Yet again the tale of the Handless Maiden is following me around. In a nutshell this fairy tale is about doing it for ourselves and it seems to pop up right when major breakthroughs are on the horizon. Here I am again, on the verge of seeing more deeply, and maybe so are you.

This story is about the feminine within all of us, women and men, being sold out to the patriarchy for convenience or profit. In the fairy tale it comes as the father selling his daughter to the devil. She saves herself from this fate but not before her father chops off her hands with her permission! She wanders the countryside and marries a king who fashions her a pair of silver hands, but this substitute will never be enough. There is no substitute for the authentic self. She is separated from the king, living in the forest with their child for seven years – there is something magical about the number seven in fairy tales and in life – until finally she grows her own hands back after saving her child from drowning.

The truth is this story is not so far removed from what each of us must go through to discover what we’ve been looking for. We are each responsible for severing ourselves from our inner wisdom but we also know what it takes to nurture our authentic voice back to life. The search is an inside job. We are what we’ve been searching for and the truth is we are the only one who can give us what we need. It comes when we finally listen to our authentic voice and follow where it leads. When we trust our intuition and believe in ourselves above all else is when we save ourselves from drowning in the clamor of what everyone else wants. Finding that sure footing within ourselves and living it out loud is what it means to grow a pair.

It also means we fully accept everything we are, warts and all, longings and all, joy and all. The truth is we are the font of fullness, our own happiness, our own healing, and our own wholeness. We may wander around looking lost, or feeling someone else holds the key to what we are after, but this is all part of the process of finding within us what we’ve been mistakenly looking for outside ourselves all this time.

Growing our own hands means being fully capable of creating and constructing anything we may need for ourselves. It means delving deeper into the shadowy realms within that hold us captive. It means facing our fears and walking into the fire when necessary.

So go on, grow a pair, and start creating the life you’ve always wanted.

kb