The Little Girl in the Red Boots is not an ordinary birth story. It is a tale about my own birth story depicted through my own haiku poems, hand drawn images by my mother, and paratexts to bring in other scholarly voices. It explores the archetypal or universal theme of birth and being “rooted” or “grounded.”

The story of “The Little Girl in the Red Boots” was inspired by a pair of little red boots I wore as a child. I wanted to recreate and tell my birth story through poetry, visual art, and the use of paratexts to blend in ‘other’ voices integrating personal/individual art with the collective creative psyche. This type of work furnishes a unique approach of interconnecting depth psychology and art through Jungian Arts-Based Research (JABR). This is a prime example that using poetry or any other art as a form of inquiry can make new knowledge of the world. Telling our birth stories and personal myths through creativity invites the reader into the unconscious psyche of the artist. It expands the words into images and symbols becoming alive and autonomous.