A Moth to the Flame by Lorna MacDonald Czarnota

October is National Domestic Violence Month. Abuse can be physical, emotional or financial. Bullying is abuse. Stand Up Against Abuse. Hotline numbers follow this story.
No portion of this original story may be recorded in any form without permission from the author. You have permission to tell it to someone who needs to hear this story as long as you give me credit.

The door creaked loudly on its hinges when Becki stepped from the bedroom into the living. She froze, hoping Jeff didn’t wake. The only other sound was the hiss of the television that had gone off the air an hour earlier. She could see Jeff sprawled on the living sofa in a drunk. He didn’t wake.

Becki crossed the living room floor toward the door. Her foot kicked an empty whiskey bottle. She looked at him. When Jeff was sleeping he looked childlike, innocent. Maybe she should stay. Then she tasted blood. No. There were too many pieces missing. She buried dollar bills she had taken from Jeff’s top dresser drawer into her pocket, clutched her satchel to her chest, put her hand on the doorknob and stepped into the night.

A light rain had begun to fall as Becki walked the six blocks to the bus depot. She was soaked clean through and thought it was like a Baptism. A man carrying a sleeping child held the door for his wife and Becki inched past them. Inside there weren’t many travelers, just one or two waiting for their buses to arrive. There was a little woman behind the ticket counter, Becki almost didn’t see her. Her hair was all wrapped up in a turbanlike bandana and Becki couldn’t tell what color it was. The woman looked ancient to Becki. She shoved her money across the counter.

"I need a ticket."

"Where to?" the little woman at the ticket counter asked.

Becki thought "Any place as long as it's not here."
Then she realized Jeff would have a headache in the morning from all the whiskey he drank. He was going to need her. She grabbed the money and turned to leave. That’s when the door to the office opened.

Becki turned and saw the woman standing in the doorway surrounded in golden light. "My name is Mildred, won't you come in?"

Becki didn't know why she entered, but she did. She expected an office, grey and furnished with gray metal desk and chair, cigarette marred and ugly. Instead, she found herself in a orange and yellow kitchen with a chrome and formica table and chairs. She sat, and before she knew it, Mildred placed a steaming cup of tea in her hands, then pulled out the chair and sat across from Becki.

"You gonna tell me how you hurt yerself?" Mildred's aging voice asked as she pointed to Becki's broken lip. Becki wanted to tell her she ran into a door, but instead she told Mildred her story.

I never knew my pa. He left when I was little. But mama found herself another good-looking man, he was a traveling salesman. He was good to us, wasn't around much but when he come home he'd bring us gifts. Only one day it changed. He lost... customers and became angry. Now he was around more and the arguing started. One night I heard a loud thud and when mama come from the bedroom she was crying and her eye was bad, bruising.

I cried out "Mama, what happened?"

She replied "I ran into a door."

One night my ma must have run into a big door because her lips was bleeding. I ran to her and threw my arms around her waist.

"Mama?" I cried.

Pa was really angry that night and I could tell he'd been drinking. He grabbed me and threw me against the wall. I heard a crack and felt a pain run up my arm, like I never felt before.

My mama stepped between me and pa. Her face was red with anger, her eyes were fixed on his. "Don't you ever, ever touch my girl!"

He picked up the first thing he could find and slammed it on my mama's head, then he ran out the door.

Mama dried my eyes. "Baby girl, I'm gonna take you to the hospital. But you gotta promise, if the doctors ask what happened to your arm. You tell them you fell down the stairs. If you don't they'll take your pa away, and I love him Baby, I do. He's just on some hard times. He don't mean nothing by it. You'll see.

Well, when the doctors asked, I told them "I fell down the stairs and Mama hurt herself trying to help me.

Pa didn't come home again, and that was good riddance. Things got a lot better.

Before I knew it I was all grown up and in high school. That’s where I met Jeff. He was captain of the high school football team and a good looking man. When he stood on the field in his jersey, he took my breath away.

He used to tell me, "One of these days Becki we’re gonna get out of this town. We’ll get married, have a house, a couple cars and you can even have a kid or two if you like."

Wasn’t that nice of Jeff?

