Author news: Susan Perrow

Here are links to two recent conversations with Susan Perrow, both well worth your time.

May 2024 – One hour interview with ‘Lust for Life’ – an Irish Parenting Podcast (Episode 5:

“It can be so tempting, as an adult, to give lectures – to explain, to reason, to offer the rationale: ‘If you don’t put your shoes together, Grandma might trip over them when she comes in the front door.’
But instead, you might simply say, ‘Your shoes are friends. They love to be together.’
I’ve seen children who, after hearing that idea, start lining up everyone else’s shoes too, just to make sure all the ‘friends’ are together.”

Susan Perrow speaking to Ciara O’Connor Walsh, ‘Lust for Life’

For more info see: https://alustforlife.com/parenting-podcast

And here is one from November 2022 – a 45 minute interview with Marina Tselner in California for her “Creative Arts Apothecary’“ Series (YouTube):

“I have permission from this particular family to share this example. It comes from a training I ran in Zagreb, where a mother – together with her teenage daughter’s therapist – attended the session. They were desperate for a story to help a 17-year-old girl who had developed MS, a disease she had inherited from her grandmother, and could no longer walk. The parents had bought her a wheelchair, but the teenager was absolutely unwilling to be seen in it. She just wanted to stay in her room. It was a very difficult situation – especially for the teenager, but also for the entire family.

The mother and the therapist wrote a short, half-page story. It was about a black stone set in a necklace that a girl had inherited from her grandmother. She wore it with pride. But as the years went on, the necklace grew heavier. She found that when she was ice skating, she would sometimes fall. And when she tried to climb stairs, the necklace was so heavy that she couldn’t get up many of them … One day, the necklace becomes so heavy that the girl falls to the ground and cannot get up. But when she falls, the black stone cracks open – and from inside, a beautiful light shines.

A way forward, that’s all the story is. It has an open ending. Many therapeutic stories might need a closed ending or a clear resolution, but in this case, the open ending was what was needed.

A typed copy of the story was given to the teenager, along with a small talisman: a little amethyst ring that matched the purple light inside the black stone. The next morning, the teenager called to her parents from her room and said, “With the help of the necklace and the story, I can use the wheelchair.”

Six years later, I visited Zagreb again. I was giving a talk in a hall when someone tapped me on the shoulder and asked me to step outside. It was a bit embarrassing for the venue because they didn’t have a wheelchair ramp. At the bottom of the stairs sat a woman – not a teenager anymore, but now 23 years old – proudly in her wheelchair, holding a bunch of flowers and a box of chocolates. She had heard that I was back in her country and had come to say thank you.

She also wanted to proudly tell me that she was now at university, and a disability advocate. She had helped make every room on campus wheelchair-accessible and had successfully advocated for an elevator in the lecture theatre.

This is the kind of story that does such wonderful, transformative work. And I didn’t even write that story (although I helped guide the process). That’s how I know the power of this kind of storytelling. And I have many more examples like this one.”

Susan Perrow with Marina Tselner, Creative Arts Apothecary

Susan Perrow’s Books