My Books
Juliette’s stories and resources
Juliette is the author of several beautifully illustrated books about emotional wellbeing, resilience and mental health, published by Routledge.
In 2020, Juliette published a therapeutic storybook about loss, ‘The Girl Who Lost the Light in Her Eyes’, and a short ‘pocket’ guide to accompany this.
A guidebook on supporting school staff to use resiliency enabling approaches at a whole-school level ‘Nurturing Emotional Resilience in Vulnerable Children and Young People’, was published in 2017, along with seven storybooks on different themes related to resilience. This resource was followed up with an accompanying ‘Nurturing Resilience Card Deck,’ in 2020.
Juliette’s latest publication is a therapeutic storybook about trauma called ‘The Silent Selkie’. This comes with a practical guide - ‘Using the Expressive Arts Therapeutically with Children who Have Experienced Trauma’.
“Beyond our pain, we are more than what happened to us – we are who we become. Our trauma story is not our only story – and it does not have to be the end of our story. Healing involves accepting and honouring the defence mechanisms and survival strategies we developed to cope with our emotional pain, whilst working to release these by tending to our deeper, truer self each day. This way, our own sparkling light can shine through.” – Ttofa, 2022
“I don't think I've come across a book quite like this one. It's clear through the images and metaphors how much expertise is behind this beguiling story of the selkie and the journey to heal the hidden wound. I have already shared this story with children and was really struck with how they identified with aspects of the story. For example a young person shared that the selkie being banished to a cave resonated with their experience of being sent to an isolation room at school. Power in this book on so many levels. Thank you for your beautiful gift.”
- Review of “The Silent Selkie”
About storytelling
Anthropologists tell us that storytelling is central to human existence. Storytelling has existed for thousands of years as a way to share knowledge and important ideas. It is common to every known culture and appears to have bonded the early human communities through time.
The templates or patterns of the stories and myths we tell and retell over generations are known as “archetypes”. Just as our mind detects patterns in the visual forms of nature - a face, a figure, a flower - so too it detects patterns in information. Stories are recognisable patterns - or archetypes - and in those patterns we find meaning.
“Without stories, we lack the cosmos that keeps us in touch with the universal reality. Without stories, we have no way to recollect ourselves when our personal world shatters…In finding our own story, we assemble all the parts of ourselves. Whatever kind of mess we have made of it, we can somehow see the totality of who we are…That story is our individual myth.” - Marion Woodman, “Leaving my Father’s House”
We use stories to make sense of our world and to share that understanding with others. Developing a sense of meaning and purpose in relation to one’s life is a key component of human resilience.
“Myths and stories….help us not only to understand life as it is, or was – but to dream life as it ought to be. We perceive, explain and make sense of the world through stories. They are the stars we navigate by, and that’s why storytelling is a universal human phenomenon, a vital aspect of communal life across all cultures and throughout the entirety of our known history. Stories teach us everything we know, and their lessons are deep and rich. Stories can reveal to us longings that we never knew we had, fire us up with new ideas and insights, and inspire us to grow and change…. Helping us to unravel who we are, and to work out who we want to become.” - Sharon Blackie, “Hagitude”
Stories teach us about life, about ourselves and about others. They provide us with the answers to the biggest questions of creation, life, and the afterlife. Stories also create magic and a sense of wonder at the world.
Using stories & the arts with children
If we want children to talk about their internal experiences, we must use their language.
The child’s language is a language of play, symbols, images, metaphor. We can access these through storytelling, dreams, arts, & the imagination.
Children respond more directly to the messages within stories because they have a natural affinity with images, metaphor and symbolism, which appeal to their colourful imaginations.
“Children need art and stories and poems and music as much as they need love and food and fresh air and play…Many children in every part of the world are starved for something that feeds and nourishes their soul in a way that nothing else ever could or ever would…We must fully understand that without stories and poems and pictures and music, children will starve.” – Philip Pullman (2012)
Because stories work with the imagination, they have the potential to energetically shift what is diminished, wounded, incomplete or out of balance, back towards strength, healing, wholeness or balance.
Stories also allow children and young people to begin to express what they may have previously suppressed – consciously or unconsciously - allowing them to explore deeply intimate and painful experiences using the ancient language of symbols, images and metaphors, without having to detail anything personal (Ttofa, 2022).
Therapeutic stories
A therapeutic story is a story that uses creative metaphors to help to address painful or difficult experiences in a child's life. It is used by both professional therapists and non-professionals (parents, teachers) to offer possible resolutions and reflections to children.
A therapeutic story can be an effective means of addressing traumatic situations and challenging behaviours with children and young people.
Stories work on an unconscious as well as conscious level, but the subtle meanings within stories often go under a child’s conscious radar.
The child or young person’s unconscious creative imagination will find the meaning relevant to their own individual situation. Adults do not have to interpret the story for a child or young person.
The use of metaphor tends to bypass psychological resistance by involving and awakening the creative imagination. The symbolism, images and metaphor that appear in stories bypass the intellect. This allows the listener to embark on an imaginative journey, rather than being directly confronted about the issue.
Presenting ideas in a story can plant a subtle yet powerful seed in children’s minds for changing behaviour and for teaching new ways of thinking, feeling or being. A child may be working on an issue without them realising it.
Stories are therefore non-intrusive and non-directive. Using stories can feel very safe and normal, which may be less threatening than formal therapy for many children.
Messages within stories may be reassuring and can inspire or build hope, confidence and resilience. By identifying with the main character or characters, the listener is empowered as obstacles are overcome and a resolution achieved. The story then becomes something we can carry with us as a source of inner strength.
Stories as carriers…
Stories connect us to each other. When we hear another person’s story, we see them in their humanity.
Stories carry wisdom. They often carry hope, as well as values & patterns of living that give meaning and healing,
In return, stories also help to carry our own personal story or individual ‘myth’…and carry us through difficult times. They are the thread that keeps us from losing ourselves altogether.
The American author, mythologist and storyteller Michael Meade has said that stories are like ‘storehouses’ – a place not only where wisdom resides, but where we also find a door to an ‘inner-other-underworld’ that helps us to ‘let go’ of what is troubling us personally.
“There is relief for the individual who no longer has to carry everything; the load is partially carried by the story.” - Michael Meade
Emotions have physical properties. Children need ways to access, express and process deep-seated emotions safely. When repressed, emotions can build up and become the fuel that powers more challenging behaviours (complexes).
Stories and the expressive arts act as a kind of ‘vehicle’ that allows children to begin to look at emotions that were previously too difficult to bear alone.
These feelings might be associated with memories that feel very dangerous to the child or young person – and hard to talk about.
The spiritual teacher and author Michael Singer talks about how we store thoughts, feelings and habits inside us that keep us stuck, but that every day we can set an intention to ‘let go’ of these - so we can heal our pain and suffering, and let our spirits soar.
Stories help us to do this.
Stories and the arts enable a child to symbolically express deep-seated feelings and memories, whilst also ensuring the child can remain at a safe distance from the source of their emotional pain.
The child is able to communicate and ‘talk’ about that which may have been unspeakable, without being triggered by their defences, or re-traumatised.
The child can then learn to separate themselves from what happened to them. This allows them the psychological space to make sense of their emotional experiences.
“The patient who comes to us has a story that is not told and which, as a rule, no-one knows of.” – C.G. Jung
