Specifically orphans, or children whose parents are terrible parents, so the children have to learn how to fend for themselves, trust themselves, and become adult on their own.
"Why such a specific topic?" you might be wondering. It was an idea from my therapist today. We were talking about my lack of individuation or separation from my family members the way most people do in the normal way of growing into an adult and how my people to separate from are all gone. "That's okay," said my therapist. "You'd be doing most of the work anyway." But it might have some effects.
Then she came up with the idea of movies or books/series that might kind of serve as an inspiration and even as a guidebook for me, suggestions of how to get there from here.
So if you know of a book or series or a movie about a child in such a situation, please recommend it or them. (It has to have a happy ending, okay?)
Other stuff we talked about was about how I'm going through separation anxiety. My mom and I were so enmeshed, rather than fully separate people, and she was my center and my home. So since she died, I have lost part of myself, my center, and my home. I've been sitting around wanting to be rescued, wanting someone to take care of me. But that's not how I want to be!
I want to be wise, serene, and healthy. I want to know who I am and what I want and what my place is in the Universe. I want to deal with life with equanimity, handling the good stuff as well as the bad and accepting that everything is temporary. And I want to be able and mobile and take good care of myself. I want to be a mature, responsible adult who is my own center and my own home and who is able to have strong, emotionally intimate relationships with others without losing myself in them. (And who understands that mature adults can still play with LEGOs and other toys!)
How to get there, I'm not sure. So I'm reading these books and taking this e-course and going to therapy and thinking and blogging. And I'm asking you, my readers and commenters, for suggestions, or at least to share your own stories if you will.
Brené Brown, teacher of the e-course and author of the books we are using in the course, says that "Asking for help is a power move." By asking for help, we allow someone else the pleasure of doing something for us. We don't keep that pleasure of doing for others all to ourselves.
So, suggestions? Stories? Share, please!
YA fiction is full of those stories. Mercedes Lackey, especially her Valdamar books, comes to mind. I'd go with her older stuff as her newer stuff mostly just keeps recycling what she's already written. Have you read Lois McMaster Bujold? I love and adore her Vorkosigan books with a deep and abiding love. Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls are exceptional as well and are both about adults coming into a realization of their true selves but set in a different universe than the Vorkosigan books. My daughter highly recommends John Green's books - Looking for Alaska, Will Grayson, Will Grayson, and The Fault in our Stars (although that one is sad so you might want to give it a miss). The Chosen and My Name is Asher Lev both by Chaim Potok are very good - both about boys growing up Orthodox Jewish but rebelling in some way against the religious and cultural constraints. Then there's all the classics - Great Expectations, Jane Eyre, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, etc. etc.
ReplyDeleteI know kids and YA fiction is full of this stuff, it's just weeding through it that is difficult because there is so much of it! There are a couple of books or series I can think of where the kids start off the series having to take care of themselves, but then they get put into places with good adults who can help guide them. That's all well and good, but I'm trying tor something closer to my situation (picture me a whole lot younger than I am ....). I read one or two Vorkosigan books because a good friend loves them and I didn't, but I'd be willing to try again. And I could look at the other two you mention. As for the classics, I dislike the Bronte sisters' work. Really hate Jane Eyre. Sorry. But I could look at the others. Thanks! I bet your kids will be fully individuated by the right time in their lives. Sigh. ;)
ReplyDeleteI wasn't that taken with Jane Eyre myself or really any of the Bronte sisters in spite of really loving that era of literature. Wuthering Heights makes me just want to smack them all. Do try Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls. Paladin follows Curse although I read Paladin first just because the title intrigued me at the library and I then promptly devoured everything I could by her. Cold Comfort Farm, which Brussel Sprout suggested, is very, very funny in that British way.
DeleteI hope my kids become individuated by the right time! At least I've inculcated them into reading.
I, too, wanted to smack some sense into the Wuthering Heights characters.
DeleteI can probably find the Bujold books at the (really poor) library in town, or at least in the county system. Same with Cold Comfort Farm.
I imagine that you will raise your kids so that they will separate from you in their teens and early twenties to become individual adults on their own. You seem to have this parenting thing in hand. Too many people for the last couple of generations have not wanted their children to separate (can you say helicopter parent?) and function on their own. My own lack of separation was more an artifact of the badly timed traumas of my life. And that I really didn't want to leave home. My mom had to practically kick me out of the house at the end of every break my first couple of years in college across the state, while I begged to come back and go to community college in town. Can't have been easy for her, but it made me at least a bit of an independent adult. I just didn't get all the way through the process.
This might sound odd, but consider the Disney movie, Tangled. The mother is one of the most chilling villains Disney has ever created. She not only seems completely real, she is real. She is insidious and cruel all while insisting that no one will ever love the heroine as much as she. I shudder to think how many parents are exactly like this.
ReplyDeleteThe Name of the Wind is another thought. I wasn't as crazy about the second half of the book, but the first part is about a boy who goes from a loving and supportive family and community to being orphaned. It is kind of bleak, however.
