When I was in Costa Rica in February, my friend Patsy talked about a movie she’d seen, Blue Butterfly, which had been filmed in the Costa Rican rain forest. It concerned a 10 year old boy who had been diagnosed with brain cancer and the thing he wanted most was to catch a Blue Morpho, the Blue Butterfly. The movie is based on a true story.
Without giving too much away, I found that the story was very similar to a healing story, an archetypal story, that I use in therapy. The healing comes out of the determination to act, in both cases, to save another! A young woman whose father, a widower, becomes frustrated with her because she has become willful and independent, and he cuts off her hands. The young woman is wandering around, in pain and afraid, almost crazy.
She finally begins to search out food and water and after a time she finds an orchard of ripe pear trees. She can stand and eat and so she is discovered by the gardener who tells others about her and finally the King hears about her. Intrigued, he hides near by and waits for her to come and eat the pears.
When he sees her, he is overcome with compassion and he approaches her, inviting her to come to the castle with him, and because he feels great love for her, he asks her to be his Queen. She refuses him, saying she cannot, doesn’t have hands, can’t do what she needs to do, but he simply tells her that as his Queen, she will not need hands, that there will be someone to take care of anything she may need. So she agrees to do this. After awhile, they are married. And after another while, she discovers that she is pregnant.
The King’s mother had become jealous of his wife, the new Queen. Hearing that she is pregnant, his mother is determined to regain her power and authority back. At the time she delivers, the old Queen mother sends everyone away but her handmaids.
The young Queen has twin babies but as soon as she’s delivered, the old Queen mother gets her up and takes her and her babies out of the castle and into a carriage where they’re taken far away from the castle, and the King.
“If you return,” the old Queen tells her, letting her out of the carriage and the deserted road, “I’ll kill your babies.” When the old Queen returns, she tells the King that his wife died in childbirth and the babies were monsters that had to be destroyed.
He is sick with grief.
The young Queen is also sick with grief and struggling to carry the babies, a child under each arm, staggering into the darkening woods. She comes to a stream and carefully puts down the babies and tries to lean into the water to get a drink. In doing this, she pushes one of the babies into the water. She leaps to her feet and looks around, not knowing what to do. She suddenly realizes there is an old woman sitting under the shade of a tree and she calls out to her, “Please, save my baby!”
The old woman just looks at her and says, “Save it yourself.”
She can’t believe this woman is refusing to help her and so she begins to beg her and in her hysteria, she pushes the other babe into the stream. Now she’s hysterical! “Please help me,” she begs. “Save my babies!” She’s crying and down on her knees pleading with the woman.
The woman remains where she is and again says, “Save them yourself.” She looks at the young woman, crying out to her and tells her, “Plunge in your stumps and save your own babies.” And when she does, miraculously, she is healed and whole and she is able to reach in and save her own children.
The wise old woman tells her, “Go back to the castle and to your husband. He loves you very much.” And of course, when she tells him what happened, he banishes his mother and he and the young Queen and their two beautiful children live happily, as they should do.
-- Story told by Angeles Arien ~~~~~
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wild world
April 2008 
Violet
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