Stories are medicine. They have such power; they do not require that we do, be, act anything—only listen. The remedies for repair or reclamation of any lost psychic drive are contained in stories.
Stories are embedded with instructions which guide us about the complexities of life.
Excerpt from Women who run with the wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés
Even as a little girl, I knew that some stories worked, while other stories tried, but didn’t. Stories that had an obvious lesson to them, like Pinnochio, caused me to feel only guilt.
But stories that leapt off the page and tickled me pink with descriptions of animal antics and beautiful places stayed with me like good friends and somewhere deep inside, they set to work at bringing me to a higher understanding of things.
I read ferociously all through my growing years. Books exposed me to things my mother would rather they didn’t. Yet, a deeper knowing could always distinguish between what needed to be kept and what to discard.
Lately I am returning to stories. But also, stories are looking me up. Presenting themselves, introducing characters and events that sometimes surprise me. I don’t always know where they come from. I write them down as they get played out in my mind’s eye.
I return to a book like Estés’s Women who run with the wolves, often. The stories told by this great cantadora, keeper of old stories, and the way she explores them, fascinate me. I dream more clearly. I become more in tune with my creativity.
I know too little about Jungian Psychology and the theories of archetypes that seem to be at the core of all authentic storytelling, in order to make a strong case for it, but I know that stories did not survive through all the ages by chance.
Stories are the bones of history. They tell us where we come from, how we got here, who we are. Stories will live on when we don’t, to whisper our truths.
We need to listen to stories. We need to tell our stories, if we are to be all that we can be.
Matilda
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