That title?  That would be a trick question.

“AHAs” are unlimited.  I can’t even begin to imagine trying to count them all.  Worse – I can’t imagine a life where  I could count them all! 

It’s sort of like:  how many blackbirds backed into a pie?  One of those unaswerable thingys that make life interesting when you feel like the world is a bit too mundane.

Sometimes it’s fun to act as if we do know the answers.  In fact, at a workshop with Brooke Castillo, “I don’t know” was not allowed.  And I’ve often heard that if you can pose the question, you can pose an answer.  Well, of course you can pose an answer – it might even be a right one.  There may be a plethera of right ones – how do you know until you ask?  Isn’t that what branstorming is all about?  Opening the floodgates so that the AHAs can make it through?  Engaging the magical “what if?”

Kathe Kollowitz one asked:  “What would happen if one woman told her story?”  and then took the time to answer it (just so you wouldn’t get lost):  “The world would split open.”

Wow – there’s an “AHA” for you.  Just share your story with one someone else or several other someone else’s and watch the world change.  That’s how powerful Story is. 

We forget that because we’ve learned to read stories nailed to the page.  We forget that whoever nailed it there in black and white got to decide the story and the way it was told.  We are so used to being spoonfed Walt Disney and The Brother’s Grimm versions of things, that we forget that once upon a time stories were both a teaching method and a reflection of the culture’s values.  What happens when a story gets nailed down?  It stagnates and dies.  It no longer has the life and breath to create meaningful spaces for reflection among the listeners.

Here’s an AHA for you:  Jack Zipes talking about stories:

In my book The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood [wherein he identifies more than 30 versions of that story- the endings changed], I demonstrated that the origins of the literary fairy tale can be traced to male fantasies about women and sexuality.  In particular, I showed how Charles Perrault and the Grimm Brothers transformed an oral folk tale about social initiation of a young woman into a narrative about rape in which the heroine is obliged to bear the responsibliity for sexual violation.  Such a radical literary transformation is highly significant because the male-cultivated literary versions became dominant in both the oral and literary traditions of nations such as Germany, France, Great Britain, and the United States, nations which exercise cultural hegemony in the west.

Believe me, Little Red Riding Hood  is just the tip of the “innocent” fairy-tales we were (and are) spoon fed as children.  Little wonder one of the first thing feminist writers took on was the rewriting and updating of those tales!

Here’s another AHA for you (in case you’re new – because if you aren’t, you’ve surely read this here before, but it bears repeating):  You write your own life story.  (Unless, of course, you are in the process of letting someone else write it for you.  How’s that for an AHA?) You pick and choose the themes by focusing on occurances in your life until they are writ very large – and very “true” – and create the world you see around you.  Which is fine because we all do that.  Which isn’t fine if your story continues to make you as passive as Disney’s Snow White who is acted upon by the rescue of someone outside her – and thus proves that it is impossible to rescue yourself , the sad model for every woman who still awaits Prince Charming so that her life can begin.

Take your favorite fairytale.  Rewrite it.  See how many AHAs you can find in just one rewritten story.  For that matter, take any story you wish and rewrite it.  You have that power, you know.  Exercise it.

For my master’s thesis, I rewrote the creation story, in poetic form, as “an act of trespass on all male-dominated authorship of poems of creation and transformation, as a place where other women can recognize their own faces and voices in the story, be encouraged to futher explore the myth’s inner meanings as a means of approaching self-awareness.”  It was, and is, delicious. 

Try it!  You’ll like it!

Wylde Women’s Wisdom:

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Old stories are changed, changed utterly, by female knowledge of female experience.  These poems that trespass are corrections; they are representations of what women find divine and demonic in themselves.  Alicia Suskin Ostriker

By going into the darkness and returning to light, I claim both sides.  By writing about my journey, I leave a path leading those who might wish to follow towards “home.”  Tammy Vitale