befriending monsters

as inspired by my daughter

My daughter tells me there is a giant who lives in the woods behind our house. His name, she reports, is Puddles.

We’ve seen him, she and I, on our regular walks in the afternoon. But the thing about Puddles is, you wouldn’t know he’s a giant just by looking. For all intents and purposes, Puddles appears to be a 15 ft pile of brush. I myself wouldn’t have known his true identity had she not revealed it to me. 

Puddles mostly sleeps through the day – except when he rouses grumpily and chases us all the way home through the woods. I hate running. But I do as I am told.

My daughter knows Puddles because she is four years old and understands that monsters exist and that, sometimes, they set up camp under children’s beds. Indeed, Puddles the Giant does this from time to time, when he tires of the forest I suppose, and she matter-of-factly accepts it so long as he behaves himself. “Puddles wakes me up some mornings,” she shrugs, simply relating a fact of life she’s made her peace with. “But he doesn’t hurt me because we’re friends.”

When I ask if Puddles would hurt me – how concerned, exactly, should I be here? – she sighs and throws up her hands as if to demonstrate my fate being out of them. I can’t rest on her laurels. If I am to be safe from Puddles, I will need to befriend him myself.

While my daughter is a Swiftie, she’s only four and can’t be expected to have a working knowledge of Taylor Swift’s entire catalog. But one day when she does (when, not if), she will know that in “Out of the Woods,” the singer croons, “The monsters turned out to be just trees.” This is a fun one to sing along to because we all know what it’s like to have our imaginations run wild for naught, perceived threats growing larger than life until they take the shape of something else entirely. There is relief in the possibility that our fears are unfounded. Belt it out.

But also? Not all monsters turn out to be just trees. Not all giants are actually long-accumulated piles of brush. Maybe Puddles is real, and my daughter is the wise one for making nice with him.

I’m learning how to befriend my monsters too, because sometimes they’re not imagined; sometimes they’re as real as the forest floor I stand on. Sometimes they’re in me, parts of me, really me; asking to be believed in. Asking to be befriended. I would be wise to look them directly in the eye, extend a hand, and let them teach me what they would have me know. 

Photo by Lucas Kepner on Unsplash

This & That

• Feminist Prayers for My Daughter celebrated its 1 year birthday this week.

• Over on Instagram Live, I video-interviewed my friend

  Eric A. Clayton
  about his new book, My Life With the Jedi: The Spirituality of Star Wars.

• This novel was my spring break read and I loved every second of it. More perimenopausal heroines, please!

• I’m officially going to the Festival of Faith and Writing in April! Will I see any of you there?

• Registration is open for the one-day “Grit and Grace” women’s event at the Franciscan Spirituality Center in LaCrosse, Wisconsin. I love this center and the people who run it, and it’s an honor to keynote the event. You can find out more and register here.

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"The monster was the best friend I ever had." ~ Boris Karloff

With love,

Shannon