This was an exercise done with puppets.  You could use a stuffed animal and tell your own story.  Send me a copy for a prize to info@WriteYourLifeStory.org  or info@AnneRandolph.com 

Anna, The Ant - by Jean Caggiano   Wed AM  www.WriteYourLifeStory.org

Once upon a time there was beautiful little ant named Anna. She was born into a family of eight red ants, all female, except for the last baby ant to emerge who was named Alvin. Anna was beautiful but one of her antennae was flawed. It was crooked, actually, horribly misshapen, so that when she tried to straighten it in order to listen to all of the sounds of the forest, all she heard was a kind of ‘blurp’ which always caused her to lose her focus and direction. Thus poor Anna always walked in a lopsided fashion, canting to the right, the side of her one perfectly tall, straight antennae, as she was always guided in that direction . This often caused her to veer off course, missing many morsels of food-especially the gnats and mosquitoes -which her gleeful sisters and brother could find so easily by just closing their eyes and listening through their two pair of perfectly good antennae. Anna often wandered far off into the forest alone and one night she became so disoriented that she couldn’t find her way home.

She tried to snuggle down under a bed of pine needles but alas, it began to rain so hard that soon she was drenched, shivering, and her big silvery tears mingled with the heavy raindrops for hours until, finally, exhausted, she fell asleep. Luckily, when she awoke the next morning, the sun was shinning brightly and as she stretched her one good antennae ,a strange thing began to happen. She realized she was hearing more than the usual ‘blurp’ from her left, faulty antennae. It was more of a hum, almost a note, like the sound of a ‘c’ note played on the piano! How could this be? The sound grew louder and louder until suddenly she realized it matched the ‘c’ sound in her right antennae.

She was hearing perfect pitch in both antennae-they were matched and she was in balance, hearing perfectly for the first time in her life! Anna easily found a breakfast of plump gnats and mosquitoes and hurried home to tell her family the astounding news. When she arrived home and looked into the mirror, surrounded by her amazed family, she saw two perfectly straight antennae sprouting from her head!

She realized it must have been the way she had slept in the forest or perhaps it was the depth of the despair she had felt and had been able to release through her tears which had enabled her crooked antennae to stretch full-length and become straight again. She was never really sure but knew that something which had been pent up inside her had been magically allowed to release, to let go, enabling her to breathe deeply and come into her full, beautiful, delightful self. Anna spent some of every day after her antennae had healed in the forest helping those bugs and animals who were in some kind of distress and paying homage to the forest, the place of her healing.

 It didn’t matter that she would never quite understand what had happened to her -it was enough that she felt whole again.