Some years ago a friend of mine – a scholarly, poetic collector of myths – shared with me a teaching he had received from his three-year-old daughter. While in his study reading one day, he was interrupted by a knock on the door. Knowing that his daughter had been outside playing, he called to his wife to open the door. Twice more came a disturbing knock. His wife, upstairs resting, had not heard.

The next sound he heard from his daughter was a loud wail. Closing his book, he went to open the door and invite her in. To this invitation she screamed, "No!" "All right, then, stay out," he suggested. She responded again with an equally loud, "NO!"

Then he looked at her sternly and presented the situation to her logically. "You cannot both refuse to come in and stay out at the same time. You have to make a choice."

To his surprise, she stopped crying immediately. Standing very still on the door step, she smiled at him, turned her head to the sky and said, "Look, Daddy, look at the beautiful clouds."

The poet in my friend told this story with great appreciation of the wisdom of his daughter. She had moved him, startled him, out of a rational approach to a conflict of opposites and brought a third, transcending option to the situation. These clouds – mist-gatherers, rain-bringers – were seen as a beautiful source of pleasure. Making no demands for rational decision-making, they could be experienced as beyond duality: they just were. The third option presented to the father was just to be in the presence of shared beauty.

Twenty-five years ago I was privileged to spend time with a little girl of six and to learn from her poignant stories told in painting, sandplay, poetry, song, and drama. She was first described to me by her mother, who experienced her as "moody," "withdrawn," and "explosive." More alarmingly, she had been talking of suicide recently, although she was also afraid of death. Her mother summarized: "She doesn't face reality and she doesn't want to grow up. She says we aren't real – that life isn't real."

Genuinely concerned about the unhappiness of her daughter, the mother was also extremely honest about herself. She had not wanted a child, but once born, she had tried to raise her in the best way she knew: by supporting the skills which would be required in life, as defined by the cultural standards. She had taught her to read fluently by the age of four, would tell her whenever she wasn't doing well at any task, and would consistently scold her for not "speaking up." Admitting that she was often too critical, the mother sincerely explained, "But I am so concerned that she has no sense of what is realistic in life."

The little girl's school report continued the same theme. "She is not being realistic about being in school and in a group. Yesterday she ran crying from the game circle because she didn't want to go into the mushpot." The game was not familiar to me, but I wondered how it would feel to a sensitive six-year-old to go into a "mushpot." I remembered being asked as a six-year-old child to play the part of the spider in "Little Miss Muffet" at a time when I had an enormous fear of spiders.

Soon I saw her for myself. She was tiny, wore pigtails, and there was a wise-owl look about her face. She had a self-conscious way of talking with an adult vocabulary and style, which at times betrayed itself in little giggles. Stiff in her body, there was little sense of play in her movement. All seemed very cautious.

She was frightened and crying when she came in. I could imagine that she anticipated another situation in which she had to do it "right." But just as she entered, I took the cover off a sandtray and discovered it filled with water, paint, and flotsam. In my surprise I said, "Yuck!", sending her into a fit of giggles. My unexpected response caught her humor and that yuck became the secret password throughout our friendship.

Shyly, as if giving a report to a doctor or a teacher, she then said, "I try to be realistic." I nodded in silence. Continuing through the room, her eyes took in the possibilities of sandtray and its figures, colorful paints and soft clay, and she suddenly whispered as if to herself, "We can make believe in here, can't we?"

Deciding on paints, she began to make a lovely pallet, mixing colors until she got just the right blends. Then another question came, this time quite firmly. "Is it bad to pretend?" I knew then that the pretender was still alive, sneaking cautiously out of its withdrawn hiding place to see if this was a place where the "unreal" world of fantasy and imagination could be lived.

Presumably she felt the safety confirmed, because she began to record in her first painting a rush of imagery which grew and grew, flowing outward as the floodgates opened. She called the painting "Clouds, "naming each as its shape appeared:

The girl then moved to the sandtray to play. She created a hospital, which she said was right next to the ocean. "You have to have a hospital there when you are in danger of sinking in." Inside the hospital a new baby had just been born. The whole family came to visit – brothers, sister, aunts, uncles, grandparents. Nurses, doctors, teachers, and priests also came, as well as a mailman who delivered flowers and cards of congratulations. An entire personal and collective community celebrated this new birth. Not all was totally paradisical in this scene, however. There was one small girl visiting who wanted to sit on the new mother's lap. The mother refused.

Here was a hint of this child's isolation from her mother and of her feelings of smallness, vulnerability, and a poignant individuality. Acceptance would need to come from some source in order for this potential new birth of self to flourish. I could surely provide some of this support to the child, as well as helping the mother to see her child more clearly. There was also the possibility of discovering resources of nourishment from her own inner world. The archetypal forces which appear in personified images of mother, father, teacher can serve to support, nurture, and instruct. This action of the psyche provides great hope for healing when the outer sources are not sufficient.

