“Twentyone Olive Trees is a tender invitation to fully embrace life and it’s mysteries. Through fables and personal reflection, Laura Formentini integrates grief with unfaltering love. Amidst longing for her son, Laura gently reminds us we are always in connection to those we love and even through loss we are capable of growth.”
Seemingly everywhere I go, I encounter ordinary people who’ve accomplished extraordinary things. Profiles in courage, towering love, and passion, these people’s transformational stories all have one thing in common––they lifted themselves out of their own pain by lifting up others. But before they could do that, they discovered and embraced the art of being themselves, […]
As you can see, Doris is a reluctant hero. She didn’t believe that there were such terrible creatures in the world and that the bad things that the fairies talked about could actually occur. She doubts and doesn’t want to be the one to do something about it because that meant the small fairies living in her huge home would discover it was messier than most, and that her kitchen appliances and artwork were out of date.
Doris dies to herself here in the silence of her lair and the uncertainty about the future. She has faced this ordeal with all the powers she has––hospitality, baking and a positive outlook on life and the belief in the power of peace to build community. But will her love in action be enough? She feeds the bats when the sweetest sound you’ve ever heard, shrill and sweet. In the laughter of both the bats and the fairies, Doris faces and overcomes her deep inner conflict of wanting to fit in as a duck-sized fairy in a bat-infested world.
One day Doris’s doorbell rang, and she opened her door. That was her call to adventure. Can you imagine something so mundane changing a life? Lots of movies work this way. Especially romantic comedies. In movies, they talk about the “meet cute,” a mundane moment where the romantic leads meet. In The Holiday, the character played by Kate Winslet meets her romantic interest played by Jack Black when he rings her doorbell and she doesn’t know how the technology works to answer it.
11. Rising After All Resurrection is the climax when the hero must have her ultimate and most perilous encounter with death. The ultimate battle also is a metaphor beyond the hero’s own existence, and its outcome has greater implications for her Ordinary World and the lives of those who live with her or the lives […]
Doris’s innermost cave is how her hospitality will work to create peace for the bats and the fairies that have inhabited her home. There is a pause in the action here for the reader to feel the stakes. Will the bats be angry that the honey caused them to stay silent? How would the bats react to laughter of the fairies? Would the bats have a sense of humor? Would her “perfect” canary-inspired idea of baking honey cakes for the bats with the crunchy centers turn into a nightmare? Would Doris be more of an outcast than ever if the bats AND the fairies looked down on her silly ways and ideas? She thought she had it bad just being a duck-sized fairy, but now the stakes are higher.