Well, we did get married but we never left. And we didn’t get a house or cars, and no kids yet thank goodness. I took a job and then two jobs. Jeff had to stay close to the phone you know, in case one of them scouts called. I’d do anything for Jeff. He was a fine player, but no calls come in. He sat and sat by the phone. I tried to tell him he needed to find work and he promised. It was always, "Just one more day Becki, the big ones coming, one more day."

And then Jeff was out with his baby brother. They went to a game and had been drinking, tried driving but ran off the road. Nathan didn’t make it and Jeff never forgave himself for that, even though his own elbow was shattered and there was no hope of football in his future. That’s when the drinking started. He was drunk most of the time. I begged him to get help but that only made him angry.

Now, Jeff was never really a patient man but when he was drinking it was worse. When he wanted something, he wanted it now. One night I come home late from working my second job. The house was dark and Jeff was just sitting in the chair a bottle of beer in his hand, empties everywhere.

"Where you been?" he asked.

"Jeff, you know I been at my job."

"Don’t mouth at me. I’m hungry, you left me without supper."

I started to say something when Jeff just leapt from his chair pushed me against the wall with his hand around my throat and began to squeeze. His beer breath was in my face "You get my supper and you get it quick or I’m gonna wring your neck."

Becki drew a breath and hung her head. "I ran into a lot of doors after that.

When Becki finished her story, Mildred rose without a word and set a candle on the table. She walked to the window and opened it a crack, then switched off the lights. That bright orange and yellow kitchen was plunged into darkest. Becki jumped at the suddenness of it. Mildred struck a match and lit the candle, then sat across from Becki.

In only a matter of moments a small moth flew through the open window. It circled around Becki’s head then dove into the fire. Becki watched as its wings curled and it died. Another moth flew into the room and as with the first, did somersaults overhead and dove into the fire. Now Becki looked and through the corner of her eye she could see many moths lining the window, beating their wings against the glass, fighting to get in. She watched as a third moth circled overhead but before it could dive, with hands much too quick for such an old woman, Mildred reached up and caught it. She held the moth in her fist, its wings beating against her fingers and held her closed fist toward Becki.

"What do you think, this moth is gonna do when I open my hand." Her words were soft and measured.

Becki closed her eyes then looked at Mildred. "Let it fly, just let it fly."

But when the old ticket taker opened her hand, the moth did what moths do. It flew into the fire and died. Mildred reached across the table and took both of Becki’s hands in hers and closed her fists around them. "Now, what are you gonna do?"

Becki slid her hands away. She pulled the dollars from her pocket and push them toward Mildred. Then she took a breath and blew out the candle.

Some information on abuse:
It isn’t easy to leave an abusive situation.
If the abuse is or can become physical the first 24 to 48 hours are very dangerous.
Seek safe shelter.
Do not go back, you do not deserve abuse.
It is hard to leave abuse when it is all you know, it somehow validates the victim and woman often return again. Sometimes this leads to their death.

Abusers are not necessarily bad people and this makes it easy for them to hide their illness. It is often why victims stay, because they really do love the abuser not the abuse. But people who abuse do need to get help and the victim is not the one to do it.

Children raised in abusive environments often seek that in adulthood because it is what they know. But we can and must change the cycle.

The national domestic abuse hotline is: 1.800.799.SAFE (7233) 1.800.787.3224 (TTY)

The Empty Cage

Copyright©Czarnota 2010
No portion of this story may be recorded in any form without permission of the author. Permission is given to share as long as the author is given credit.

The Empty Cage
An Original Story

In all the discussions of at-risk youth and story for healing, we should not lose sight of our compassion for the mother who has lost her child to the wilderness, and she should show kindness to herself also. The following story was written for my friend whose daughter ran away, leaving two more teens still living at home. All three children were adopted and their new parents always had, and still have, great hopes for them.
_________________________

One day a young woman walked through the woods to fetch berries. She had a small basket over her arm that swung merrily to and fro. As the woman neared a woodland pond, she heard the unmistakable chirping of young birds nearby. Sure enough, three tiny, downy soft baby birds came toddling out of the bushes and gathered around her feet.

“Where is your mother?” asked the woman softy. She looked here and there in the underbrush. She found an abandoned nest and the young birds continued to chirp loudly.

