Any story can be viewed in terms of our parts, by which I mean that we can enter the story through any one of the characters, and in fact, we do, whether consciously or not. I join with others whom I admire in inviting my readers to explore their own internal landscape through stories.
In addition to Benjamin Button, here are some more compelling and redemptive depictions of movement through loss, captivity, and our own guilt and fear toward liberating love and life:
Maboroshi - this one is refreshingly literal and magical (similar to South American magical realism) in its invitation for viewers to consider how we make agreements deep within ourselves to stay trapped in despair for fear of change and the breaking and annihilation that it appears to be, and how we find our way out of the past and into the greater harmony and life of the present.
Amélie - I finally found this one, too, the other day, and what a blessing. It depicts a woman liberating herself from well-meaning but overprotective parental love through little love conspiracies that spread light and love in her community and lead her to realizing her own soul’s calling for deep connection as she continues to hide but eventually allows herself to be discovered by the love she’s looking for. I had my own calling to nurturing innocence and love conspiracies about a year and a half ago, so I really enjoyed these aspects of this story.
When we do parts work, we discover dark parts of ourselves, like the villains in the stories we watch, but we also discover loving and liberating parts, and we bring to light again innocence we become alienated from through the experience of life’s traumas. When we let these parts come to life again inside ourselves, we may find life and hope renewed. Through this, we can let the mischievous and soul-crushing parts of ourselves fall away and the life and love affirming parts rise.
Just like we get to choose which stories we read and watch, which characters, comedies, and dramas we invest the energy of our attention into, we get to choose which of our parts to identify with most. Our “dark” parts need to be brought to light, not so much to bond with them but to recognize that all humans contain the capacity not only for love but also for hate and indifference. When we invest our attention in acknowledging them, we can embrace what they arise to teach us, and release the power they have over us when they move in pure darkness.
I like reading and watching warrior stories sometimes, too, for parts integration, to call to life the strength within myself to face some of life’s scariest challenges, but it’s important to also include sweeter stories like Amélie, to foster soft places for the innocent parts of ourselves and imagine ourselves transcending ever further and in times of relative peace in the world.
It is important to dream, to face our nightmares, yes, but also to dream much bigger and broader into love and innocence renewed and more fully embodied. When we do this, it is easier to see and honour these parts in others immediately around us and in the world at large. We can more easily distinguish whom to follow and invest energy into and whom to acknowledge and let fall away.
There is a wise maxim that says that what we resist persists. We must keep our eyes and hearts open to the pain and suffering in the world and within ourselves, not to fall into them and live there in the abyss forever, but to hear its message and answer the call to bring our best selves to our worlds within and without, to find and/or create safe, loving spaces within and without for those hurt parts to heal.
Forces that are larger than our own individual capacity for love can be given to the unbounded power of Love itself, which I believe is the core, the seed, the source of who and what we are. We come here to this life with it when we’re born, and in our necessarily growing comprehension of our separateness from other individual people, we develop amnesia that we must persistently overcome as we reckon with the ever evolving diversity of life in the world.
The heart is one of our most powerful organs in this endeavour.
Traumas can blind us to love, but they can be overcome. It is important to find ways to open our hearts again to love and life as we heal. When our hearts are closed, the light and love of the world have a hard time getting in, and in fact, sometimes the loudest calls within in us, often echoed without, the ones that shake us with fear to our core, are calls of love we have refused to hear and left unanswered. In many ways, our nightmares are calls for us to wake our conscious minds from some kind of fear and isolation we have imprisoned ourselves within: a nightmare illusion of our separation from love.
Opening can be scary, but when we explore and embrace the vast and diverse nature of our loving parts, it gets easier, and loving changes outside us begin to appear as well. Trust grows. Faith in humanity becomes possible again, and factual loving realities rise to meet us.
There is another wise saying that applies here: “when the student is ready, the teacher appears.” When we are ready to be loved, the love appears. It may have been there for years, more likely always, somewhere, but now we can see it.
Nature is one of the best sources of wise and redemptive reconnection with our true loving nature. Many of our stories help us along the way, too. I am forever grateful to artists, scientists, and philosophers on love for their persistent, perennial loving light.
I hope you find some beauty ringing within you from these stories, some salve for your pain, and some hope for yourself and the world around you.
Warm wishes,
Julie
P.S. I had a feeling but wasn’t sure how it would fit in until after I’d already posted this and watched a few more episodes, but My Happy Marriage is also a good one for this kind of liberation and integration.
