Stories written for others invoke the magic of healing. For Gleice da Silva, a teacher of children with support needs, this is an essential tool in inclusive social development work. Reflections from her lecture at the Inclusive Social Development Conference in Dornach, October 2024.
A little seed, for me to sow,
A little earth to make it grow,
A little whole, a little pat,
A little wish, and that is that.
A little sunshine, a little shower.
A little while — and then: the flower.
In my early years as a curative educator, I sang this song with the children every spring when it was time to plant flowers in the garden. The song is accompanied by beautiful hand gestures, which the children learned quickly. As a teacher, I was always searching for stories and images that could accompany and help make sense of the children’s experiences.
Stories are essential for our own growth and also for what is called “inclusive social development”—for the educational and therapeutic work of supporting others on their path of development. Stories are not just for children but for everyone. I want to explore how stories work and how we can work with them. Let’s start then with a story:
A father gives his daughter a seed which, according to him, contains magic power. He tells her that if she sows it, magic will happen, and a plant will appear. The child, filled with awe and wonder, plants the seed. Her father also tells her that she’ll have to be patient, to take care of the plant, to water it, and to pay attention to it. Wanting to see the magic happen, the child does as she is told and diligently waits and cares for the plant. There is a time when the child wonders if anything will really come out of the earth that she is so intently looking after. Then the magic happens, the shoot sprouts, and the child, overcome with joy and excitement, runs to her father to show him. The father tells the child to keep watering the plant and keep watching over it so that more magic will happen. The child, with renewed faith in her father, does as she is told. She witnesses leaves emerging, one by one, then flowers blooming with magical colors and scents, and finally, the withering of the flower, which brings her some sadness. But then she finds the seeds that look exactly like the one she was given by her father. To the child’s amazement, the flower does not give only one seed, but many. And the child thinks, “I can create so much magic with all these seeds.”
Two things are essential in this story: first, the child herself planted the seed and experienced the magic directly, and second, the child’s faith in her father—it could also have been her mother or a guardian—has been strengthened by trusting him and by having her trust confirmed.
Left: Participants in Gleice da Silva’s workshop
Right: Participants in a workshop at the conference. Photos: Matthias Spalinger
My first encounter with Rudolf Steiner’s course on Education for Special Needs was through my then-teacher, now-friend, and colleague, Jan Goeschel. In the first year of my training in curative education through the Camphill Academy, Jan guided us students through the process of doing a child study. One of the main guiding practices was a contemplation exercise. It consisted of taking the child into our sleep by inwardly asking them what we could do to support them: Who are you? What can I do for you? How can I better understand you? and then observing the child closely during the day, noting what they liked and disliked, how they moved, expressed themselves, and so on.
Coming from extensive academic studies in science (I have a B.A. in biology), I knew the importance of discipline when learning and testing something, but I did not know much about the ways of contemplative work. I tried the exercise for a week, and nothing seemed to be revealed to me. Frustration started to wear me down. Jan asked me to keep trying, which I did, though unhappily. I tried for another week, and still nothing to report. I was again encouraged not to give up. More than two weeks passed, and I was about to give up on the exercise when I had a dream. In it, my student was a puppet with strings attached to her limbs and connected to a puppeteer above her. This image was so strong and insightful to that particular child’s situation, that it informed my child study and guided my approach to working therapeutically with that child for the remainder of the school year.
Like the child from the story who witnessed the magic of the seed shooting up through the soil, I experienced real spiritual substance that guided my studies and practical work. I experienced an increased trust in my teacher and later in the work of Rudolf Steiner. The seeds that were planted early on, through the experience of taking difficult situations into my sleep, have become an essential tool in my work with inclusive social development.
Another important seed was planted in the third year of my training in curative education when we started studying the Education for Special Needs course by Steiner. In the introduction, Albrecht Strohschein describes how the name of their curative education center came about. He says that, for Steiner, it was important that it be called the Therapeutic and Educational Institute for the Care of the Soul, with the words “care of the soul” in capital letters, so that the children being served there wouldn’t be immediately labeled as “disabled.”1 Strohschein ends this remark by saying:
Now, I slowly realized for the first time that ‘care of the soul’ was something belonging to all education, which everyone might be called upon to practice; there was nothing in it to separate our children from others. And with this, our future centers for curative education have received their name.2
It was a vital, magical moment for me. I remember highlighting this passage in the book and writing in the margin: “Everyone needs care of the soul.” Then I thought, “I’m also included in this ‘care of the soul.’” The realization that we all might be an integral part of healing through curative education, not only as providers of healing but also as recipients, was extraordinary to me. Even if it turned out that this wasn’t what Steiner meant at the time, it was the insight I gained from that indication.
In my last year as a student in the Camphill Academy, I wrote a curative story guided by my incredible teacher, Norma Lindenberg. For 15 years, she had crafted her Art of Storytelling course, which had the unique component of guiding us students in writing a curative story for a child under our care. The story I wrote left a powerful impression on me. I felt that the child and I had both been changed by the process of writing with the intent of bringing about healing.
Those first learnings and experiences that I had with curative stories stayed dormant for a couple of years until I had to choose a topic for a dissertation. I was asked to consider using contemplative inquiry to choose the topic I would write about for my master’s program in healing education. The seeds I had been cultivating intersected perfectly in the search for a topic. I meditated on “writing something that would meet the needs of the world.” After weeks of taking that question into the night, the image of the work came to me: “curative stories for children in need of care of the soul.” Through contemplative exercises, my dissertation topic, “Curative Stories and their Healing Powers,” came about. Even though it was initially related to children in need of support, I knew my work needed to go beyond that.
