Do you know about healing fairy tales?
My colleague Allison Quaid designed a beautiful website which can show you how to develop your own fairy tale as a story that can help you or others with traumatic experiences. On this site you will also find examples of such tales which you may find useful to read or tell to yourself and others. Curious?
Find out about the power of healing fairytales on
Yo todavía era niño. Pero también si hubiera sido mayor, no habría podido decir como el carpa se hubiera explicado a si mismo su curioso viaje. Es que algunos amigos míos se habían permitido una jugarreta con él. De noche, clandestinamente lo habían sacado de su estanque con una red. Lo habían llevado en un cubo a través de bosques y campos por muchos kilómetros. La piscina en el jardín de mis padres debería ser su nuevo hogar. Tengo que admitir: No fue poco nuestro asombro cuando lo vimos nadando sus rondas en el agua. Me parece que fue en septiembre. Ya no se echaba cloro al agua, la temporada de nadar casi se había acabado. Entonces pez y ser humano ya no se hacían tanta competencia el uno al otro, y así Luís, como lo llamamos, podía quedarse allí por el momento. Vino el invierno y con él una espesa capa de hielo.
En la primavera, el agua fue cambiada. Como se puso en manifiesto , Luís había superado bien el invierno. El consejo familiar acordó devolverlo a su hogar. Otra vez Luís fue despachado en un cubo. Lo más grande que pudimos encontrar era un cubo ya inservible de pintura. Siguiendo caminos de bosque y de campo, nos fuimos para devolverlo a sus amigos y familiares. En el cubo, Luís dio sus vueltas, en círculos bastante pequeños, porque había crecido durante el invierno, y un viejo cubo de pintura no es una casa señorial para un carpa. Encima de eso, la mitad del agua se nos derramó a lo largo del camino. Pero finalmente llegamos. Con un empuje Luís acabó en su estanque para reencontrar sus viejos conocidos. Lo que hizo después fue muy sorprendente: Luís dio sus vueltas allí, pero lo hizo como que si no se encontrara en un estanque sino en un pequeño cubo, como antes. Trazó seis o siete círculos de un diámetro inferior a medio metro. Después los círculos se convirtieron en una espiral, estrecha al inicio y ampliándose más y más. Finalmente Luís comprendió donde se encontraba. En una larga línea se disparó fuera de su órbita de cubo.
(Por Stefan Hammel, traducción: Bettina Betz)
A story by Katharina Lamprecht…
A vole watched a snail, which dipsy-doodled along a path and asked her: “Why do you crawl so arduously back and forth? Doing that it takes you much longer to get forward”. The snail sighed. “That’s true, but I always look on both sides of the path for something to eat. When I´m on the left side I keep thinking, that there might be better food on the right. When I´m on the right side I think the same and therefore go back to the left. I´m always afraid that I will overlook some yummy greens”. The vole understood perfectly. “I´ll help you. I´m a big taller than you are and walk in the middle of the path, that´s a good lookout. You can stay on the right side and in case I see something worth coming over to the left, I´ll let you know”. And in this way they went on. The vole saw many lush and juicy herbs on the left side, but it didn’t say a word. Because now, giving all her attention to just one side of the path, the snail found enough treats. After a while, as the snail discovered that she found enough to eat, she thanked the vole for the help and went on by herself. Just following her path.
Another beautiful story by Katharina Lamprecht…
One day, it was Midsummer and the Swedish days where as long as the dinner table for the king’s birthday. A wise old moose on his evening stroll met a young boy, sitting on a moss covered tree trunk, sobbing deeply. The old moose stopped and looked at the boy who did not notice him because of all his despair. Not until the moose nudged him with his soft muzzle did the boy raise his eyes. And just in front of him he saw the big brown eyes of the moose. He saw in those eyes all the stars in the heavens that he could not see before on this Midsummer night. So big, so deep and so endless the eyes seemed to be that he got the feeling he could just take a walk right into them. The stars where so beautiful, like jewels, iridescent and glittering in all colors he could imagine, scattered like the crumbles on grandma’s apple-pie, big ones and small ones, thick and thin ones, each of them meaningful and unique. At the sight of all those treasures the boy got the feeling he was surrounded by good friends, who bestowed upon him potency and love.