“You’re hungry little ones,” she said as she took plump berries from the basket to feed them. They eagerly devoured them.

Gently, the young woman tucked each birdling into the pockets of her apron and carried them home.

“They have no one,” she told her husband. “Can’t we care for them?”

The couple had no children and the husband was enamored of the young birds too. “Yes,” he replied smiling. “We can keep them. Tomorrow I will make a beautiful cage that they will be safe and comfortable.”

The next morning dawned crisp and bright. Before the woman rose from sleep, her husband busied himself in his work shed. All morning she heard pounding, sanding, and scraping until at last he emerged holding a lovely cage. It was delicate, but sturdy and carved with intricate designs of the forest.

“Oh, how wonderful!” his wife exclaimed as she hugged him tightly and kissed his cheek. “What a fine place to live.”

She searched the warm place behind the kitchen stove and found the little chicks cuddled together. “Come my precious ones and see your new home.”

The birds were placed in the cage and the door was closed carefully behind them. They looked splendid, happy, and safe.

Every day the young couple admired their charges. They spoke to them, fed them, and kept them clean and warm. Every day the young chicks grew. Finally, they were no longer babies. They had grown into beautiful adolescents. Their soft down was replaced with larger feathers in many colors. The young birds loved their home and the couple, but as the days went by they longed for the life they saw beyond the cage walls. They could see the sunshine and the forest through the window. They could smell the fresh breezes of a new spring. The oldest of the three longed so much that her heart was breaking. One night, she made good her escape.

Oh, the next morning was frantic. “Husband! Husband,” cried the woman. “One of our children is missing!”

Running into the room, the man saw it was so. His wife broke into tears and he wiped a few away himself.

“What are we to do, Husband?”

“Take joy in the two who are left to us, Wife. Perhaps the other will return.”

The man made certain the cage door would not open again. He wrapped it with wire, tighter than before, but it was not to keep the second or third young one from leaving. They were determined to find a way, and one morning the cage lay completely empty.

The couple was sad. The woman’s heart longed for their soft chirping and the touch of their soft wings, but mostly her heart yearned to have someone for whom to care. With a great heaviness in her heart, the young mother walked through the wood, hoping to catch a glimpse of them. They were nowhere to be seen. Yet, she never gave up hope. Years passed and daily she walked through the forest, cage in hand. Until one day, she heard them. In the trees above her head, she heard them singing near the pond.

“Oh Our Mother, how we love you. Oh Our Father, how we love you. Thank you for our lives and love. Thank you for all you have done. You were always near. We are always here.”

The woman sat hard upon the ground. She was surprised and amazed by their words. She stood and held up the cage. She swung it once, twice, three times over her head and threw it into the pond.

Now every day an old woman walks through the woods and listens. Sometimes the wood is silent, but sometimes she hears birds singing.

“We are always here.”

And she knows her children are safe and happy. What more does a mother ask.

Living the Fairy Tale Life

I find myself currently contemplating the meaning of "Living a Fairy Tale life." No happy ending until the main character goes through the struggle and overcomes the wicked character(s). We often only see the end of the story in others and say to ourselves, "Wish I had that life." We seldom consider what they had to do or go through to ...get there. Very significant and is becoming a major part of my work.

A friend replied to the comments above as follows: "I often wonder at the back story of the wicked character. How did they get that way? Is there really no hope for redemption for them? Could not the conflict have been arbitrated better than by a woodcutter's axe, a hot oven or a bucket of water?
And, if I'm in a Fairy Tale Life, how do I know I'm not the wicked character?"

True. I am thinking about that also. I think the "good" character is just an average person doing what average people do and trying to do his or her best, but no matter what that character does in the story, the other characters aren't happy.

Cinderella, for example. She does everything she is asked to do and yet her step-family is not satisfied. It would seem that the step-family will not be satisfied until they destroy all that Cinderella embodies. I think many people can relate to her dilemma and I don't think anyone, except for wicked people would consider her wicked. But yes, there is that question of what made the step-family wicked in this story. That we must leave up to our imaginations and how each of us would create that story.

