The Gift of Story

The Gift of

Story

A WISE TALE ABOUT WHAT IS ENOUGH

Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D.

Illustrations by Michael McCurdy

BALLANTINE BOOKS NEW YORK

To the old ones,
a nagyszuloknek, para los ancianos,
the last of their kind.

Copyright 1993 by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D.

Illustrations © Copyright 1993 by Michael McCurdy

The front cover illustration originally appeared in
The Man Who Planted Trees,
Chelsea Green Publishing Company

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this hook may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Performance rights reserved. Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 93-90686
ISBN: 0-345-38835-6
First Edition: November 1993
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

ALSO BY CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTES, PH.D.

BOOKS*

Women Who Run With the Wolves
AUDIO WORK+

The Gift of Story:

On What Constitutes Enough

In the House of the Riddle Mother:
On Women's Archetypal Dreams

The Red Shoes:

On Torment and the Recovery of Soul Life

The Radiant Coat:

On the Crossing Between Life and Death

How to Love a Woman:

On Intimacy and the Erotic Life of Women

The Boy Who Married an Eagle:
On Male Individuation

The Wild Woman Archetype:

On the Instinctual Nature of Women

Warming the Stone Child:

On Abandonment and the Unmothered

The Creative Fire:

On the Cycles of Creative Life

*Published by Ballantine Books
+Published by Sounds True, Boulder, Colorado

THE GIFT OF STORY

WITHIN THIS SMALL BOOK, THERE ARE

several stories that, like Matriochka dolls, fit one inside the other. Among my people, questions are often answered with stories. The first story almost always evokes another, which summons another, until the answer to the question has become several stories long. A sequence of tales is thought to offer broader and deeper insight than a single story alone. So, in this old tradition, let us begin with a question: What constitutes "enough'? Let me begin to answer by telling you a story.

This old tale was handed down to me in many different versions over many an evening fire. The tellers are various good and rustic people from Eastern Europe, most of whom still live by the oral tradition. The story is about the great wise man, the Bal Shem Tov.

The beloved Bal Shem Tov was dying and sent for his disciples. "I have acted as intermediary for you, and now when I am gone you must do this for yourselves. You know the place in the forest where I call to God? Stand there in that place and do the same. You know how to light the fire, and how to say the prayer. Do all of these and God will come."

After the Bal Shem Tov died, the First generation did exactly as he had instructed, and God always came. But by the second generation, the people had forgotten how to light the fire in the way the Bal Shem Tov had taught them. Nevertheless, they stood in the special place in the forest and they said the prayer, and God came.

By the third generation, the people had forgotten how to light the fire, and they had forgotten the place in the forest. But they spoke the prayer nevertheless, and God still came.

In the fourth generation, everyone had forgotten how to build the fire, and no one any longer knew just where in the forest one should
stand, and finally, too, the prayer itself could not he recalled. But one person still remembered the story about it all, and told it aloud. And God still came.

As in this ancient story, as throughout all of human history, and in my deepest family traditions, the ultimate gift of story is twofold; that at least one soul remains who can tell the story, and t hat by the recounting of the tale, the greater forces of love, mercy, generosity and strength are continuously called into being in the world.

In both the traditions I come from, Mexican-Spanish by birth and immigrant Hungarian by adoption, the telling of story is considered an essential spiritual practice. Tales, legends, myths and folklore are learned, developed, numbered and preserved the way a pharmacopoeia is kept. A collection of cultural stories, and especially family stories, is considered as necessary for long and strong life as decent food, decent relationship and decent work. The life of a keeper of stories is a com-

bination of researcher, healer, linguist in symbolic language, teller of stories, inspiratrice, God talker and time traveler.

In the apothecary of the hundreds of stories I was taught by both my families, most are not used as simple entertainment. In the folkloric application, rather, they are conceived of and handled as a large group of healing medicines, each requiring spiritual preparation and certain insights by the healer as well as by the subject. These medicinal stories are traditionally used in many different ways; to teach, correct errors, lighten, assist transformation, heal wounds, re-create memory. Their main purpose is to educate and enrich soul and worldly life.

It must be noted also that many of the most powerful medicines, that is stories, come about as a result of one person's or group's terrible and compelling suffering. For the truth is that much of story comes from travail; theirs, ours, mine, yours, someone's we know, someone's we do not know far away in time and place. And yet, para-
doxically, these very stories that rise from deep suffering can provide the most potent remedies for past, present and even future ills.

When I was a child, the few Hungarian family members who survived the devastating war in Europe found their way to America with help from those already here. Suddenly, I was the fortunate inheritor of additional extended family that included several remarkable old women. One in particular I called "Auntie Irena," which in Hungarian is an affectionate name for a storyteller, like the name "Mother Goose" in Britain and the United States. It was she who gave me a story about what "enough" really means.

She was then an old woman who became one of the treasures of my life for she was filled with an immense love for humans, and most especially for little children. Sometimes she awakened me in the mornings by shaking sprinkles of cold water on my face, and this she called her special blessing on me.

She rouged my cheeks with black cherry juice in the summertime. And once in the wintertime, and outside the bounds of propriety among adults in those times, she sledded with me down a hill and into a pasture, cackling all the way. Best of all, she knew innumerable stories. When I climbed into her lap, I felt I was sitting in a great warm throne, and all seemed right with us and with the world.

This was all the more extraordinary since she and this entire branch of the family had lived through years of unspeakable fear and inhumanity during the war. They were simple farm folk who lived in the tiny hamlets and remote villages. And like millions upon millions of kinsmen and kinswomen in countries throughout Europe, all were thrust into a war they did not make, yet were forced to endure or die. Auntie, like all who survived, repeated over and over again, "I cannot hear to speak of these things. No one can understand how terrible it was. No one can understand what it was like unless they saw it, smelled it, heard it, clung to life through it themselves." When I asked what

little present she would like for her birthday or for a holiday, her reply was always the same, "No gift please,
edes
kis
, my sweet little one. The gifts I longed for are here now—to be able to hold a child again, to be able to feel love, to be able to laugh sometimes, and to finally be able, once more, to cry. All I have yearned for is here."

Here is the story she gave to me about "enough". She told the story in the third person, the way that people do when they "cannot bear to speak of these things". You may find the heart of the story familiar, for it is very old.

Long ago, during

the war, a small

farm in Hungary

was overrun three

times by three differ-

ent armies. Toward

the end of the war,

in the winter just

three days before Christmas, yet another army came, and took nearly everyone who was left away to forced labor camps. The others they marched to the border and left them there stripped of shoes and coats. By a miracle one of the old women was able to hide in the forest. Frightened and dejected, she wandered through the wood for endless hours, trying to make herself as black as a tree trunk one moment, as white as the snow the next. All about her was the starry night and from time to time, the sound of snow falling from the trees.

In time, she came to a small shed of the kind that hunters use. Finding it empty, she entered and sank to the floor in relief. It was only moments before she realized that there with her in the hut, half in shadow, was another soul. It was a very old man whose eyes were filled with fear. But she knew right away that he was not her enemy. In a moment he realized that she was not his either. To tell you the truth, they were both more odd looking than frightening. She wore men's pants that were too short, a coat with one sleeve missing, and an apron wrapped around her head for a hat.