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Exploring different endings to the story
SAID ALOUD
Exploring different endings to the story
Aim. To explore the notion of‘ success’ and allow the group to construct a suitably realistic ending.
PART II: THE TRAINING
Trainer. We have come to the end of the story of the Butterfly Woman. Has she found her family again? Will she be able one day to sit beside her beloved river and feel at peace?
Of course, we don’ t know. There are many possible outcomes, and we have only explored a few of them.
In every case, including the real cases on which you work, we also have to consider whether the work that we have done as helpers, and the efforts made by survivors, have been a‘ success’.
Let us think about‘ success’ for a moment. It is a very complicated idea – but important, because we often rely on it to value our work and the efforts we make, and to give us hope. Yet, in the very painful and chaotic conditions in which we operate,‘ success’ in its most straightforward sense(“ And the Butterfly Woman lived happily ever after”) is unlikely to occur. So what do we mean by‘ success’? What should we mean when we talk of success?
Let’ s spend a few minutes now thinking about this together. What have you used in the past to measure your‘ success’? Have you changed the way you think about success in any way after the three days we have spent together here? What are the key issues for you?
And of course, the other side of success is‘ failure’. We have probably all felt at some point that our work has not succeeded. We might not have helped a survivor as we had hoped. Perhaps a woman with whom we worked was not able to find in herself or in others the resources to recover her dignity and strength. How have you dealt with failure? How have you felt on such occasions, and have you managed and overcome those feelings? Has the work we have done together in these three days helped you to think about this issue?
Discussion. Measuring success.( 10 minutes.)
DISCUSSION
What do we mean when we talk of success?
Thank you all. Now we have reached the last moments of the Workshop and I am going to tell you how I believe the story ends. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I will begin.
The Trainer ends the Butterfly Woman’ s story in her own words.