It held that the act of storytelling was essentially digestive in nature. We bring up a topic much like how a ruminant animal, a cow for example, brings up partially masticated grass from its stomach. In our stories we exhaust our emotional attachment to past events. We elicit similar stories from others. By mulling things over—and the word mulling meant to grind, just as ruminate meant to think—we are able to assimilate the most unhappy or happy experiences of our lives. We accept them as normal human events. We quit telling them, and the stories become part of us.