One way this happened has been by having the participants in courses I teach experience curative stories themselves. In the spaces I create, we split into pairs, and one participant shares with the other an experience they’ve had of a “little wound”—a struggle they’ve had, but not a major trauma. Then, the other participant is tasked with writing a story about that wound, with the intention of bringing healing to it.
In recent years, I’ve been writing letters to prisoners through the Anthroposophical Prison Outreach program in America.3 One of those prisoners (I will call him Jonah) has been struggling deeply, and I offered to support him by writing a curative story for him. I wanted to give him a possible image of hope amidst the hopelessness he was experiencing. It began like this:
The forest was dark; he could not see a thing; he could only hear the sound of a woman’s voice calling:
“Come to me!
Without shame,
Without fear.
I will take care of you,
Through your terrors
And tears.Yes, he was afraid, and yes, he had cried way too many times; after all, he could not find his way out of the forest. It enveloped him with its long, dark branches and mute noises. He was lost and did not know which way to turn…
And here’s how it ended:
He opened his eyes and traveled back from those sweet childhood memories. He then realized he was still in the forest; all around him was still dark, and he was still lost. It was then that he understood that the voice he was hearing was his grandmother’s. The voice spoke again, sweet as the rushing creek and mighty as the mountains he once saw.
Take a step forward,
Don’t be afraid.
I am with you.Following the voice, he took a step forward, and another one, and another one. He knew very well that he was still lost in the dark forest, but at least he knew he was not alone. “My grandmother is with me.” He thought. He closed his eyes once more, held on to her warm and loving face, smelled her delicious cooking, felt in his heart her embrace… He opened his eyes and took another step forward… Towards the light.
The letter took a long time to reach Jonah, and his response took an even longer time to reach me. But part of healing work is time, which is so important.
Jonah’s reply to my story was:
“I read the story you wrote with me in mind, and I can’t grasp—get my head around the fact that you wrote it for me. You spent your time doing something personal for me because you actually care about me. I thought, or I believed, I was here waiting for death. That I was utterly alone. You truly brought healing light into the world I live in. It is a beautiful story. Thank You!”
I asked Jonah to give the story I wrote for him a title, and he chose his first and middle name, followed by the words “come to me.” Jonah’s experience is similar to many others that I have witnessed over the years when people write a story or read or listen to a story that was written for them. One participant said that writing a story for someone else is unique because it activates warmth in the space of the heart. This activation of the heart’s forces is exactly what I’ve witnessed every time the space of contemplation and the wish to care for someone’s soul come together through the medium of stories.
Left: Participants in a workshop at the conference
Right: Stefan Hasler, Eduardo Rincon and Ueli Hurter at the festive evening. Photos: Matthias Spalinger
My own story and the stories of so many people who spoke during the Dornach conference are a testament to the power of the work we’re striving to do in the field of inclusive social development. There is power in who we are and the tools we have developed over the last 100 years, especially the tools of empathy, of putting ourselves into the shoes of the other. For me, curative stories are exactly that: they use the power of imagination to create a different reality, allowing social processes that have become stuck to become unstuck, and creating the possibility for us to see ourselves differently.
Everywhere we look, there are little wounds and big wounds that can benefit from the care and attention of what Karl König called the “approach of curative education.” In 1965, Karl König, the founder of the Camphill Movement that now has curative education and social therapy communities around the world, lectured about the importance of this work and expanded it to all who need care of the soul.
The ‘curative educational approach’ should express itself in every field of social work, in spiritual welfare, in the care for the elderly, in the rehabilitation of mental patients as well as the disabled, in the guidance of orphans and refugees, of suicide candidates and the desperate; but also in overseas aid, in the international Peace Corps and similar attempts. If we truly still want to consider ourselves to be human, then this is the only possible answer we can give today while mankind dances close to the abyss. Only the help from person to person, the encounter of ego to ego, the realization of the other person’s individuality without judging his confession, beliefs, world view and political standing, simply the direct and one to one encounter of two personalities is able to create this kind of curative education that is able to meet the threat to the inner human being in a healing manner. However, this will only be possible on the basis of a thorough and heart-felt wisdom.4
The seeds that I’ve planted and that were planted in me over the years as a curative educator will hopefully continue to grow and produce more seeds of change, inspiration, and healing. Healing for myself, for people with disabilities, but also for everyone who struggles and wishes to experience the magic of what it means to be human.
Title image Gleice da Silva (right) during her workshop. Photo: Matthias Spalinger
Footnotes
- In German, the suggested name was Heil- und Erziehungsinstitut für Seelenpflege-bedürftige Kinder. See Rudolf Steiner, Education for Special Needs: The Curative Education Course GA 317, Rudolf Steiner Press, 2014.
- Ibid.
- Anthroposophical Prison Outreach brings Rudolf Steiner’s work to incarcerated individuals. The APO program is designed to encourage inmates to take responsibility for their lives. The specific objective is to encourage and support self-rehabilitation through self-discovery.
- Extract from Karl König’s address on May 7th, 1964, at the opening ceremony of the Camphill School Föhrenbühl at the Lake of Constance.
