“Grandmother Rapunzel Knows What to Do With A Tower,” by Jerome Stueart (11 x 15) watercolor, mixed media on paper.
I wondered what an older Rapunzel might teach us about how we live with the past, how we get over our towers, and how we might transform them.
Rapunzel had a lot of “Tower” moments.” She lived inside a tower moment created by great upheaval and change when she was traded to a witch as a baby and raised in the tower, isolated, trapped. The Witch, as mother figure, wanted to control what she saw, what she did, who she knew, what she thought. In Sondheim’s “Into the Woods,” the witch is just an over-protective mother; in Disney’s version, she is Dame Gothel and uses the girl’s hair for immortality. In the Disney version (Tangled, 2010) Rapunzel transforms her tower inside to something beautiful–always “repainting” her childhood, the isolation, as a place of joy. I liked that — but I also thought an older Rapunzel, someone we never ever see, might be able to give us some pointers.
Fairy tales could have lessons for Elders too if we heard how the story continued.
In my reimagined Rapunzel here, she tries to thrive inside the tower, even making a swing out of her hair. If there are suitors, they are scared off by the witch. Rapunzel eventually outlives the witch, but she is left with the tower.
What do you do with the Tower you are left with?
- Examine the Tower from the Inside
As a writer, I have been circling around tower moments in my own life, trying to see them honestly, not relive them, and write about them, so that maybe I can put the tower behind me. But it is hard to look closely at your tower without feeling trapped, or feeling the pain of what it was like inside that tower. People who hurt me are long gone; circumstances have changed. But I am still in the tower because I don’t know how to climb down.
Rapunzel had her hair, but she’d have to remove it to leave. There’s no door at the bottom. In some versions of the fairy tale, she makes a ladder of straw and climbs down — so maybe there doesn’t have to be a sacrifice, but getting out of your tower is not always easy. They tend to travel with you.
Before I can leave though, I need to understand what my tower is, and how it shaped me going forward. It’s hard to look closely at your tower but I don’t think we can escape them without understanding them first — and understanding how we ourselves are NOT our towers.
2. Who am I now after the Tower?
Understanding ourselves now, shaped by our pain, but also beyond our pain, is important I think. We need to see how the tower lies to us — how it keeps us isolated from everyone else, from the truth, and how unsafe it is. We’ve been told that the tower is “safety,” but sometimes well-meaning people can make us believe things that are intended for our safety but which hurt us nonetheless. I was taught that my natural desires for men were “unsafe” by the church, and that isolating myself would be good for me. That tower led me to believe so many things were unsafe and that I was constantly threatened if I didn’t stay perfectly in my tower. It made me repent a lot, and hate myself and my own body and my own natural desires.
Who am I now? How am I different from what those in the Tower taught me? How can I differentiate what is the true me from the Towered Me?
When I can understand how I am NOT the tower, not the isolation, the beliefs, the pain of the tower — then I can leave the tower.
3. Reject People Who Would like to Keep You in Their Towers
You get to decide who is going to be part of your life. Rapunzels like us either LOVE having someone protect us and tell us what to do and keep us safe, or we HATE it, and don’t want anyone to have control over us anymore. In my reimagined story of Rapunzel, SHE is rejecting anyone who might control her again. She’s come to peace with the pain of the tower and has tried to, perhaps, redecorate the tower, make the tower reflect her life now. Which is great! But the structure is still there and it’s so easy to find someone who play your witch for you. You are attracted to witches with control issues. Rapunzel has to find people who will encourage her finding her true self, not someone who wants to reinforce the former towers in her life. I don’t need people to reinforce the strictures of religion in my life, or reapply the guilt that I lived with and escaped from. I need new people who want to grow with me.
4. Leaving the Tower in search of something more
Rapunzel in this tale leaves her tower because she’s done the work and can separate herself from the tower and wants to make sure she looks for people who can enjoy her without the tower.
Dating is difficult after trauma. Truly finding someone who allows you to change and grow over time is wonderful, and you need to let them grow and change too. Maybe Rapunzel had amazing adventures, booking passage on a ship from a nearby port and meeting people who never heard of towers like hers! Maybe she traveled to distant lands! Had wild “hairy” adventures! Maybe she found herself and discovered more of who she was, around others, so that she learned to reinforce her boundaries without relying on the tower structure.
We can be so used to the Tower keeping people away from us, keeping us safe, but trauma is not a good boundary keeper. It doesn’t keep us safe. We have to form better boundaries that we carry with us everywhere. We have to learn to be safe without towers.
5. Transforming the Tower
The Tower is yours by default. You own it. What will you do with it?
In my version, Rapunzel transforms her tower when she brings back someone who loves her for who she is and not the cool tower she was in. She installs a door at the bottom of the tower for easier access, and windows all the way up. He helps her transform her tower, and maybe they repaint it, install a waterslide, and she and hubby, Dave, have three kids and a big pool! They and her kids paint sunflowers on it.
We can let people help us transform our towers. We don’t have to do it all by ourselves. We can USE our towers to have a beautiful life.
The right people in our life recognize that we’ll always have the tower as property we own. But they understand us and know how to live with the lifelong effects of towers. They love us, and we get to reframe our towers with them. We get to have fun ANYWAY. We get to have joy ANYWAY. Even if the tower is there in some form in our lives, we get to dance around and within it and not be subject to the pain of that tower anymore. And the people we bring into our lives can see how much we’ve transformed our towers. They will continue to love us.
In this portrait, Rapunzel is a grandmother, her hair braided and still long, hers to keep and use as she wants.
She has transformed her pain.
Not everyone can do that. Not everyone wants to transform their tower, or stay in it, or even think about it. I’m sure there are Rapunzels in ranch-style homes everywhere with short hair, very happy not to be a part of any tower. Not everyone can turn their pain into art, or pain into happiness.
I’m trying to transform my towers into better things. I have a great partner who helps with that.
Happily Ever After
It’s said at the end of the fairy tale that Rapunzel lived happily ever after, a phrase that ties up the story in a neat bow and gets you back into the real world. It’s easy to say “happily ever after” but it skips the work that Rapunzel did, that we all do to understand our towers, if we had them, and if we want to understand them.
Our towers give shape to our actions, beliefs and thoughts throughout our lives.
But I think, if we can understand and come to peace with our towers, and that’s not easy work, not short work, but if we can stick with it, I think we can renovate them, transform ourselves and our towers to make the most of them, and take back control over our actions, beliefs and thoughts.
At least that’s what I have done along the way, so far, and I have a few more towers to go.
But, really, there’s nothing wrong with tearing a tower down and building a nice ranch-style home either. You do you, sweetie.
_______
Notes:
*As an advocate for mental health, for therapy, for looking at our shadows, our past, and coming to terms with them, I hope you can find someone within your affordability range to help talk through your past and current towers.
** This is the first painting in a series of Elder Fairy Tale characters and what they have to teach us from their happily ever afters. I plan to do more of them.
*** If you’d like to adopt this painting in some form, you can buy the original from me. DM me for more information. Or you can find this image on prints, pillows, mugs, etc at Redbubble under “Grandmother Rapunzel”.
**** A thank you for my face model, D.D., who allowed me to take pictures to work from to make Rapunzel more unique.
***** Originally this was my going to be my entry into the Folio Society’s contest to illustrate “Rapunzel” but I didn’t read the fine print well, and my depiction of events outside the story disqualified my work before I could submit. Unfortunately, I might have sent it in but I didn’t have a way to make it 300DPI or better at the time and couldn’t afford it. But I’m transforming that little tower. lol.
Bear Witness 