Some stories are harder to name — especially the ones we inherit without question.
The ones etched into us not by choice, but by repetition.
This is a story about roles, silence, and what we’re allowed to want.
This is part of the larger journey of unmasking — reclaiming your wants, your voice, and your direction. Start here if you’re feeling stuck: Why You’re Not Broken for Wanting a Meaningful Life.
Note:
This post explores feminine-coded archetypes and inherited roles.
It’s written from personal experience, and may resonate differently depending on your own background.
I work with narrative and symbolic frameworks to help people explore identity, meaning, and story — not with diagnostic or political models of identity.
If this speaks to something in you, you’re welcome here. If not, feel free to explore the other paths.
What story did you inherit about being a woman?
Not the one you tell others.
The one that shaped you before you knew you had a choice.
Maybe it came from the books you were handed.
The movies you watched on loop.
The rules whispered between glances and gestures.
The fairy tales where the woman was the prize, the mother, the witch – or the lesson.
We grow up absorbing myths we don’t choose.
And unless we question them, we keep living inside them.
Even when they hurt.
The Role You Were Assigned
In most traditional stories, the woman plays one of a few roles:
- The Damsel: beautiful, helpless, waiting.
- The Mother Queen: nurturing, sacrificing, erased by the next chapter.
- The Witch or Stepmother: powerful, and therefore punished.
- The Helper: the wise one who lifts others, but never gets her own arc.
And these roles didn’t disappear.
They just updated their costumes.
Today, we’re handed new archetypes:
- The Flawless Caretaker, who holds everything together without complaint
- The Achiever-Goddess, who works like she doesn’t have a body and looks like she doesn’t have a job
- The Cool Girl, who never gets angry, never asks for too much, and always laughs at the joke, even when it hurts
None of these are inherently wrong.
The problem is when we’re told: this is what you should be.
And worse – when we don’t realize we’ve internalized that story.
Yes, We Have Mulan. But…
Even our “strong women” are often cast as exceptions.
Elsa, Mulan, Éowyn – they break the mold, but they do it alone.
Survivors, not system-changers.
And so we absorb another myth:
That to be powerful as a woman, you must become inhumanly resilient, violently exceptional, or emotionally shut down.
What about everything in between?
Could softness and strength coexist?
Could there be space for nuance, uncertainty, and change?
Rewriting Your Story as a Woman
You’ve lived inside inherited roles.
Now it’s time to become the narrator.
Rewriting your story as a woman isn’t about rejecting every past version of yourself.
It’s about reclaiming authorship.
Choosing nuance over narrowness.
Permission over performance.
But reclaiming your own story doesn’t always feel brave. Sometimes it feels like guilt. Like betrayal. Like an unmarked trail you’re not sure you’re allowed to follow.
If you’ve ever felt like your story is being ghostwritten by guilt or obligation, this guide on reclaiming your voice and your life offers tools to help you begin again — on your terms.
What If You Could Choose?
There’s nothing wrong with being nurturing. Or driven. Or mysterious. Or quiet.
But there’s something deeply wrong with being only allowed to be one of those things.
The moment we turn stories into scripts, they stop being mirrors – and start becoming cages.
It’s time to write something else.
Stories Are Tools, Not Templates
Fairy tales have always carried power.
They’re how cultures pass on warnings, hopes, fears.
They’re how we map the world when we’re too young to name it.
But stories aren’t sacred because they’re old.
They’re sacred because they can be changed.
So what if we went back to the beginning – not to erase, but to reframe?
What if we asked:
- What did I learn I had to be, to be loved?
- Whose story am I still stuck inside?
- What would it mean to choose my own role, now?
You’re Allowed to Want More Than Survival
This isn’t a post about how women should stand up.
Instead, it’s about how you already have – in a thousand quiet ways.
And how you’re allowed to want more than endurance.
More than being admired.
More than being useful.
You’re allowed to want a story that feels like home.
And you don’t need anyone’s permission to begin telling it.
Ready to Begin Rewriting?
If something stirred when reading this, you’re not alone.
Rewriting your story as a woman means letting go of inherited scripts and crafting something true.
It takes clarity, compassion, and symbolic tools-
And that’s exactly what I share in the Living Lore Dispatch.
Join the Dispatch to get myth-marked letters on identity, meaning, and story.
No fluff. No hustle. Just quiet insight – and the occasional micro-quest.
