Ashes & Alchemy: Trauma, Fairy Tales, and the Divine Self That Survived

There's a story in all of us the would would never let us finish.

Maybe you had a childhood where safety was a fairytale. Maybe your body learned to flinch before your mind knew what fear meant. Maybe your nervous system was carved into caution by invisible knives—early abuse, neglect, chronic stress, systemic harm, or the thousand quiet devastations we now call Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs).

And if you survived that? If you’re reading this with trembling breath and a knowing ache—then you are not broken. You are a myth in motion.

What Is PTSD & Post-Traumatic Growth?

Let’s get clinical for just a moment—because naming things is a kind of spell too.

PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) isn’t just about war zones or car accidents. It’s what happens when your body never got the message that the danger was over. You keep scanning for threats, flinching at shadows, replaying the hurt. It is not a weakness. It is a holy, overworked guardian refusing to rest.

But there’s another side to trauma. One the textbooks are only now beginning to name. It’s called Post-Traumatic Growth (PTG)—the phenomenon where people, despite enduring great suffering, emerge wiser, more empathetic, spiritually deeper, and more aligned than ever before. It is not silver-lining toxic positivity. It is not "everything happens for a reason." It is the molten core of what remains after the fire: gold and grit, both.

The Fairy Tale Was Never Meant to Be Easy

Trauma recovery is a mythic journey. Always has been.

The girl in the red hood walking into the woods is not naïve. She is brave.The princess in rags who talks to mice is not weak. She’s still singing.The witch in the woods is not evil. She remembers what the world forgot.

Fairy tales, at their core, are stories about transformation through ordeal. We meet the wolf, we fall asleep, we are cursed, we cry out. But then—we rise. Maybe not untouched. Maybe not whole. But sovereign.

The monsters we survived deserve their place in our story.But they do not get to be the narrator.

ACEs and the Altar of What Never Was

ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) track ten categories of early trauma—abuse, neglect, household dysfunction. The higher your score, the more at risk you are for lifelong health struggles, emotional dysregulation, addiction, even chronic disease.

But what ACEs don’t track? The dreams you were never allowed to dream. The version of you that could’ve bloomed with a little sunlight. The girl who could’ve danced instead of dissociated. The boy who could’ve felt instead of fled. The child who could have just been—without performing for love, without surviving for safety.

You are allowed to mourn who you never got to be. Grief is sacred. That lost self mattered. And your tears—salt of the earth, salt of the womb—can become part of the ritual of reclaiming.

Narrative Magic: Retell the Story

One of the greatest tools of healing is taking back the pen. To be trauma-informed means acknowledging what happened to you. To be mythically empowered means choosing what happens next.

What if your trauma isn’t the end of the story—but the initiation?What if the suffering was not your fault—but your survival is your art?

Write it. Burn it. Speak it into the wind .Draw yourself with wings. With teeth. With flowers in your scars. Let your myth be messy and magical.

You Are Not Who You Could Have Been—You Are Something Stranger and More Sacred

Let’s say it plain:

You were robbed. You were denied ease, and safety, and joy in moments that should have been yours. You didn’t get to grow in peace. And that is not fair.

But somehow—in the hunger, the dark, the broken mirror of self—you became something otherworldly.

You are not the princess in the tower. You are the witch who built a sanctuary out of bones and herbs. You are the knight who swore an oath to protect your inner child. You are the dragon and the keeper of your own flame.

A Blessing for the Divine You Are May your nervous system uncoil like ivy toward the light. May the ghost of the child you were sit beside you as you heal. May your tears water the new world you are building. May the myth of you inspire others to write their own. May you know this, in your marrow: You are not what happened to you. You are what survived.

And that? That is magic. That is witchcraft. That is the Weird Sister way.

Need help crafting your own myth? We offer trauma-informed coaching, journaling rituals, and community spellwork for reclaiming your narrative at Weird Sisters Wellness.

Come sit with us, strange one. The story’s just getting good.