Lift Up Your Hearts!

I didn't play a lot with dolls as a child, nor with trucks either. I had both, and enjoyed both, along with sundry other toys: blocks, Tinker Toys, laboratory equipment, tools, toy guns, childhood games, stuffed animals, a (real) bow and arrow set, a hula hoop, a baton for twirling—normal childhood stuff. I was eclectic in my tastes with no overwhelming preference for anything, except I suppose for reading books, climbing trees, and exploring in the woods. So, as I said, I didn't play much with dolls.  But the dolls I did have were babies or young children, and they were simple, the better to encourage imaginative play.

So my heart skipped a beat when I saw what one Australian mother has done to "rescue" old, worn-out dolls of the more recent type. I never liked Barbie dolls, certainly not the Bratz and other strange-looking creatures that passed for dolls when our daughters were young. This woman brings beauty from ashes.

This seven-minute video will warm your heart. Not only watching twisted ugliness turned normal, but especially listening to little girls with much more heart and common sense than the jaded, angry toy manufacturers.

This is another post I've pulled up from my long backlog. I wrote it in 2015, when the story was new, but for some reason it languished for more than 10 years! I don't know why; the post was complete and I still love the story.

The inevitable question is, "Where are they now?" What has happened since that bright beginning? Tree Change Dolls has an Etsy site, which appears to concentrate on helping others revive their own dolls, but occasionally offers some of her own creations, which she announces on her Facebook site.

As with any good thing, there are detractors, such as the doll collectors who think she is ruining the dolls, some of which are collectable and worth money in their original form. (Though probably not when found worn-out and broken.) More disturbing are those who say they hate the Tree-Change dolls because they promote the idea of natural beauty instead of heavily made-up and sexualized children's dolls. (That's the impression I got; I didn't spend much time in that unhappy land to find out more.)

"Where does the name come from?" is the other question that intrigued me. Google Search brought up this AI answer:

A tree change is a move from an urban or city environment to a more peaceful, nature-focused rural or regional area, often inland, to embrace a simpler and healthier lifestyle. Unlike a sea change, which involves moving to a coastal area, a tree change focuses on reconnecting with the natural landscape, such as rolling hills, mountains, or countryside, to escape the pressures and fast pace of city living. 

Well, that fits, but it struck a discordant note for me because that's not what "sea change" means. Here's the interesting story of the term, from Merriam-Webster:

In The Tempest, William Shakespeare’s final play, sea change refers to a change brought about by the sea: the sprite Ariel, who aims to make Ferdinand believe that his father the king has perished in a shipwreck, sings within earshot of the prince, “Full fathom five thy father lies...; / Nothing of him that doth fade / But doth suffer a sea-change / into something rich and strange.” This is the original, now-archaic meaning of sea change. Today the term is used for a distinctive change or transformation. Long after sea change gained this figurative meaning, however, writers continued to allude to Shakespeare’s literal one; Charles Dickens, Henry David Thoreau, and P.G. Wodehouse all used the term as an object of the verb suffer, but now a sea change is just as likely to be undergone or experienced.

So, a sea change is a transformation, but not specifically moving to the seaside to escape city life. However, "sea change" and "tree change" are apparently used in that way in Australia (at least on the one real estate site I checked), so the name of these dolls that have moved to a simpler, happier life makes perfect sense.