I was recently introduced to one of Grimm’s fairy tales “The Handless Maiden.”
In the story a miller that had fallen into poverty made a deal with the devil to become rich in exchange for what stood in his backyard. The miller believed this to be a bargain as all that stood in his backyard was an apple tree.
The devil keeps his end of the bargain and makes the miller very rich and successful, however what the miller didn’t realise when making the bargain was that his beautiful daughter was stood by the apple tree.
After three years, the devil reappears to collect his end of the bargain. The girl had kept herself free of sin and her hands clean, and because of this the devil is unable to take her. The devil threatens to take the miller in place of his daughter unless he cuts off the girl's hands. Out of fear, the miller and his daughter agree to this. The girl, however, continues to weep onto the stumps replacing her hands, so they remain clean and the devil still cannot take her.
Despite her father’s wealth the girl decides to leave her family and wanders for days. Overcome by hunger she wanders into the orchards of the King’s castle looking for fruit to eat. She encounters the King who falls in love with her beauty and helplessness and thus marries her and has a pair of silver hands crafted for his new wife.
When she is happily pregnant the King must leave for war. In his absence the Queen gives birth to their child and send a message to the King announcing the joyous news. But, the devil still angry over losing her, interferes with the message and the King receives word that the child is a changeling. The King writes back that both the Queen and the child should be cared for regardless. Again, the devil intercepts the message and replaces it with one that states both the Queen and the child need to be killed.
Heartbroken and terrified the Queen runs away into the forest with the child strapped to her back. After many hours of wandering, she comes to a stream and as she leans over to get a drink, the baby slides off her back and into the water.
The Queen plunges her handless arms into the stream, desperate to save her drowning baby.
To her amazement, her hands grow back allowing her to rescue her child and also herself.
When we experience trauma, it is often as a result of something that was out of our control, very much like the girl in this story. She lost her hands because of something that her father did and was left with pain, betrayal, fear, sadness, grief, loss, helplessness and parts of her missing.
And whilst the King had silver hands made as a substitute to help her, it was actually her own actions of plunging into the water to save her child that resulted in her hands growing back.
When we are willing to plunge into the waters of healing, face and feel the emotions, connect back into our body and challenge and transform our thoughts we can call back our power and the parts of us that we lost through the trauma.
If you want to start your healing journey then I would be honoured to support you with this. My work is personalised to you using a range of tools such as breathwork, hypnotherapy, relaxation, yoga, spirituality, NLP and conscious coaching.
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