[ Contents | Search | Next | Previous | Up ]
From: Carla Bernier
Date: 04 Oct 2004
Time: 20:29:03 -0500
Remote Name: 151.203.149.164
Ellen-Marie, Thank you for the bibliography. I, too, like to use stories in therapy, but there are too few for stuttering. I am happy to have the list you provided as a reference. Stories are wonderful, and the same experience can be told from different points of view, and all be true. It so helps the person trying to help to have the perspective of the person asking for help. Often, it turns out that the one who is helped most is the therapist! I need to recommit to writing my stories for my family. Your paper reminds me of when I was a little girl, and my parents had a dear friend who was crippled by polio. He was a wonderful, gentle, man, and he would come and sit with us while my parents went out for dinner occasionally. They would help him in the door, and he would sit in a straight kitchen chair, in the living room, with his right arm hanging limp by his side, and his left hand holding his cane. My sisters and I would sit around him, and he would tell us stories, for hours (“This is the house that Jack Built” went on and on). All were told from memory, no books. It’s likely that some were made up along the way. Like you, I don’t know that I ever got the meaning of some of them back then, but every time he came, we would ask for the stories repeated over and over. He would talk until his mouth was dry, in a deep voice and with such animation. We loved his stories. You have rekindled a part of my childhood that I have not visited for many, many years. Thank you!