So they stood for a long time and looked at each other, the young boy and the old moose. Then the moose blew his warm and soft breath through the boy’s hair, turned around and faded into the forest. The boy looked after him for a long time, as if in trance, and only after a while did he discover that his infinite sadness had transformed. It was still there but all of a sudden there was also a happiness and cheerfulness. And he somehow felt that this had something to do with the stars he had seen in the fathomless eyes of the old moose.
He turned around and walked back home. And whistling happily away he kicked at the stones that laid on his way.
Another contribution by Katharina Lamprecht who will also be at the Festival in October…
Sometimes there is a little sparrow sitting on the clothesline in front of my kitchen window. I like to observe him, he is quite funny and quite different than the other birds. Somehow he always looks as if he was a little tipsy. He dithers a bit on the line and you can see that it takes an effort to keep his balance because he sticks out one leg and flaps his wings. He generally makes the impression of being quite dizzy. But it doesn’t seem to bother him at all, on the contrary, I get the feeling that he enjoys his slanting position very much.
A friend of mine, who is an ornithologist, said that this phenomenon goes by the name of “crooked bird”, common knowledge amongst experts. He explained, that there are indeed many birds, who love to frolic through storms and high winds. Back and forth, up and down, left and right they let themselves dash around by the wind until they don´t know anymore where they are, don´t know up from down or back from forth. And it is obvious that they have so much fun with it, that they keep the dizziness even when there is no wind at all. Just like the sparrow on my clothesline.
Scientists suspect that these crooked birds have a kind of inner anchor. Somewhere in their bodies has to be a place that gives them the needed security to be able to always find their way and relate to a stable, secure, safe and unshakeable point, no matter what. In this way they can relax, be calm and at ease, at least internally. They can feel straight and upright even if they have no orientation in the outer world. The scientists cannot determine where this inner anchor is but they are quite sure, it´s there. Perhaps one can compare it to the radar that bats use. This we can´t see either but there is no doubt it´s there.
“We don´t really know how all of this functions, but it has to be somehow like that”, my friend said and grinned. To be honest, I´m not quite sure if I can believe his story or if he wanted to pull my leg. But watching my little sparrow, reeling and rocking with obvious delight on my clothesline, I keep thinking that he surely must have such an inner anchor. Even if he has not the slightest idea, where it is or that it even exists. But it´s got to be in there somewhere, an area within him that gives him the absolute certainty to be safe and sound in all of these dizzying situations. An anchor that keeps him upright and gives him balance.
So seeing him on the line, I imagine that, the more he careens, the bigger and stronger the anchor in him gets and he is even more centered. With stormy winds outside and the feeling of security and safety inside, the little sparrow can enjoy his crookedness as much as he likes. And I wonder, where my inner anchor might be…
Another story by Katharina Lamprecht…
“This is awful!”, one cactus complained, “My thorns are so long that no animal dares to come near me. No lizard, no bird not even the tiniest termite! I feel so lonely”.
“Why are you complaining?” the other cactus answered, “Mine are so weak and thin and soft that I cannot defend myself at all. No animal shows me any respect. The lizards climb all over me and tickle me with their little feet and the birds dig their claws so deep into my flesh that it hurts. I hate it”.
“You are a lucky one”, the first cactus replied, “I would give my roots for an experience like that. Imagine, feeling all that life on oneself”.They went on complaining and lamenting in this way to each other for a while. But suddenly they had a wonderful idea: they would swap their thorns so that each other could get the feeling they wanted. And for a short time, both were happy. One, to feel the birds and lizards and the other to enjoy peace and quiet. But that didn´t hold on for long and soon each began to complain again. They felt their new lives to be exhausting or boring and they longed for their old lives. So they swapped their thorns back. But again, after a short period of contentment they began whining again as before.