Relating it to real life, we can see that there are many reasons people become that way; childhood abuse, trauma, mental illness. Bullying, substance abuse, and other "wicked" behaviors are symptoms not causes. And many times, the wicked cannot control their behaviors which related back to Gollum of yesterday's post, is why they deserve our pity but this does not mean we must endure their torture.

Stories of Choice and Empowerment, final celebration and presentations.

This is the final session of a storytelling program designed for at-risk girls. It is a night of celebration, somewhat like a graduation.

The evening begins with an explanation of what will happen and why we are celebrating. The girls have completed seven sessions of storytelling and self exploration, with the celebration being the eighth session. Each week has built on the last with a focus on metaphor and the power of story.

The girls are told a story. I like to use Laura Simms Black and White Cows for this evening. I call the story Star Woman’s Basket.
A farmer captures a woman who comes from the heavens and milks his cows dry. He wants to marry her and she says yes as long as he never looks in or asks about her basket. All goes well until many years later when she is called away for an extended time as a midwife. His curiosity gets the better of him and he opens the basket, only to find it empty. He barely has time to replace the lid before his wife enters the house. Seeing that he has betrayed his trust, she takes her basket and leaves.

Not only is this a wonderful story about relationship, it is a reminder about the importance of keeping trust.

I then ask the girls to place a dream, wish or something they want to keep sacred into my round basket with the promise to keep them safe. In the spring, I invite friends over for a wish planting ceremony. The girls’ wishes are planted in my garden under a prayer tree.
Following the story, the girls then presented their mandala projects. (See Mandalas for Healing for the method used to create these lovely works of art and soul.) Then each was awarded a key on a string, representing the tool they now have to unlock the door to their future. The key is the power of story.

After all the presentations are given, we eat. Breaking bread together is an important element of community.

Mandalas for Healing in the Crossroads Story Program: Empowering At-Risk Youth

Lesson One: What are Mandalas

The word mandala is Sanskrit meaning circle. They are large sand paintings made by Tibetan monks. They can take up to seven days to create. Prayers or meditations are chanted throughout the process. The monks use their fingers and tiny funnels to handle the colored sand.

At the end of the seven days, the artwork is destroyed. Anyone fortunate to be present at this time is given a bit of the sand, like being able to take a piece of the prayer. The remaining sand is thrown into a body of water with ceremony. The water then carries the prayer. Each mandala is usually made up of concentric circles. These circles include gates that represent north, south, east and west. I have seen them worked from the inner self out or the outer self inward to the center of self. When I do these with the youth, we usually work inward to find self and the gates represent different stages of life.

http://tinyurl.com/yaktun4
http://www.asia.si.edu/exhibitions/online/mandala/mandala.htm

Mandalas Lesson Two: the Outer Circle

This is lesson two in creating a mandala with the girls in my group home program. We drew three concentric circles on our boards. Each circle will have four gates lined up with each other for easy passage. The outer circle’s gates will be your birth gate, your dream gate, your metaphor gate and the gate that brought you to the place where you are now. We began by spending the first two weeks listening to stories with strong metaphors, discussing metaphor and identifying a personal metaphor or archetype.

1. Think of an object, animal or story character (not by name but by type such as little girl, witch, etc.) The girls chose piece of paper, caged bird, Turtapillar (turtle and caterpillar combined), snakadilla (armadillo or snake combined), and I chose a warrior.

2. Why did you choose that metaphor? Paper can be written on, I like to sing and I am caged, a turtle can hide in its shell for protection and a caterpillar is ugly but will become a butterfly, an armadillo can roll into a ball to protect itself and a snake sheds its skin and is new, I am a warrior because I need to fight.

3. How can these metaphors be helpful to you? How can they hold you back? A piece of paper can be written on or crumpled, a turtle has a place to hide and carries its home with it but if he never comes out he cannot eat or anything, a caterpillar may be eaten by something else, an armadillo is slow moving, a snake may bite others, a warrior can become overly hardened by war.

4. We did a visualization. The girls closed their eyes and I asked them to see a door before them and notice they have a key in their hands. They were asked to open the door and find a special tool on the other side of the door. This tool is just for them and their metaphor to use on the journey toward self.

In creating this outer circle, you can make the gates elaborate and also decorated the circle outline. The more decorative, the more interesting. If using sand, be sure drawing is large enough.

