Taking Back the Fairy Tale…
Four Women Making Music, by Luca Giordano, Italy, circa 1658.
The fairy tales were not written by kings or poets.
Everyday people—grandmothers and cousins and, yes, female minstrels—wrote these stories and told them to each other to remind us all that we are precious and that we can succeed against the oppressors.
The princess stories are great examples of tales-for-the-people because a princess might have to survive unbelievable horrors:
A dragon attack,
A marriage to the highest bidder,
An ogre’s attempt to steal her babies,
Or a stepmother’s command to cut out her heart.
For many, today’s problems are just as horrific:
Some women have to survive human trafficking.
Some women have to deal with the fear of police breaking into their homes and shooting them in the middle of the night.
Some women have to find their babies who were stolen at the US border.
Some women have to survive wars fueled by politics and hate.
And many women-identifying people have to navigate the microagression of not being valued for who they are in their own homes or communities.
This is awful. This is not how a society should be. It’s time for change, for compassion, and for new leadership.
What I like about the fairy tales is that a princess is still a princess no matter what terrible experience she goes through. Nothing can tarnish her worth. In many stories, some hero goes to the ends of the earth to rescue her. In other stories, she rescues herself. In one story, the princess opens a tavern and feeds the poor and eventually rescues the hero. In another story, the female protagonist realizes that he’s really a he, and he becomes a hero who rescues a princess.
In short, the only guaranteed way to stop being a princess is to become a hero—or a queen.
I picked the title “Princess Awakening” for this book series because now is the time to rise. Now is the time to recognize the inherent worth in humanity all around us. Now is the time to see the princess in everyone, regardless of race, gender, orientation, immigration status, belief-set, age, ability or any other circumstance. When we all rise to be our best, the world around us just gets better.
If this book speaks to you because you are a survivor, your story matters. Your heart is powerful.
Here are a few resources that might be helpful:
Restore NYC is one of the nation’s leading organizations supporting international survivors of human trafficking.
Loveland Foundation provides a fund supporting Black women and girls to get therapy support from Black therapists.
Immigrant Families Together helps post bail, find housing and reconnect families who were separated through undocumented crossings at the southern US border. (Update, now supporting ALDEA and Casa Cardo.)