When the Hands Are Cut: Enduring, Leading, and Beginning Again

"Without the hands—without the ability to act, work, create, and touch—we are not whole. Yet in the ordeal of their loss, a woman comes to understand the deeper forces of transformation that shape her life." ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves

Recently, in the UK, two men were found guilty of criminal damage after deliberately cutting down a tree. For the uninitiated, this may sound like a trivial offence. But the tree was ancient and culturally sacred. Its loss felt like the severing of something essential, a living connection to history and meaning. Their sentencing is due in July 2025, and given the gravity of the offence, they may face up to a decade in prison.

The tree’s crown toppled over Hadrian’s Wall, damaging the historic Roman fortification. But the deeper damage was to something less tangible, more collective.

The Sycamore Gap tree, standing near Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland, was a world-renowned natural and cultural treasure. It was not merely a tree: it was a landmark of identity, pride, and continuity; an anchor to place, memory, and meaning. Its destruction sparked fury and grief, possibly to the surprise of those who felled it. In a time where many feel disconnected from tradition or belonging, this act laid bare the enduring human need for roots—both literal and symbolic.

This is why the tale of The Handless Maiden came to mind.

In the Grimm version of the fairytale , a poor miller strikes a reckless bargain, trading what he does not fully understand for fleeting gain. He believes he has promised an apple tree to the devil—but in truth, it is his innocent daughter who stands behind the mill. When the devil comes to claim her, her purity shields her, so he demands the miller cut off her hands instead. The miller obeys, and his daughter is left helpless, dismembered.

What unfolds is a strange journey of suffering, endurance, and transformation. The girl leaves home, finds refuge in a royal orchard, and, after long trials, her hands are miraculously restored.

The Handless Maiden is no minor curiosity of European folklore; it is a strange and unsettling story with deep, enduring roots.

Traditional variants of The Girl Without Hands number in the thousands, recorded across Italy, the British Isles, France, Spain, Romania, Ireland, and Germany—each country offering its own rich interpretation. Versions also circulate in Russia, India, Canada, Mauritius, Brazil, Chile, South Africa, Scotland, Iraq, Iceland, Armenia, Nigeria, and Japan. An Indigenous Australian telling survives, and modern adaptations have been collected across the US, South America, and Africa—where the maiden’s bleeding arms are hurried to hospital by car rather than left to fate.

As folklorist Ashley (2010) observes, some of the most wrenching interpretations emerge from places marked by the brutal legacy of war—Rwanda, Sudan, Sierra Leone—where the story’s motifs of mutilation, survival, and ultimate restoration speak hauntingly to real histories of dismemberment and endurance.

When I first encountered this story, I cringed at its patriarchal tones: the girl’s purity as virtue, the prince as saviour. Yet, as Clarissa Pinkola Estés states, these old tales hold more than surface meanings. Beneath the discomfort lies a deeper truth: the cutting of the hands is the loss of agency, creativity, and action, the very things that let us shape and tend life itself. But this loss is not the end. It marks the beginning of a necessary transformation, a descent that leads, in time, to restoration.

And so too, perhaps, with the Sycamore Gap tree.

But the resonance does not end with ancient myths or felled trees. It echoes, quietly but insistently, in the experience of modern leadership, especially in systems like the NHS.

In the NHS, how many leaders feel their ‘hands’ have been cut off? Resource constraints, staffing shortages, unrelenting policy demands. All have left even the most committed people feeling disempowered, unable to shape the care they long to give. Like the miller’s daughter, they are asked to nurture life while unable to touch or tend it fully. Their connection to action, what Estés calls the “hands” of the psyche, is strained, or severed.

And what about the tree in the fairytale - the apple tree? This too is a powerful symbol. Across cultures, the tree is the emblem of wisdom, knowledge, life passed down. To cut down such a tree is not just to lose shade or fruit; it is to lose memory, continuity, the quiet inheritance of meaning. When we dismantle these things—whether ancient sycamores or cherished public institutions—without planting anew, we risk leaving only ruin.

So when leaders in the NHS speak of being "tied," "bound," or "cut off" from what matters—this, too, is the language of the handless. When systems are hollowed out—values lost, resources stripped, traditions ignored—the ‘tree’ of the organisation weakens. Its fruit withers. Its hands falter.

And yet—the old tale also holds hope.

The hands of the maiden do not remain lost. They grow back—not through random magic, but the magic of persistence, love, time, and grace. She even drops her baby before she can finally hold her fully. This is the tale's deeper wisdom: that dismemberment, though terrible, is not final. It can be the dark ground of rebirth. So too for communities, for leaders, for institutions, for society. What is cut away can be restored—if there is the courage to tend to roots, to replant, to reconnect with purpose.

The Sycamore Gap tree will not rise again. Nor will much of what has been lost. But new saplings can be planted. In time, new trees can grow. The lost hands of agency and creativity in public service can, in time, be restored—if we remember why they matter, and if we care enough to nourish their regrowth.

To me this is the quiet invitation of the fairy tale, the felled tree, and those who try to lead in difficult places: to endure the loss, but not to accept the ruin. To reach, again, for wholeness. And to plant—however small—the seeds of what might grow.

For those who wish to explore these deeper questions of leadership, agency, and renewal, you are warmly invited to join our Quarterly Reflective Practice Group for Psychologists in Leadership: a space to pause, reflect, and reconnect with what matters in the work of care and change.

Quarterly Reflective Practice Group for Psychologists in Leadership – Event details and registration