother- the old woman – was self sufficient in the forest and able to care for the infant.

         

Today, the morning after the telling of the story, these two mothers have a deep resonance with me. I think about my own mother as powerless to remain alive and I think about all the second mothers I have known in my life – strong women who have nurtured me in music, learning and the arts. In the story the boy grows up well in the care of the second mother and so have I. I feel a rebalancing in absorbing this element of the story - a reframing of life experience in a positive light.

Fourteen people came to storytelling last night. They listened and discussed this story and other stories told. It is my hope that each person went away with some insight that could be applied to his or her life. I know I did.

Author: Rita Grimaldi (Rita is the co-founder of Peterborough Storytellers)