Card 43: The Victim Narrative

Once Upon a Time: Little Bo Peep

Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep and doesn’t know where to find them. Leave them alone and they’ll come home, wagging their tails behind them.

Most people stop there. The rhyme doesn’t. In the later verses she dreams of them, goes looking, and finds them, with their tails gone. Then she finds the tails hung on a tree to dry, sighs, wipes her eyes, and sets out to fasten each one back on.

Every verse is about her. Her loss. Her dream. Her heart. Her sigh.

This is the victim narrative, but not the version you’d expect. Bo Peep isn’t oppressed. She’s the shepherd. The sheep were her responsibility. Nobody asks how they got lost while she was keeping them, or who took their tails. The song positions her as the one who lost something. Poor me. The sheep left. What can I do?

“You never support me.” “Everyone always abandons me.” “I’m always the one who gets hurt.” The person who caused the problem becomes the one who suffers from it. The shepherd becomes the victim. And you become the sheep who comes home missing something, to find the song is sorry for the person who lost you in the first place.

The Decoder: When the shepherd claims to be the lost sheep, check whose flock it actually was.

The Pattern: Permanent victimhood across every relationship

What They Say/Do:

• Every story positions them as victim
• Ex-partners were all “crazy”
• Bosses were all “unfair”
• “Everyone betrays me eventually.”
• “I can never catch a break.”

What the Pattern Usually Does: The common denominator in all their stories is them. If everyone they’ve ever known is terrible, the pattern suggests something about their perception, not everyone else.

How It Hooks You: You feel special for finally understanding them. You work to prove you’re different from all the others. You excuse behavior because of their hard life.

Your Power Move: Listen to how they talk about others. You’ll eventually join that list.