The Metaphor Gate: This gate will be where you draw your special tool(s). This represents the entrance that you other self can use to journey inward.

The Birth Gate: When we are born, we are a clean slate. All the possibilities of life lay before us. Some of us may have beautiful paths with everything we need along the way. Others may be missing a parent or both parents and feel lonely on their journey. Some may be born to abuse and poverty. This birth gate is open to us and we must enter but we do not have to stay on that path forever.

The Gate that Brought US to Where we are Now: This gate represents the path that brought us to our current situation in life. It may be an event that pushed us here, or a person or people who helped us get here.

The Dream Gate: This gate represents that path you would choose to travel someday. It is not looking back and wishing things had been different. Instead it holds the promise of our future.

Mandalas Lesson Three: The Middle Circle.

The Middle Circle (not the center one) is one that we used as a next step toward achieving a better understanding of self and in our group’s case, a step toward achieving our goals at each outer gate.

The Objective is to get the youth thinking about the many possibilities their lives could have taken at any given moment to empower them to take a proactive role in changing their path to be successful in obtaining what they really want in life. This was done by making them think about what was available to them at birth, what brought them where they are, who they are now, and what they would like to be in the future.

This middle circle brings them closer to self by asking them to consider what they went through in each of those initial gates (Metaphor, Birth, What Brought Them Here, and Dream).

Do they have a straight path to center from birth?
Did they have to break through a wall?
Were they incarcerated, addicted to drugs?
Do they feel in control or out of control of their lives at this time?
Where do they want to be and what is needed to get there, education, money, a job, a support system?

The girls were really forced to think beyond the past and the here and now. They had to look at layers of self-discovery.

Mandalas Lesson Four: The Center of Self

Self is something we cannot achieve until the end of our days, unless we are completely devoted to this discovery. I don’t really recommend this devotion to my groups as they are still in egotistic stages and I feel they need to mature to the stage of thinking of others more than themselves before they should begin looking inward again.

Discovery of self is not the same as ego, in fact it requires setting ego free and being unattached to self.

For the very center circle in our mandalas, I asked the girls to draw something that represented openness. They chose flowers, onions, eyes, and geometric.

The girls will be asked to tell about their creations on our last night. Using art is the way I have found they open best to telling the story of who they are and where they have been. They can do this safely through their artworks, it helps keep them at a distance and separate from the emotions attached to their stories.

Grief and the Weeping Lass

The Weeping Lass (Scotland)
adaptation of "The Weeping Lass at the Dancin’ Place" :Twelve Black Cats by Sorche Nic Leods
Copyright©Czarnota 2008
No portion of this adaption may be recorded in any form without the author’s permission

There is a place where the young folk go to dance and laugh. Although Mary went there, she was not happy. While the others played at the games of love, Mary sat alone beneath an overhanging bush and wept. Every night it was the same.
Then one night, when the young people were well into there fun, a tall handsome stranger came. All the lasses danced with him, but Mary never noticed he was there. She didn’t notice when the dancing stopped and one by one in pairs and alone, the young people went home, and the stranger stood before her.
"Why does such a young and pretty lass sit alone and weep?"
"I weep for my love Jaime who’s gone off to sea and drowned."
"Well I knew your love Mary, it was months ago he left and it is time to get on with living. Come dance with me."
"I’ll dance with no other than my Jaime and he is gone."
Before Mary could say another word, the stranger took her hand and pulled her to her feet. He turned her in great circles. Little by little Mary looked up until she looked into his face. Well she knew those eyes, that nose. And the mouth she had kissed a hundred times. It was her own true love. Mary was overcome with joy and the two danced into the wee hours to music only they could hear.

