And Zen What

It's quite a story.

No, I have no idea how closely its events approximate those of Three's life in Haiti. She wasn't 11 when she came home, but she does tell her sisters that she used to take care of her little sister while her mom tried to sell stuff.

All writers use some aspects of their own lives and experiences in their stories, of course. Readers love to try and find the autobiographical bits (often not well disguised, usually for marketing purposes) in stories written by Famous Writers.

So, while it's not literal, I do believe that Three is working through her life when she writes stories like this. (Especially since "hoppy" is not only a word which points to rabbit locomotion but also how she says "happy.") Her version of coping, of learning to own her extraordinary experiences, is to use story-telling.

Story-telling is what cultures do, what families do, what individuals do, to create identity and stability, to explain the world and their place in it. It's what we do in therapy too. Tell our stories, try to learn to understand them in relation to the world we find ourselves in, maybe modify them to help us live in that world a bit more happily.

Story-telling is fun. And it is work.

Most of all, it is a way to heal, and to commemorate and preserve that healing.

Three doesn't talk to me (yet) about her life, but she does story it to me.