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Genevieve's avatar

First, thanks for the invitation of sharing our thoughts about this old story. I had lots of fun writing this. I loved reading fairy tales, myths and legends when I was a kid, and this exercice allow me to reconnect with some feelings I had not feel since I was a child.

Second, I am French speaking so I am not sure I can express correctly all I want to share here, but I’ll try my best.

Here are the thoughts that rise in me when I read that story.

**About the King’s and Queen’s screaming desire to have a child** : There are big risks in wanting to control everything, especially big powerful things like the birth of a living being. Despite «having everything you want», nobody deserves to control everything in their life. We must be careful about what we pray for.

**About the frog in the Queen’s bath** : I think this frog or toad persona is one of the archetypes that strikes my child’s soul the most when I was reading old stories as a young girl. I could not tell the exact titles of the other stories this frog/toad is in, but I remember it was in a lot of them. They gave me a weird sensual pleasure. I was in complete awe of nature when I was a kid, meaning it represented lots of wonders but also lots of fears to me. And imagining a talking frog/toad would appear in my bath was the perfect incarnation of all these mixed feelings. So, to me, in this story, the frog represents kind of a small devil with who the Queen is ready to make a pact to get what she thinks she knows she wants and deserves.

**About the 13th wise woman** : Maybe if the King also had to interact with a speaking frog in his bath in order to get the child he wants, he would have been better prepared to let go of all you need to let go of when you become a parent. Here, he decided that 12 was the exact number of wise women he should invite, no matter what. He decided to simply stick to his perfect plan. But there is simply no way you can protect yourself from the trials of life. They are woven into the fabric of life on Earth. There is no plan perfect enough to put them aside from somebody’s life. There are not even bad in essence, they teach us wiseness. Here, the King doesn’t learn his lesson from the 13th wise woman. He simply replied by more illusion of control.

**About the Princess finding the Old Lady** : It strikes me that Brier-Rose is kind of looking for the Old Lady and the spindle. Contrary to her parents, to who life trials seems to be going after, she is looking for them. Teenagers from all times do that : they chase experiences. The King and the Queen seems to think that because they took great care in doing everything possible to keep their prodigy child safe, they can relax, they can count on the fact that she and they are virtuous enough that nothing «bad» will happen to them.

**About the Sleeping** : Sometimes, while chasing experiences and trying things, we get hurt. And sometimes, instead of going through healing, we shut down, or at least some parts of us shut down. It commonly happens to the part of us that was initially able to experience romantic love. For some reasons, maybe because of overprotective parents, because of the common fear of being afraid or because of a really ego or physically frightening event, we freeze. Maybe this is a tale that the growing number of trauma therapists could use.

**About the Thorn Edge** : I was intrigued by this edge since I was a child. I have always been curious to see how beautifully or not it would be represented in books or movies. I often wished that the Prince would spend more time in it, so that the authors would have to spend word describing it. Which plant was it made of? Was it just one or more species? Was it there to protect the Princess and her princessdom or was it detrimental to her? Now I know this magic Thorn Edge is not more precisely described because in real life it can take so many forms. It represents the barriers we erect around us, around the frightened parts of us. This Edge is actually fabulously protective and enormously harmful, for us and for those trying to cross it.

***The hundred years had just passed, and the day had come when Little Brier-Rose was to awaken*** : This is the part I didn’t remember or I never knew. In my memories, in my romantic fantasy, in my naive ideals, the Prince was able to see through and go through the barriers surrounding the Princess despite she having to show any sign of being ready for this invasion. But it seems here that the Prince is not awakening Sleeping Beauty. She simply reached the moment she is ready to live again. And he, contrary to the King, is ready to embrace all that a life with the Princess will be bringing is in his life: the thorns and the roses.

**The Wedding**: Like all weddings, life is a story of great joys and great challenges.

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David Jurasek's avatar

To me there's a lot of mystery to this tale... a lot unsaid.

What made this last prince able to penetrate the briar? Was it his luck in terms of timing? His proclamation that he was not afraid? Hmmm...

I wonder how much the retelling of this story must have changed over the generations and hundreds of times it was passed around before it was written down...

I'm gonna chew on this one some more.

Sometimes, such passed on tales hold deeper wisdom and sometimes they simply carry the shadows and wishes of past generations...

And much of it serves as a Rhoscharch test... allowing me to project my own meaning on it...

To me, right now, there is something unsettling and almost too easy about the way it is resolved. That simply the young man who wants love and fortune and tells himself to not be afraid will get it... like the lies our culture tells us about "you can be whatever you want to be, if you only work hard enough for it" or that "love is there if you dare to seek it." Why did the other princes fail? I imagine them to be also equally entitled and daring...

Maybe, I am expecting more tension and conflict... and something harder earned and this is a tale inviting surrender and softening... upending expectations and offering love to any and all who seek it...

I'll be sitting with this for a while...

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