Half Girl 🌓

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. ](https://www.samuelcrosby.com/)

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.”_