Stepping back from her play for a moment, she seemed to call upon these archetypal forces when she announced, "Next time I'll make a story called "Organization Goodness." It will be a place where everyone comes to volunteer their help for neglected children. Each person will do what they can do and like to do best – each different. There will be teachers, farmers, bakers, nurses, priests, mailmen, policemen, bankers, musicians, and dancers. They will all help take care of the children, including the teenagers, who will try out many of the jobs."

It seemed that the acceptance of the "pretend space" from which the moving, growing cloud painting had emerged was offering her a potential for a new beginning – a new birth which needed protection against "sinking in." The protection was well pictured in an organized system of support and nourishment.

Having established a sense of safety, she went back and looked again at her "Cloud" painting. Reviewing all the images, she paused at the final one of the monster. It was the one image that did not have a moving quality; it was neither growing older nor younger. Indeed, this last image was almost like a stop sign.

Pointing to it, she looked away from me and said in a small voice, "You know, it's a Monster of Love. Besides, we can't be alive because of the Monster of Love. It makes a rose that is so beautiful that we can't help loving it. But if we pick it we die, and so it is the Monster of Love."

In the next hushed moments it was as if a big secret had been shared. The other images, moving and full of potential, had danced around this last one. Behind the seemingly static image of the Monster was its story – a story which told in metaphor of the experience this little girl had of love – its quality of poisonous seduction, a story of false promises.

As I was entering with her into this tragic sense of life's betrayal, she spun around and, looking straight at me, said passionately, "They won't let me be who I am!" In her one cry I heard all the cries of all the children, the rich variety of growing beings who were not being allowed to live their own stories. Her own clear declaration of this issue set us both on a path of discovery. Where could she find the way to validate this individual self that she knew she was?

She chose the geography for the first stage in her journey in her next story. She called it the "Strange Land of New," and described it as a country of wild animals and sea creatures. These were all given personified positions of authority and service, as in "Organization Goodness." For example, the fox was the teacher, the octopus the jailer. The peacock was the Queen and an owl was the King, who treated his Queen with gentleness.

Having carefully established the structured organization of this new land, she stepped back to look and said, "They don't look natural." Picking each one up, she bathed the animal and sprinkled sand on it, commenting, "I'm being a good mother to them. Dirty animals look more natural. You only need to be clean sometimes." Looking at me with a sly grin she said, "Like me, I don't always stay thinking so well these days. Just only when I need to."

In her movement toward the "Strange Land of New" she begins to go back to an early stage of development where, as Erich Neumann describes in The Child,2 the animal and vegetative forces are most active. The growth-producing forces are at the level of instinct. Here the new birth shown in the beginning goes through a natural development. However, because of the need for order and structure, perhaps to keep her from sinking, the animals are personified in a human system of law and order. Her sense of "mothering" also enters as she actively participates in creating a more natural setting in which the dirt of the earth is honored and accepted.

The next chapter of her story returned the animals fully to their own habitat, where the order became the order of the natural seasons and growth, not the imposed order of organized government. Played out in the sandtray, it was called "Rushing Stream." A stream began to flow, making lakes for the animals. At first, the animals were pleased and came one by one to drink freely. Then, knowing that winter was coming when the waters would be frozen, they began to burrow into the earth to sleep and wait. Bears, lions, apes, turtles all dug themselves in. The baby elephant had to dig its own hole, because it had no mother to do it. Some animals laughed at the beaver, because he built his protective house over the ground. "But he didn't care," she stated emphatically, "he did it his way."

Soon all was frozen and quiet. Even the Rushing Stream was silent. Everything slept for "six years and a half hour." Slowly, slowly it began to warm up, to thaw, and soon the Rushing Stream began to flood the land. The animals stirred and awakened as they felt the water and poked their heads out. Feeling the warm sun, they stretched and went outside and saw that the waters had receded. To their surprise, many trees and flowers were coming up. The seeds also had been sleeping and were watered by the now flowing stream. So many trees were coming up that each animal "eventually" had its own kind, which it loved. Only the orphan elephant had no tree, so the Father Bear gave it his tree. Now, all can continue to live in this forest where there are so many differences and "everybody lets it be so." Even the especially different beaver.

This story seemed to allow the creativity in her to flow even more vividly, shaping itself now into poem and song. She came in one day humming a tune and then proceeded to share two songs – one about winter, one about spring – continuations of her "Rushing Stream" story.

Here again, the lesson of differences is learned from nature – different snowflakes, different minds. Where before she could not join this reality of nature, now her awareness is "just the same" as the snowflakes.

Having learned the lesson from winter, it too can change.

As she sang I kept thinking about the other flower, the rose which the Monster of Love planted but which when picked, caused death. Was there some transformation going on in these new flowers that the animals seemed to love and that warmed the winter?

As I wondered, she began to mix two colors of paint together, contemplating them as if to study the blend itself. Then, apparently referring to the last line in her song, "The robins mate, just like mine," she asked, "Do you know about mating? It's about two different things coming together – like a man bird and a woman bird coming together to make a new bird. Like opposites, dirty and clean, dry and wet, right and wrong – do they ever get together and unite? Do they ever have two babies in the same stomach?"

