Reclaiming Our Story: Reimagining Fairy Tales and Ourselves

Once upon a time, not as it was — but as it could be — a reclamation, a remembering, a rewriting.

We live in stories.

From the moment we’re born, the world wraps us in stories — some whispered, some shouted, some so old they seem to live in our very bones

What is good.

What is dangerous.

What is beautiful.

Who deserves love.

Who can choose.

Who holds power.

What it means to be strong, soft, or sacred.

Many of these stories arrive through culture. Some come from religion. Others are family tales — passed around the table or silently absorbed between the lines. And some come dressed in lace and sugar, tucked into the pages of beloved children’s books — the fairytales we think we know by heart.

But what if the versions we were given were never the whole truth?

What if the sweetness masked something darker?

What if the villain wore gingham, and the wolf told the truth?

What if the lost girl wasn’t lost at all — but waiting to remember?

This is the work of reclamation.

This is our "once upon a time."

The Power of the Reclaimed Story

To reclaim a story is not just to revise it.

It is to re-see it — to re-feel it — to move beyond the surface and into the symbolic layers beneath.

When we reclaim a tale, we aren’t simply rewriting endings.

We are asking deeper questions:

• Who told this version — and why?

• What was hidden, diminished, or demonized?

• What part of myself did I lose when I first heard this story — and what part feels healed or reawakened when it’s told from a different perspective?

• What do I discover when I look again through the lens of symbol, archetype, and soul?

The stories we’re given — or quietly absorb as children — often carry unconscious cultural messages:

That obedience equals safety.

That curiosity is dangerous.

That wildness must be tamed.

That salvation comes from the outside — and danger always wears fangs.

But real life is rarely so simple.

Sometimes, the person who seems “safe” is the one who harms us.

Sometimes, the part of ourselves we were taught to fear — our inner Wolf, Witch, or Warrior — holds the key to our power.

And sometimes, the woods aren’t a place to avoid, but the only path home.

Not Just Fairytales: Religious, Cultural, and Inner Myths

Fairytales are just one form of story. Many of us also carry inherited spiritual narratives — stories about sin and salvation, suffering and sacrifice, worth and shame, strength and surrender.

These stories are often held as sacred.

And yet, like fairytales, they too were shaped by history, power, fear, and human interpretation.

To reclaim these deeper stories is not to discard faith.

It is to ask what has been hidden.

Where the feminine — or the “other” — has been silenced.

Where fear has been mistaken for truth.

Whether the story is sacred text, Sunday school lore, or a whispered (or shouted) family belief — reclamation is an act of spiritual agency.

It is how we remember who we truly are beneath the conditioning.

It is how we reclaim the soul’s original language.

Why This Matters Now

We are living in a time when old paradigms are cracking.

Voices once silenced are rising again — or perhaps rising still.

People of all ages are asking: What stories have shaped me?

And which ones do I choose to keep?

As Neptune shifts from Pisces into Aries, we’re crossing an archetypal threshold.

We’ve spent over a decade immersed in Neptune in Pisces — swimming in collective dreams of healing and transcendence. But those waters grew murky. Boundaries blurred. Truth bent into illusion.

Now, the dream wants to be embodied.

Now, the story wants to be lived.

Now it is time for doing.

As an archetypal astrologer, grief educator, and intuitive guide, I’ve found that symbolic story is one of our most powerful tools for healing. When we work with myth, dream, and fairytale through an archetypal lens, we unlock insights that bypass the mind and speak directly to the soul.

We don’t just read these stories — we live them.

We feel them in our bones.

And when we reclaim them, we begin to reclaim ourselves.

We begin again, not with Once upon a time as it was — but as it could be.

Reclaimed Stories: A New Series Begins

This post marks the beginning of a new series: Reclaimed Stories — symbolic retellings of cultural, mythic, and spiritual tales, exploring the hidden truths beneath the ones we were told.

Each story is a mirror.

Each one, a threshold.

Each one, an invitation to remember.

You might find your inner Red. Or your inner Wolf.

Or the part of you who sat quietly, too long, in someone else’s chair, eating their porridge.

Wherever you find yourself, these tales are not meant to prescribe but to awaken.

They are offerings. Keys. Remembrances.

Red’s cloak, for example, long symbolized feminine vulnerability — ripeness, visibility, exposure to danger. In the old story, it marked her as naïve. Tempting. A girl becoming a woman — and therefore, a target.

But in this version?

In my version?

The red cloak is not a warning or a target.

It is her birthright.

Not something that marks her for danger,

but something that binds her to memory, lineage, connection — and fire.

Not weakness.

Spark.

She is not prey.

She was the flame — not feared, but forged.

And now, the cloak flies behind her — not as a burden, and not as bait,

but as a banner in the wind.

A signal. A story. A spark.

And hers is only one of many.

This is what reclaimed stories do.

They reframe what was feared.

They return what was taken.

They remind us who we are — and who we’ve always been.

Because Once upon a time was never meant to stay the same.

And now, it begins again — not as it was…

but as it could be.