Curse of Chalion is one of my very favorite books. I second the motion, you should read it. Everyone should, in my opinion. You might also consider The Magician's Assistant by Ann Patchett. I love this book, but I warn you, the first part may seem unbearably sad. It's about a woman who's best friend, her husband, has died. The book deals with crushing grief and love in its many forms. Sabine, the Magician's Assistant, must learn how to move on to a new life when all she wants is to hold on to the life she has lost. Don't worry, it is not as sad as it seems in the beginning. Good luck with the experiment. I hope it helps.
The Magician's Assistant sounds very much like something that would apply to me.
DeleteI love Tangled! I'll have to watch it again and yes it is one of the best Disney movies ever. That "mother" was a real ... mother. :)
I know it sounds like a weird experiment, looking for life help in fiction books, but it seems reasonable to me. Of course, I'm the one in therapy. On the other hand, it was my therapist who suggested it .... :)
it doesn't sound weird to me at all. I think it is a fascinating idea and well worth a try. By the way, I never could quite fall in love with the Vorkisigan books either. But Bujold is one of my favorite authors. So maybe you will like some of her other books.
DeleteI love the Bujold books too, and think Curse is great.
DeleteHow about the Poisonwood Bible? Those girls had the most out-of-touch father in the world, but from what I remember, it turned out ok for one daughter. She ends up...oh I better not say.
ReplyDeletexoxo Letitia
I haven't read that one. I'll look it up in the library. Thanks!
Deleteauthor is Barbara Kingsolver.
DeleteOkay, this may seem a little flip, but I suggest Harry Potter. His situation fits exactly the mold you've outlined and, over the course of the books, comes to find acceptance and self-reliance.
ReplyDeleteYou are right. None of the adults in his life completely takes him under their wing to show him how to grow up to be a good person and a responsible adult; he has to do it on his own. All he has is an anti-example. But reading that whole series again .... She could have used an editor on the last couple of books, that's for sure! I will consider this.
DeleteFor a short and very funny read, The Willoughbys by Lois Lowry, and then of course, the Lemony Snicket books about the Baudelaire orphans. Both have a good deal to suggest about individuality and developing as a person. Quick to read as children's books.
ReplyDeleteI think Great Expectations gets better and better with every re-read. I've taught it three times in the last ten years, and it is wonderful, and much richer for the more mature reader. I can tell you, I was forced to read it age 12/13 and loathed it. Now, Pip is becoming my favourite Dickens male.
House of Mirth by Edith Wharton.
Cold Comfort Farm - Flora Poste is an orphan. It's very funny and she's a very competent young woman.
The writers I'd really recommend for therapy purposes are Europeans, though and short story writers: Heinrich Kleist, Chekhov and Stefan Zweig. Zweig's novel Beware of Pity is also excellent. another couple of novels I'd recommend would be Camus's La Peste (or L'Etranger, both are very provocative explorations of the self), and Le Grand Meaulnes by Alain-Fournier, which is very elegiac and all about growing up and uncovering one's true self.
And finally, one of my favourite writers is Sybil Bedford, an incredibly humane and wise lawyer who had very useless parents. She wrote memoir and novel - start with Jigsaw and go from there.
Another terrific autobiographical book is Jackie Kay's Red Dust Road about her chasing up her birth parents, and her poetry The Adoption Papers.
You and your therapist have hit on one of the true purposes, in my view, of reading, and one of the reasons I keep trying to encourage students to do it - reading as solace, window on the world, reading as revelation and guide. It's the right way to go.
Not sure I can get the European writers --- even though I live in the huge city of Houston, the county library system is not very good. I will look though. And I'll look for those last two authors.
DeleteI've always read for escape and for fantasy fulfillment, never for the purposes you mention. I may be adding them in to my repertoire! Thanks!
I don't consume a lot of stuff with kid heroes, so I'm not much help.
ReplyDeleteIn the adult realm, I can think of Persuasion. But you have lots of suggestions above! A rewatch/read of Harry Potter sounds like a good idea, and Great Expectations too.
I haven't read Persuasion --- not a big Austen fan, but I've read some so I'll take a look at it. And maybe I'll watch the Harry Potters rather than read all the way through those increasingly large tomes! And now that's two for Great Expectations!
Delete(For Persuasion or Great Exp -- watch the movies of course!
DeleteNo bright ideas of my own (although I know they made a movie out of Cold Comfort Farm), but I second a bunch of the ones above. I'll let you know if anything brilliant occurs to me later :-)
ReplyDeleteCan't think of anything that fits the bill right off hand but I'll think on it.
ReplyDeleteI love the idea of using novels in this way, though.
One of the problems with depression or the mental deformations resulting from bad experiences is difficulty being able to imagine something better. Using fiction can help you get ideas of what change would look and feel like.
ReplyDeleteYou might also consider biographies. I keep thinking I'll do more reading there in my spare time (that never happens).
There was a recent psychology study showing we can temporarily take on traits of people we read about as we think about what we've read. I do this with books and movies. For good or ill, it doesn't last. :)
We've been watching the final season of The Tudors. It's been an interesting psychological ride. There are so very few good people in that story.