No broken humans, no rescuing.
Jessica Dore is a licensed social worker, storyteller and writer interested in meaning-making with symbol and image, and someone I only "know" through writings on the internet and recorded offerings that land in my inbox from her substack who nonetheless has sent me golden charms through the ether at times of urgency and need, often when I least know that I need them. The most recent came in the form of a tale of an orc from a Sardinian folk tale . I would encourage you to read the full tale as Jessica tells it, for she is a far more gifted storyteller than I. For my purposes here, however, this is the gist of it: the orc gives his young female captive an unlikely clue to her escape, sharing with her the secret of three magic woolen balls she has stumbled across in their shared home. This magical yarn, he tells her, can support her in escaping any villain. Not long after, she uses it to leave him for an imagined happy future with a young man she has seen from the window of