Then one day the wise old snake came along and rested for a moment in the shade, the two cactus casted. She listened to the two of them, complaining away, and suddenly she whispered “instead of wailing to one another you better learn from one another”. And with these words said, she slithered on.
The cactus thought about these words for three days and three nights. Then they began to try and find out, how they each managed to let their individual thorns grow. When they knew how to do that, each started to explain and teach the other how to do it. After some practice they knew precisely how to grow strong and how to grow weak thorns. And the more they experimented the better they became and the more colorful and different their thorns got.
Now they were able to keep a perfect balance between peace and quiet and lively action. And for the wise little snake they created a thornless and shady space right between them.
In a professional forum a colleague asked, if anybody knew of a certain therapeutical story. He remembered one that he once heard and thought that it was from a famous storyteller. Until then I never had actually written in this forum but now I wrote on behalf of this colleague’s question that I thought it was the famous story about a tiger. I was quite happy that I was able to contribute something at last until I read the response of another colleague. “I don’t know anything about a tiger”, he wrote, “but I guess you may have thought about the famous lion story”. I instantly sank into a hole three miles deep, full of shame and embarrassment. Now wasn’t that just typical of me and my incomplete knowledge? Shortly afterward I told a friend of mine what had happened, still very ashamed. But he hugged me and said “But you gave that wrong information with much love and enthusiasm”. I looked at him and began to work my way out of that hole.
In a land in our time there lived a man, who read a book and found lots of wonderful stories therein. There were true and invented stories, experienced and pensive, enjoyable and painful stories. There were stories which contained stories, and such which were actually not stories. For every story he read, there occurred to him nearly five which he had either experienced or thought up himself. So the thought came to him, that a lot in the world was a story which could be healing for himself and others; he only needed to absorb the healing stories well and to forget the terrible ones immediately. Then he would learn which story he had used when and for what. So he organised his own stories which he knew, and which had become a help to himself and others, or could become so. Sometimes he noted it down when a new story came to his ears and sometimes when a helpful story occurred to him, he memorised it.
Then he saw before him in a picture the storystories of this life arranged in long shelves, as in a large pharmacy. And behind the counter there sat a man who had learnt to listen to himself and others. He was a master of his subjectspecialty. His talent was that he understood how to tell the right thing at the right time to himself and to those who visited him.
I was still a child. But even if I had been older, I would not have been able to say how the carp might have explained his peculiar journey. Some friends of mine had played a trick on him. They secretly fished him out of his pond by night with a net. They carried him in a bucket for kilometers through forest and field. The swimming pool in my parents’ garden was supposed to be his new home. I must admit: we were pretty astonished when we saw him swimming his rounds in the pool water.
It was in September. The water was no longer chlorinated. There was no longer much competition between fish and man, and so Ludwig, as we named him, was allowed to stay for the time being. Winter came, and with it a thick layer of ice. But with the coming of spring it was time to change the water. Ludwig had survived the winter well. The family council decided to bring him home. Once again, Ludwig was loaded into a bucket. An empty paint bucket was the biggest suitable container we found. We brought him through the forest and fields back to his friends and family. Ludwig turned his circles in the bucket. Pretty small circles, because Ludwig had grown over the winter, and an old paint bucket is no mansion for such a carp. Aside from that, he sloshed out more than half the water along the way. But finally we were there. A swing of the bucket and Ludwig landed again in his pond with his old acquaintances. What he did then surprised us: Ludwig swam his rounds there, indeed so, as if he found himself not in his pond, but in a small bucket. He swam six or seven circles, with a circumference of not even half a metre. Then the circles became a spiral, first narrow, then wider and wider. Finally Ludwig realised where he was. In one long, straight line, he shot out of his bucket carousel.