But as morning drew near, Jaime said "I must be gone before daylight Mary." He whistled for his horse. A steed black as midnight came to the call.
"Oh no," said Mary. "Now that I’ve found you, I’ll never let you go."
"Mary, the house is cold and dark and small. You cannot come with me."
"But I will," she replied. And he had no choice but to put her behind him on the horse.
Jaime kicked the horse’s side and off they flew across the landscape. Or so it seemed to Mary that the horse’s hooves left the ground. Faster and faster they went until the world was a blur around them and Mary grew cold. She leaned closer to Jaime for warmth but he was cold and wet. And it was not raining!
As quickly as they had begun, the horse came to a halt inside the village cemetery. Mary knew the place for it was here she had erected a stone in memory of her Jaime. He slid from the horse and gave her a hand to help her down. His hand was cold and
pale and when Mary looked into his face she saw the once vibrant rosy cheeks were grey and sunken. Jaime pulled Mary to him and she struggled to free herself.
"Let go whoever you are!"
"I am your love," he said "And now that I’ve found you I’ll never let you go! No longer will you keep me awake with your weeping. No longer will you wet me with your tears."
Mary pulled and pushed and finally freed herself but the plaid shawl wrapped about her shoulders came loose in the deadman’s hands. Mary ran for the gate and he chased her. She could feel him on her heels but she never looked back. Just as Mary crossed the threshold, the sun rose over the trees and she fainted.
When Mary woke, she found herself in a safe warm bed with a fire burning in the kitchen beyond her door. An old couple had found her on the road and now heard her stir.
"You’re awake at last," said the old woman. "Tis good to see the color in your cheeks."
They explained to Mary how and where they had found her and she told them her story.
"Tsk," said the old woman. "We dream such strange things at times."
"Twas no dream," said Mary. "Go to the cemetery and find my shawl, then you’ll see."
It was plain to see there was arguing with her so the man took two of his friends to search in the cemetery. They found a scrap of plaid near a headstone. The stone read "Jaime, Beloved of Mary, Lost at Sea." They tried to pick up the cloth but it was buried in the earth.
They sent for the priest and the old man sent one of his friends to the shed to fetch a shovel. "We’ll dig it up."
And dug they did. They dug and dug until they came to the roots of an old tree that grew nearby.
"Look, it’s tangled in the roots," one man said.
"And more," said another. "It’s tangled in the fingers of a corpse!"
The priest helped give young Jaime a proper burial then they returned the shawl to its owner. Mary pressed it to her face. She breathed in the scent upon it.
It smelled like the earth. It smelled like the grave. Mary wrapped the shawl about her shoulders and went home, never to forget her love but never to weep for her Jaime again.

Grief is a real human emotion, the other side of joy. As with most things in life, we cannot have one without the other. We must have death to have life, night to have day, cold to have warmth. Contrast is the design of life.
Grieving has stages and each person will experience them in different ways and in different order. Some people will go through all stages of grief and others will skip. It has to do with coping skills, severity of loss, and distance from loss. Those at the center of the circle will feel it most and probably take longer to heal, but healing will come. If you worry about how you feel, know that grief is normal and natural and only really becomes a problem when it interferes with normal activity such as eating and sleeping or makes us ill. Even then, you can get help by talking about your grief, telling stories of the wonderful life of the one you lost so that you celebrate and honor all that made that person or pet or job or whatever, valuable. Sometimes it may be necessary to get professional help. Just know you are normal for these feelings. In fact, we should worry more about someone who does not feel this way after loss.
In her 1969 book On Death and Dying, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross defines the five stages of grief as Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. These are in a reasonable order of processing but some people will experience them in a different order.
Perhaps the most important thing I have learned about grief is that we do not have to experience it alone. We should not be afraid to allow ourselves the support and comfort of friends and family. If these people are not available to us, we also have clergy, teachers, counselors and many others to be there for us. Grief like life is a shared human experience.

Presence

Today’s lesson in archery class was follow-through. I teach students to anchor the draw in the same place each time for consistency, shoot, and freeze until the arrow hits the target before taking another arrow. Moving too fast makes us less accurate.
We can be so overwhelmed by our many tasks that we forget to be present in the moment and enjoy the fruits of our labors. This is simply going through the motions without presence. It is survival without living fully. Granted, licking a stamp and mailing a letter or washing another dirty dish may not be thrilling, but we can still do it with purpose and with presence. These mundane activities can help us transition into other more difficult tasks if we allow ourselves to use this time to focus only on what we are doing instead of our minds wandering to the past or what is next.
Enjoy those moments in life when you accomplish something, mundane or important, before moving on to the next thing. Listen to the arrow in the air, hear it land, see it quiver, feel the experience in your whole self, then go for the next one.