2. The Handless Maiden

What was cut off and the slow regrowth

“She could no longer hold, no longer touch, and still — she walked.”

There once was a girl whose hands were cut off.
She was given away, traded, betrayed — by her own father.
She wandered the forest handless, helpless, holy.
And still —
she grew new hands.

This is not a story about victimhood.
It’s a story about survival.
About what grows after loss.
About the slow, sacred work of reclaiming your life when everything has been taken from you — including the ability to touch, to hold, to create, to protect.

We don’t talk enough about the times in life when we are handless.
When we can’t grasp what we need.
When we’re not yet who we’re becoming, and no longer who we were.
When we wander, ghost-like, aching for something we can’t name.

This fairy tale isn’t just old — it’s archetypal.
It lives inside women who have been silenced, sacrificed, or severed from their instincts.
And it asks us:

• What was cut off in you, so that someone else could be comfortable?

• Who traded your wildness for safety, your voice for belonging?

• What does it mean to grow back what was taken — not as it was, but changed, sacred, alive?

The Handless Maiden walks the forest inside us.
She is grief.
She is exile.
She is healing in slow time.
And she is the part of us that refuses to stay severed.

This is her descent.
This is our descent.

If this story stirs something long-buried in you, stay close.
There are more descents.
And many ways to come back with new hands.