In Part One of Perceval and the Holy Grail, we follow a nameless boy raised in isolation by a mother terrified of losing him. When he encounters a group of knights in the forest, he becomes determined to join them. He puts on the Red Knight’s armor and begins moving through the world guided by borrowed rules and an identity he has not yet earned.

He rescues the beautiful Blanchefleur but rides away when she asks him to remain. Then a prayer leads him to a mysterious castle, where he encounters the wounded Fisher King, a bleeding spear, and the radiant Holy Grail. He senses that something is wrong, but because he has been taught not to ask too many questions, he remains silent.

Through the medieval story of Perceval, we explore the armor we wear, the identities we inherit, the difference between rescuing someone and truly relating to them, what happens when we fight, flee, or freeze rather than listen to our inner world and how one compassionate question can begin to heal an entire kingdom.

Did something in this episode speak to you? Send me a note.

About Know Thy Soul

Know Thy Soul explores myth, fairy tales, scripture, symbolism, psychology, and spiritual traditions as maps of the soul, revealing the timeless patterns that illuminate the journey home to ourselves.

🎙️ New episodes every Tuesday.

Visit knowthysoul.com for episode transcripts, reflections, and more.

📬 Join the Know Thy Soul newsletter

What happens when the life you planned is not the life your soul is asking you to live?

In this episode, Jennifer explores what it means to live with our hands grown back. Drawing on Carl Jung’s four psychological functions, The Handless Maiden, Perceval, and the parable of the farmer and his horse, she considers what becomes possible when reason, feeling, sensation, and intuition begin working together—and the inner king learns to serve rather than silence the inner queen.

Then she shares the winding and improbable story of how Know Thy Soul came to be. What began as a plan to start a podcast led instead to a writing retreat, an unexpected encounter with Anne Lamott, a workshop she didn’t win, and the sudden clarity that revealed the book she was meant to write.

This is a story about gnosis, synchronicity, the kingdom within, and learning to follow the next right step—even when your soul has other plans.

Did something in this episode speak to you? Send me a note.

About Know Thy Soul

Know Thy Soul explores myth, fairy tales, scripture, symbolism, psychology, and spiritual traditions as maps of the soul, revealing the timeless patterns that illuminate the journey home to ourselves.

🎙️ New episodes every Tuesday.

Visit knowthysoul.com for episode transcripts, reflections, and more.

📬 Join the Know Thy Soul newsletter

What happens when you’ve spent so long minimizing your own experience that you can no longer recognize how much pain you’re carrying?

In this episode, I step outside the fairy tale to explore what The Handless Maiden can look like in real life. I share the story of my first childbirth—how often I silenced what I felt, handed my authority to others, and insisted I was fine when my body was telling me otherwise.

This is an exploration of what happens when we believe trusting someone else requires us to stop trusting ourselves.

Along the way, an octopus shows us how something lost can grow back, and a turtle becomes an unexpected teacher in listening to the wisdom within us and trusting the next step without knowing where the entire path will lead.

Together, we explore the quiet ways self-abandonment happens, the healing that often takes place where no one else can see it, and the first small act of sovereignty: telling ourselves the truth about where we are.

And I’ll leave you with one question:

Where in your life might you be calling a nine a three?

Did something in this episode speak to you? Send me a note.

About Know Thy Soul

Know Thy Soul explores myth, fairy tales, scripture, symbolism, psychology, and spiritual traditions as maps of the soul, revealing the timeless patterns that illuminate the journey home to ourselves.

🎙️ New episodes every Tuesday.

Visit knowthysoul.com for episode transcripts, reflections, and more.

📬 Join the Know Thy Soul newsletter

In the final chapter of The Handless Maiden, the maiden has spent seven years healing in the sanctuary of Here All Dwell Free. Her living hands have grown back. Meanwhile, the king has spent seven years wandering through the forest, learning to lay down his armor and soften the heart that could once offer her only silver hands—beautiful on the outside, but cold, rigid, and unable to feel.

When they meet again, neither is the person the other once knew. She has become a whole and spiritually sovereign woman. He must learn to recognize her, hear what his absence has cost, and love her without trying to rescue, possess, or change her.

In this episode, we explore:

• Why healing requires rest, safety, and the freedom to belong to ourselves
• How living hands symbolize inner authority, creativity, and spiritual sovereignty
• Why healing does not erase memory—and forgiveness does not automatically restore trust
• The king’s transformation from a hardened heart to a heart soft enough to feel
• Kintsugi and the possibility of allowing our wounds to become catalysts for rebirth
• Maslow’s idea of Being-love: loving another person without needing them to complete or rescue us
• The sacred marriage and the reunion of the healed feminine and masculine
• What it means to reclaim the authority of the soul

Drawing from fairy-tale symbolism, the Bible, the Tao Te Ching, psychology, and personal reflection, this episode asks us to consider where we may have surrendered our own hands—and whether something within us is now ready to return.

What is true within you may be forgotten, buried, or silenced, but it cannot be destroyed.

Did something in this episode speak to you? Send me a note.

About Know Thy Soul

Know Thy Soul explores myth, fairy tales, scripture, symbolism, psychology, and spiritual traditions as maps of the soul, revealing the timeless patterns that illuminate the journey home to ourselves.

🎙️ New episodes every Tuesday.

Visit knowthysoul.com for episode transcripts, reflections, and more.

