Honey For Your Heart
The sweet alchemy of viewpoint
You are the hero of your own story.
As a child I was in love with the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. My mother told me I asked for it every night when I was 2 years old for almost a year and she got so sick of telling Goldilocks and the Three Bears! One night she asked me to tell it to her instead. What?! Even at under three years old I knew that wasn’t how bedtime stories were supposed to go. But eventually I was convinced and this was my telling of the story.
Once a time, dere were bears. And, and the mama made oatmeal that was too hot. So, so the bears all went for a walk in the woods and Goldilocks didn’t come! (I’m told I giggled with delight here.) I did! And I ate all the papa bear’s oatmeal and all the mama bear’s oatmeal and all the baby bear’s oatmeal and then I ran home. The bears never knew it was me!
Apparently the oatmeal was the most important part of the story to me at two and a half. Many years later at a Story and Mythology Conference, one of the speakers (I do not remember who) said, “We often live into our favorite stories in some way, especially the stories we were drawn to as children.”
I began to laugh as it didn’t take long to see how I was living into Goldilocks and the Three Bears. I am a traveling musician and storyteller performing in schools and libraries and festivals around the country and I always ask for home hospitality. There I am sitting in other people’s chairs, sleeping in other people’s beds and hoping for a bowl of oatmeal in the morning!
At a conference with Dr Lewis Mehl-Madrona at the Rowe Center in MA (almost 20 years ago) I was struck by him saying that all stories are beautiful and valuable. Tragic, funny, heroic, mysterious, all stories are beautiful. However, if we want to change the story we are living then we need to change the story we are telling.
Here is a link to an interview here on substack with Dr Lewis if you would like to learn more about him. https://substack.com/home/post/p-151195610?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Today I became a member of Asheville Cryotherapy and Recovery. They have cryotherapy, red light therapy, compression therapy and an infrared sauna. Fabulous! So, today I was in a room that was 153 degrees above zero, a room that was 109 degrees below zero and now I am on my front porch drinking a glass of water with electrolytes and the temperature is 75 degrees. Too hot. Too cold. Just right.
Looks like I am still happily telling and living into Goldilocks and the Three Bears!
What was your favorite childhood story? Are you living into it in some way?