"Or is it like this?" she continued as she chose two new colors and put some of both on each half of the paper. "Is it like good and bad ? Perhaps there is a little good in the bad side and a little bad in the good, and it keeps changing around and moving." (What a perfect description of the symbol of Yin/Yang!)

"But perhaps," she continued, "something really new that is not good or bad comes when they love and mate and make a new egg." Seeming satisfied with her own answer, she used a new color to make a large egg, calling it "New Beginning – A Surprise."

The next time she came in joyously with a painting she had done at home, and a song. Excitedly she showed me the image, saying, "It wasn't an egg, it was a big seed – you know, from mating! In the seed was this big tree!" The painted tree was sturdy and tall, with strong, overarching branches that were flowering at their tips.

"It is the Tree of Love," she said, "and here is its song."

This tree, like the cloud-looking of the little three-year-old, was born out of the impulse of the psyche to move beyond dualism and opposition to an experience of totality. The tree, neither good nor bad, just is. This wonderful tree of love, dreams, and wealth was a visionary picture of herself natural, rich and flowering. It was a tree that could stand against the Monster of Love, under whose branches others could join, taking her from the isolation and loneliness of differences. It was as if her neglected being had been given its own tree by this action of her psyche, just as the Father Bear had given the orphaned elephant its tree.

Next she asked me to join her as she directed the painting of a remarkable series of the six days of creation, each one mandalic in form. Nothing was painted on the seventh day. She declared it not only a day of rest, but one in which all creation could be carefully looked at and appreciated "in the time off."

Day 2
	Day 3
Day 4
	Day 5
Day 6

This was evident in the play she now wrote and wanted us to perform, called the "Evil Source." I can only summarize it, since it was quite long, with clear dialogue and directions for stage sets and sound effects.

She had joined the Girl Scouts and came in one day very upset about a girl the others called "Fatso." "She's only different," she explained, and she proceeded to paint for her a "teaching gift." It was a tulip, "which all little girls like." This was a special flower because it had a beautiful smell that wafted away in the wind but came back again to the flower, so that it could enjoy being itself. It also had nettle-like leaves to protect it from being picked and hurt.

For the other girls, she created a new set of rules, as the Queen had done. In a triptych she painted three symbols. The first was a sun, for FRIENDLINESS, as the sun was to the stars. The second panel had several flowers and a butterfly for DISCOVERY. The butterfly discovered something different about each flower, especially the tulip. The third panel was a beehive representing HELPFULNESS. The bees make something for everyone to eat and enjoy from the beauty of all the flowers.

This intuition about her return to the ordinary world was confirmed by her own statement the next time I saw her. She said she wouldn't need to come any more because she wanted to use the time to practice jumping rope. Her best friend was the captain of the Jump Team and wanted to play with her. She showed me how she had learned to jump 116 times now instead of just 43.

She planned the celebration of our last meeting. I would bring the food and decoration and she would bring the gifts. She came wearing her own gift – a small image of herself made in felt and worn on her dress as if it were her signature. Her gift for me was a felt mandala shape of many colors, which I was to wear. It seemed a reminder of her own experience of the Self, an experience I had been privileged to share, and an experience I had been able to validate.

Her gift to the sandtray was a new small ball, which she placed in the center of the tray where she said, "The oceans meet the sand." It was a simple and profound statement of the totality of her Self, balanced and safe between the opposites. The story had come full circle: now there was no danger of sinking in, and no danger of isolation from the life-giving waters of the psyche.

The final gift was for both of us. It was a painting called, "Magic Twilight Hour." As we looked at it she said softly, "I'll meet you here between night and day, dark and light – where we can see things change – like looking at the clouds."

In the deeply shared silence that followed, I remembered a lovely Hawaiian legend about a small bird that carried a tiny light in the dark, guiding those who were lost in the forest or whose canoe had overturned in a stormy ocean. Most especially, the bird enjoyed coming out at twilight to play with the children, who also carry their own tiny lights.

For this moment of her life, the gift of the changing, shape-shifting quality of the imagination – which could take her from suicide to new life, from the Self-denying stance of "I try to be realistic" to the play of light and laughter – had been received. If a child can experience this dynamic, healing quality of the inner cloud-watcher in a context which reflects back its value and its reality, then this natural life resource can be used forever. This gift is not given to solve all problems, but to bring options for their solutions. It is not given to cure all wounds, but to unlock healing possibilities.

REFERENCES
  1  Jung, C. G. (1965). Memories, Dreams, Reflections. New York: Vantage Press.
  2  Neumann, Eric. (1973). The Child. New York: C.D. Putnam.
  3  Kirsch, James. (1977). "The Symbol of the Cloud in European Literature of the 19th and 20th Century." Quadrant, 10, 5-16. Published by the
      C. G. Jung Foundation of New York.
  4  Jung, C. G. (1965). Memories, Dreams, Reflections. New York: Vantage Press.

Edith Sullwold, Ph.D., was the Founding Director of the Hilde Kirsch Children's Center at the C. G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles and of "Turning Point," a professional group working with seriously ill children.  She also helped found the Center for Healing Arts in Los Angeles.