The Healing Stream of the Story

An Interview with Nancy Mellon

By Maria Pia Videla

Why do you think it is valuable to tell fairy tales to children? Do you think it would be valuable to tell story tales at any age?

The child lives within every adult. That is why it can be very helpful to bring a story to a traumatized teenager or adult, as well as to children, because (even if it is not guaranteed) the healthy child self can receive the wisely told  story without all the worries and troubles  carried in their memories of the troubles they have encountered. So the story can be a resting place where their heart and their soul can in some ways be refreshed and innocent again.

Of course the definition of fairy tale is problematic because, if taken literally, a fairy tale is about  fairies and the weaving of the elemental world with the human world. But many many of the so-called fairy tales do not have any fairies in them at all. Most of the Grimms' fairly tales are more accurately called "wonder tales".  I like to use the term "wonder tale" because I think it is more helpful for holding different kinds of stories. Fairy tales originally were named in France during the seventeenth and eighteenth century to amuse courtiers during royal occasions; especially the ladies were distracted by these contes de fees. The general term "fairy tale", contes de fees, was then adopted by Germany  and other countries and became a usual way of describing a very great variety of stories.

 I think it is important today, out of respect for the genuine fairies and other elementals ,  for us to revise the term fairy tale, and instead to speak about stories that greatly increase our sense of wonder and imagination. Imagination today, of course, brings a multitude of images and concerns additional to those from those of past centuries, and it is important to be awake to these, especially when addressing trauma. 

Do you think it could be possible that the language of the wonder tales could accompany through its healing images a human being in a traumatic experience? Why? How would you describe the medicine that fairy tales and healing stories carry inside?

This is a complicated question because there are so many different varieties of trauma which children and adults experience. I think that with trauma  what is absolutely most important is that the story teller be calm and centered: physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. This is because any other way of bringing a story can increase personal and communal distress. What does a  listener experience, and sometimes have to endure from a storyteller? When we are not in balance we too easily communicate more troubling  anxiety,  more  domination, whether artistic or narrative or in some other ways

The healing stream comes through balanced speaking. The streaming comes from welcoming healing into our words.  

During my many years of working with stories, I have found the healing which can come has very much to do with the presence of  the balanced embodied person who is calmly there. A little bit is the story, a great deal is the presence of the story teller's warmth and confidence in life, coming from the heart and from depths of soul. What is needed is some restoration of sweet confidence in life to comfort the stunned frightened traumatized self. Traumatized and traumatizing individuals  cannot find this confidence  in themselves because they have been so disturbed. Feeling warmth and spiritual nutrition pouring from the story teller into the soul, the wonder story can be a way of resting from worried traumatized present-time thinking. A different patient quality of speaking and listening can be helpful, but there is no guarantee, unfortunately, that a tale will help.  We certainly want to be mindful not to add to traumatic troubles. As story teller we want to be inviting healing to stream through our listening warmth, through our vision which is seeing into the story, not looking at the traumatized person directly but really looking into the story. So our vision, our warmth,  our listening helps the troubled person to feel and to see and to listen to life in a new way,  in a safely welcoming stream of universal warmth and fresh light.

Which are the tales you consider most valuable for traumatic events? Why?

I have often spoken about the grandfather of a friend of mine who told stories to his grandchild from a big empty book!

Eventually I was gifted with a beautiful handmade book with empty pages during a conference in Buenos Aires. I have cherished this book with its handmade rose-petal cover  and pages ever since and keep it with me. It reminds me  first to find contemplative space by looking  where I do not yet know what is good for the troubled listener(s). We can discover what may be good by opening with courage, intuitively,  and without prior judgement. Then a story can become  truly empathic.

The very brief tale at the end of  fairy tales that were collected  almost two centuries ago by the brothers Grimm is called "The Golden Key". It is about a young man frozen with cold .    As he attempts to build a fire, the young man manages to find an iron box buried underneath the snow, and a golden key.  The tale (see below)  says: ...now we must wait to see what is inside this box. I believe that this story is a very important one for traumatized people to know.

It may open the possibility for a healing storyteller to ask:  Can you picture in your mind something or someone in that box that feels friendly?  The storyteller might attune to that and continue the story, inviting creative participation from the listener. Or a storyteller might suggest that hidden inside the box is a doorway to a place of warmth and safety, and invite a description of that place, such as a quiet lake or a little cave far away from all the world or a garden which is protected from trouble; the story teller might help to make a story about getting to that safe place. Or ask if there is some trouble that as held inside that box. Maybe the box can be  closed up again and locked,  and the young man pocket the golden key. 

The Golden Key by the Brothers Grimm

In the winter time, when deep snow lay on the ground, a poor boy was forced to go out on a sledge to fetch wood. 

When he had gathered it together, and packed it, he wished, as he was so frozen with cold, not to go home at once, 

but to light a fire and warm himself a little. So he scraped away the snow, and as he was thus clearing the ground,

he found a tiny, gold key. He thought that where the key was, the lock must be also, and dug in the ground and found an iron chest. 

Thought he, no doubt there are precious things in that little box. He searched, but no keyhole was there.

At last he discovered one, but so small that it was hardly visible. He tried it, and the key fitted it exactly. Then he turned the key once round, and we must wait to know what what was in the box. 

If you had to choose three stories to carry inside your emergency suitcase, which story would you choose?

I do not answer that question easily because I do not think recipes necessarily help. If we are going to be the story teller we want to be truly tuned with the troubled person, not only with our favorite go-to stories. Of course there are stories that have lived for many years that fascinate young and old. For example the story of  Hansel and Gretel, who are abandoned by their parents to fend for themselves in the woods. But it can be a disaster to tell that story to someone whose parents have just been killed in the war or who are feeling very alone and troubled for other reasons. There is no guarantee that even the best of tales would be good for a person to hear. The Brothers Grimm knew that new imagination would be needed to meet future times.That is why I believe everything I have said before this is much more important than any particular story~~~ because we want to do no more harm! We want to truly meet our listeners in a helping way.

If you had to describe the best tale, Which story would it be?

For many years I have said this no matter how dark a story may be, we want it to adventure in a positive direction. In the story we can hold trauma but the trauma does not stay frozen because we carry the story through to a reassuring heartfelt ending. The story and the storyteller help the traumatic dark part of the story to move onward to a positive conclusion. That is the basic plot line that I work with. The positive ending does not have to be a wedding yet arrives somewhere wonderfully  better at last.  A wise and positive healing and helping energy is there at the end of the story.

To keep myself primed for creative courage these days, I like to read and re-read Hans Christian Anderson's  The Snow Queen as a helping parable for our time, and see how this great tale has been transformed  for today's children in the extremely popular film, Frozen. I often recommend Francis Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden, and  George MacDonald's The Princess and Curdie to picture vivid healing imagination in action for the whole immune system, and at least to peek at video games which out-picture the global and human immune system that so ingeniously and ferociously is adapting to our present day very real and future pressing circumstances. 

 María Pía Videla is a Waldorf teacher and a puppeteer who has worked with children for many years. She lives in Capilla del Monte, a small town surrounded by mountains in Argentina.  She has recently published in April, this year: " Grandmother Pepa's Stories"("Los cuentos de la abuela Pepa").In this book María Pía shares the healing stories she created for children who where going through difficult situations such as: fear, loss, changes and different kinds of traumas. She also shares the way she creates the stories inviting the readers to do it by themselves. There are so many paths to creation as different people around the world. All the elements have already being created. The creation is the art of combining these elements.