Red Shoes

Many years ago, when Boy-child was an infant, a friend of mine - someone I worked with and thought I knew well - committed suicide. Her name was Lori.

Not long after that, I was reading the book, Women Who Run With the Wolves. I was reading it while on vacation in Paris and I happened to see the movie "The Piano" while I was in the middle of the Bluebeard chapter of the book.

You know how sometimes things click in such a way that it creates a shift in your universe? That book and that movie at that time after that tragic event was just such a moment in my life.

As I continued to read the book, I began to see Lori and myself and every woman I had ever known in the archetypes described through the fairy tales. It was amazing.

Toward the end of the book I discovered The Red Shoes, which is a dark fairy tale I had not been familiar with before. It disturbed me deeply because I saw my mother in the story.

By now you're probably wondering where this is going. Well, I took my mother a new pair of slippers today. After marking them with her name and getting them on her feet I looked at her and said, "Look at your new red shoes!"