📬 Join the Know Thy Soul newsletter

In Part 2 of The Handless Maiden, we follow the maiden into the king’s pear orchard, where the story begins to reveal what our relationships often mirror back to us: our wounds, our patterns, and the places where rescue can be mistaken for love.

The king gives the maiden silver hands, but silver hands are not living hands. They may cover the wound, but they cannot restore her agency, her inner knowing, or her direct connection to God. In this episode, Jennifer explores deficiency-love, the honeymoon stage, wounded masculine and feminine patterns, and the painful loneliness of trying to make love work with someone who has emotionally left the castle.

This is an episode for anyone who has ever confused being chosen with being truly met, or who has had to learn that healing cannot come from someone else covering the wound.

This is not the end of the maiden’s journey.

Next week, we’ll follow her deeper into the forest, where her real hands grow back, the king begins his own healing, and we begin to see what love looks like when it comes from wholeness.

Did something in this episode speak to you? Send me a note.

About Know Thy Soul

Know Thy Soul explores myth, fairy tales, scripture, symbolism, psychology, and spiritual traditions as maps of the soul, revealing the timeless patterns that illuminate the journey home to ourselves.

🎙️ New episodes every Tuesday.

Visit knowthysoul.com for episode transcripts, reflections, and more.

📬 Join the Know Thy Soul newsletter

What if the deepest wounds aren't the ones inflicted upon us... but the parts of ourselves we slowly learn to abandon in order to survive?

In this first episode of The Handless Maiden, we begin exploring one of the most profound fairy tales ever told. Beneath the shocking image of a father cutting off his daughter's hands lies a story about the ways we lose our voice, silence our intuition, sacrifice our needs, and slowly forget the quiet wisdom within us.

Together, we'll explore the symbolism of severed hands, tears, father wounds, self-abandonment, and why so many of us spend our lives searching for someone else to heal wounds that only we can begin to heal ourselves.

Along the way, we'll discover why these ancient stories continue to speak so powerfully today, how they illuminate patterns modern psychology is only beginning to name, and why the journey home often begins the moment we leave the place where we were wounded.

This is only the beginning of the Handless Maiden's journey.

Next week, we'll follow her into the forest.

Did something in this episode speak to you? Send me a note.

About Know Thy Soul

Know Thy Soul explores myth, fairy tales, scripture, symbolism, psychology, and spiritual traditions as maps of the soul, revealing the timeless patterns that illuminate the journey home to ourselves.

🎙️ New episodes every Tuesday.

Visit knowthysoul.com for episode transcripts, reflections, and more.

📬 Join the Know Thy Soul newsletter

In this episode, we zoom out to see the larger tapestry these ancient stories are helping us recognize.

The Handless Maiden and Perceval may seem like two separate tales, but when we place them side by side, they begin to mirror one another. One tells the story from the perspective of the soul. The other tells it from the perspective of the ego. One loses her hands. The other loses the ability to ask the healing question. Both enter exile. Both must let go of what no longer serves them. And both point us toward restoration, wholeness, and the journey home.

Together, these stories invite us to look at the places where we abandon ourselves, hide behind armor, lose connection to our inner knowing, or forget how to see with compassion.

This episode asks:

Where are you in the story?
What has been cut off?
What armor are you wearing?
And what is your soul asking of you next?

Did something in this episode speak to you? Send me a note.

About Know Thy Soul

Know Thy Soul explores myth, fairy tales, scripture, symbolism, psychology, and spiritual traditions as maps of the soul, revealing the timeless patterns that illuminate the journey home to ourselves.

🎙️ New episodes every Tuesday.

Visit knowthysoul.com for episode transcripts, reflections, and more.

📬 Join the Know Thy Soul newsletter

Why have some stories survived for thousands of years while countless others have been forgotten?

Why are we still talking about Adam and Eve, Cinderella, King Arthur, the Buddha, and Jesus?

What if these stories have endured because they are pointing toward something timeless within us?

In this episode of Know Thy Soul, we explore why myths, fairy tales, parables, and sacred stories continue to speak across cultures and generations—not because they are merely entertainment or history, but because they are maps of the human soul.

Together we'll explore:

• Why stories often communicate truths that facts alone cannot.
• What Jesus meant when he taught in parables.
• How wisdom traditions from around the world seem to point toward the same deeper reality.
• Why stories reveal new meanings as we ourselves grow.
• How symbols such as Bluebeard, Isis and Osiris, and even Dead Poets Society can illuminate our own inner lives.

If you've ever wondered why certain stories stay with you long after you've forgotten the details, or why the same themes seem to appear again and again throughout history, this episode is an invitation to begin reading stories with new eyes.

Because perhaps the greatest stories were never meant to tell us about someone else.

Perhaps they have been telling us about ourselves all along.

Reflection Questions

• What stories have stayed with you throughout your life?

• Which characters or moments continue to speak to something deep within you?

• What might those stories be revealing about your own journey?

Did something in this episode speak to you? Send me a note.

About Know Thy Soul

Know Thy Soul explores myth, fairy tales, scripture, symbolism, psychology, and spiritual traditions as maps of the soul, revealing the timeless patterns that illuminate the journey home to ourselves.

🎙️ New episodes every Tuesday.

Visit knowthysoul.com for episode transcripts, reflections, and more.

📬 Join the Know Thy Soul newsletter