Fables Treat Our Foibles Workshops Use Stories As A Way To Teach Valuable Life Lessons

As a child, many of us hear fables that try to teach us right and wrong or good qualities such as honesty and loyalty. Two North Idaho women have taken this concept and given it a new twist.

Charlotte Brown and Karolyne Rogers, Ph.D., teamed up to write a book called “A Weaving of Wonder.” Brown wrote the six fables that are in the book, and Rogers, a counselor, wrote activities designed to accompany the fables and teach us something about ourselves.

What has come from the book are workshops that use fables and activities to help people use their wisdom to guide them on a daily basis. Rogers says that the workshops help people listen to their own needs. “Most of us know what we need, we just override it,” she says. “This is an invitation to listen to what we know.”

The workshops also help people direct how they react to certain situations, Rogers says. It offers a “conceptual framework to explore the things that are happening in your life,” she says.

Brown says that when she wrote the fables, she found herself unexpectedly benefiting from them. “I came to so many realizations about myself that I hadn’t anticipated,” she says. Brown hopes that others will be able to experience such personal revelations as well.

Brown says that people need to appreciate the wisdom in their own experience. “We’re all a lot wiser than we think we are,” she says.

The workshops run from one to three days in length and are designed to integrate a person’s childhood experiences with their experiences as an adult. The workshop starts with the reading of one of the fables in the book and participation in the accompanying activities, Brown says. One example is the story of the wooden egg who is adopted by eagles and searches for his place in the world. Participants take the themes of patience, being lost, being different and having potential and relate them to their own lives. Participants are asked to relate early recollections of being patient, as well as childhood memories of experiencing the other themes. They reflect on what the themes meant at the time, and compare them to what the same kind of experiences felt like as adults.

Then a second fable is read and participants are encouraged to tell the story in their own words, using their own experiences. At the end of the workshop, participants create their own fable. “The fables we’ve heard are just amazing,” Brown says. , DataTimes MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: PREVIEW Workshops are offered twice a month. Cost is $100 per day per person. University credits are available. For more information, contact Karolyne Rogers at (208) 765-9393.