I read it for the first time, right after I graduated college—less than a year before I got the idea for the Ever Afters. This was the moment when Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés became my literary elder, but I was familiar with her well before that.

When I was growing up, my mom kept the book in the house. She had loved it and knew that I eventually would too, but as a kid, I just read the fairy tales inside it and left the analysis for another day. 

In college, my Fairy Tale Course professor assigned a chapter from this book, specifically Chapter 14, which dives into “The Handless Maiden.” I’ve mention before how that story had a strong influence on Lena’s Tale. It also had an impact on me personally—this was a semester when I was recovering from major health problems. My strength was still growing back, so it shifted me from pain and towards resolve when I read about a woman who lost her hands and regrew them. This was the first time I remember needing a story that sank in like medicine.

Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés describes herself as “a Jungian psychologist, a poet, and a cantadora, keeper of the old stories.” My own work grows out of being exposed to hers.

Symbols, for example. The fairy tale course I took was taught by a Jungian professor, who instructed us to interpret old stories with those methods. In case you haven’t heard from him, Carl Jung was a contemporary of Freud’s. He talks a lot about archetypes, which is the idea that symbols are universally the same for every person across cultures. 

As a modern human, I find that premise presumptuous; as a writer, I find it restrictive. 

So, I ignore Jung and turn to Dr. Estés, both psychologist and cantadora. She respects the story, telling it beautifully and teasing out its symbols. Then she applies the story’s symbols to her actual lived experience. She doesn’t make someone’s life fit the archetypal symbol as written in a book written long ago. She finds the most helpful story with the most helpful symbols, and she hands it to the reader-listener as a way to make meaning. She makes sure that the story works on several levels:

• satisfying in the plot

• well-crafted in the telling 

• based in actual psychological growth, present in the story AND available in our everyday lives

With her example, I was able to write the Ever Afters, a series about fairy tale characters-in-training with as much emphasis on growing up as fighting villains. Because of Dr. Estés, I knew fairy tale adventure AND inner growth was possible at the same time, and that’s what I aimed for. 

When I stumbled across “The Water of Life” story, with the talking stones telling the quester she couldn’t do it, I knew that this was really a story about self-doubt and build an entire novel around it (Of Witches and Wind). To make that ending believable, I developed self-doubt-focused subplots for each of my three main characters, crafting adventure scenes to match. Rory’s experience in the mirror maze, which is filled with reflections that magically voice all of her worst doubts, comes directly out of that intention. It’s one of my favorite scenes in the series, and a fave of some readers as well, and it wouldn’t exist without Dr. Estés’s work. 

I’m not recommending that everyone go out, read all of Dr. Estés’s work, and make her your elder—though I think you might learn a lot. I’m also not suggesting that you make ME your literary elder—though I acknowledge the possibility that I already am and I take that responsibility seriously.

I just want you to be aware, especially if you are a young writer: you have influences already present in your life. 

You can choose which ones you give more of your attention to. 

It may be many years before you understand exactly the way their work has impacted you, but you can pick your own literary elders. 

I did.