One Christmas, when I was a young girl, my mother’s older sister gave us a collection of fairytales in a large-format book with beautiful German watercolor illustrations. The book had tales from different cultures, more than the popular Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, and Beauty and the Beast.
Within its pages, I discovered the fairytale of the Wild Swans. 
Depending on the source, the story is about six, seven or eleven brothers and their young sister. The father of this brood, the king, has lost his wife. Enter the wicked stepmother, who, in this case, is a beautiful sorceress or witch. Jealous of her husband’s affection for his offspring, the stepmother casts a spell on the brothers, turning them into swans, who can only resume their human form at night.
Devastated, their young sister seeks and in her dreams, finds a way to undo the spell. But, like any task in a fairytale or myth, the way is not easy.
The sister must gather nettles (ouch!), break them down to get at the fibers inside, and then spin them into a green yarn. From that yarn, she must knit coats for the brothers (whether six or 11 that’s a lot of work and tender fingers).
AND, she must do all this gathering and work without speaking—ever—until the spell is broken.
Of course, the primary place to gather the nettles is in the cemetery. And so, our heroine is deemed a witch and sentenced to burn at the stake. Throughout it all, she maintains her silence, continuing to work on those 11 coats, desperate to save them.
And as the torch for her pyre approaches ever closer, suddenly from the sky appears a streak of crowned white swans, calling, calling. They swoop down, pushing back the torchbearer, and as they fly past her, the princess throws one coat after another over each of her brothers. As they turn back into men, the crowd realizes that the princess is not a witch after all, just a very devoted sister.
And they all live happily ever after…mostly. The youngest brother is left with one wing because in her his sister was unable to finish the last sleeve of the last coat.
This fairytale so resonated with me that 
when I began my weaving business in the 90s, I named it, Nettles & Green Threads. My mother, who was an artist, designed my business logo and card to integrate that fairytale feeling.
Transformation, powerful change from within, became a theme for my writing and my two-dimensional weavings. I wove three pieces in a series titled Transformation. The last one, “Transformation III: My Mother’s Journey” was woven after my mother’s death and marked her transformation as well as mine.
This fairytale, however, is not just about the power of love to transform, but also speaks to the creative process. First, like the princess, we must make a commitment to the project, a commitment that we will follow through regardless of what others think or demand of us.
Second, we must be willing to do the hard work, to suffer the sting, the discomfort of the creative process. To even bleed a little if necessary.
Third, we must be willing to put it out there regardless of whether or not it is perfect, even if the project seems to still have one wing. What would have happened if the princess had waited to complete that last coat? Too often, the temptation to fix this or tweak that is just another way to keep from putting our work out into the world and thereby risk failure.
Fourth, I love that the princess had to work under a spell of silence. It’s reminds me of the advice I often hear given to a writer that talking too much about the idea of a book can drain the energy from the book so that it is never written. Silence is a good practice for directing that creative energy inwards, AND an important practice for hearing the Muse.
And finally, I LOVE that the princess found the solution to breaking the spell in her dreams. Inspiration and problem-solving is always available in your dreams.
A pretty rich and powerful fairytale for your creative life, don’t you think?
It’s still resonating in mine. Does it resonate in yours?