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Hi friends, 

On Saturday, a hot and sunny afternoon in Cornwall made way for a cold and cloudless night. A wash of stars hung in the sky as a roar from the beach travelled along the wind.

Feeling blessed, I found myself amongst a group of folk, sitting around a large campfire, spellbound and hanging on every word spoken by the storyteller, Sam Crosby. 

He is a gifted orator and weaves vivid images through words that stay with you long after the event.

At the end of the evening, he prompted us to share the stories we’ve heard, because when we do, we embody them and they live on, inside each of us. No one owns a story, which in this world is a form of resistance. 

But that evening, he started with a tale called Half Girl, and I would like to share it with you today. I will do my best to return to the fireside and capture the story in all its beauty.

As we each shared our experiences of hearing it for the first time, we soon realised that everyone interprets it differently. Each of us sees ourselves within different moments of it. What comes up for you?

Half Girl

A long, long time ago, far away, there was a village, and in the village was a hut. In the hut, there was a woman giving birth to a baby. Around her were midwives and everyone a mother needs to bring a child from one world into the next.

The baby was born, and I’m happy to tell you it was a little girl. 

She was a very sweet little girl.

But if you looked at her, you may have said,

‘What a beautiful right eye she has, and what a beautiful right ear, right shoulder, hip, ankle, foot’.

The thing is, in a story, anything is possible, 

Somehow, only half of her is visible. The other half, she just couldn’t see. 

And so as the little girl grows, she looks around the village, and she can’t help but notice that everyone else looks pretty complete. She thought to herself, ‘How is it that everyone else seems so confident, so full, and so arrived when there is only half of me?’

As soon as she can learn to talk, she starts to ask questions, but never receives a straight answer. She always gets a response that is intangible or unintelligible, as material as pixie dust. As anyone would, she feels it’s not okay. 

And so, when the time arrives separating adolescence from young womanhood, she’s had enough. It’s time to leave!

The day she left the village, she was aware that nobody tried to make her stay. She was aware that no one had tried to call her back. She was aware no one cared. She just kind of slipped away, it seemed. It felt cold.

She did what she had to do and began to walk. She walked, and she walked. Days went by, weeks went by, months …

In a story like this, when they say that a girl walked for a few days, in our lifetime, that could be years.

When you’re a half girl, it’s hard to fit in. It’s hard to have relationships. It’s hard for life to settle. Because in some way, you’ve never fully arrived.

So it was a kind of restless life she lived, anxious and shaky. She kept walking on to the next place, never really present, never really staying.

Time went on, as time does. The first slivers of silver entered her hair.

Her travels eventually brought her walking through the rolling fields. It was a hot day, like this Saturday afternoon. As sweat dripped down her weary brow, she found herself seeking the cool shade of nearby trees. The treeline brought her to the side of a valley. She started walking down; it became cooler, darker, and quieter as she descended. Gravity pulled her into the depths of the valley, eventually meeting a mighty river, a sacred river.

So she went over to it to cool her down. After wiping half of her face, she sits on the bank, taking it in.

When an extraordinary thing happens. She sees a shape running towards her, gaining speed, almost crying.

She realises it is another half girl, and miraculously, this girl has the half that she doesn’t.

But she gasps, thinking to herself, “if I met this girl when I was 5, this would’ve been a joyful union. Maybe when I was ten, even. But I am older now, the world has chewed me up…. I don’t feel good about seeing this girl at all.”

“I don’t want you to come near me!” She shouted.

And the other girl, now hurt with the rejection, wasn’t pleased to see her either. So the two of them stare each other down. Well, one of them spits at the other, and a fight ensues. Grabbing hair. Clawing faces. Dropping f-bombs. They throw the whole kitchen sink. 

As they fight, they tumble, they wrestle, and they fall into the river.

Down they go into the cold of the river

Down they go into the softness of water

Down they go, being struck by the hardness of its rocks

Down they go, a half head pops up

Down they go, a right hand appears

Down they go, a left hand pulls down the right hand

Down they go, two half heads gasping for air

Minutes go by, hours too

Finally, just as we have given up hope of ever seeing them again

…. One …. One! A woman appears!

Crawling naked out of the river, she looks cold, ragged, and beaten. Her medusa hair drips onto the rocks. 

But there is one of her.

She stares at both of her hands, both her feet, and touches the wholeness of her face.

The thing is, when a person enters a sacred river, the alchemy is that they don't have the memory of what happened before.

The woman tries to rise to her feet. Like a baby deer, her legs wobble and shake. She stretches one out in one direction and then the other, swaying for balance. Eventually, she learns how to put one foot in front of the other. She notices walking in this new shape is much faster, mystically faster.

She walks through the forest, through the desert, and back through the towns she used to know. What took years and months now takes days and hours.

Until one day, she walks through a village. At the edge of the village is a very old man and woman. The woman notices that these people seem familiar, and she asks, “Can you tell me where I am?”

The face of the old woman breaks open with joy …

“Dear daughter, welcome home! Do you not recognise the village that you left, all those years ago? Do you not recognise our faces? We wept after you left, even though we knew you could not see us”.

“I don’t remember, mother” The woman replies, “Father, why did I leave?” 

"Because we couldn't give you what you needed," he replies. "You had to go out into the world and find it. Look around, what do you see?”

At that moment, she gasps as she realises that all the young girls and young boys in the village are half girls and boys. The children start to gather around, and the old couple embraces the woman with a welcome that maybe she needed all those years ago.

That evening, the village hosts a huge feast. There was singing. There was dancing. There was praying. There was storytelling. They then went to sleep, and they woke up and did it all again.

One night, the woman was in a hut with a mother, helping a child to be born, and that night, she decided to stay. She became one of the elders, giving counsel, helping where she could. On some evenings, she sat under a particular tree, and the village gathered round to hear her tell the stories of her travels. She stayed there for years and years, and when at last she died, she became a tree herself. 

And it is said by storytellers that to this day, you can go to the village, and shade yourself under that very tree, and you can hear the story of the half girl be told in either direction the wind blows. Like seeds on the wind, it passes on, generation to generation.

And now the seed lands on you, the Story of the Half Girl.

Warmly, 

Rob

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