Not So Fair Fairy Tales: We don’t choose how our story begins. But we can choose how it ends.

Turning points in life don’t always arrive with drama. Sometimes they creep in quietly: One more task. One more “sure, I’ll handle it.” One more “I don’t want to let anyone down.” One tiny thing that tips the scales. Marta Sýkorová, author of Not So Fair Fairy Tales, knows this first-hand. For a long time she adapted to everyone around her, tried to please them and pushed herself to perform, until her life started crumbling in her hands. She decided to deal with it her own way. And she didn’t stop there: through her Not So Fair Fairy Tales, she now helps other people too.

“Not So Fair Fairy Tales were born at a time when I was trying hard to please lots of people around me, to keep everyone happy, and to make relentless, strenuous use of every talent I’d been given. I couldn’t say NO to almost anything that “came my way.” It got to the point where I didn’t manage my bachelor’s final exams, had to go straight to the job centre, and started working with seniors as a caregiver – which also brought me much closer to the topic of death.”

We asked Marta how Not So Fair Fairy Tales came about – from the first idea to the finished book – and about her time in the Social Impact Award 2025 incubation programme, where she won the Audience Award.

Therapeutic fairy tales

The concept of Not So Fair Fairy Tales is built on the principle of therapeutic fairy tales. Just like fairy tales for children, the stories help readers learn about the world around them and, above all, about themselves. The form lets them look at what’s happening to them without having to talk about themselves directly. Paradoxically, that distance helps them recognise themselves in a character and accept their own reality. Instead of shame, there’s more of an “aha moment” – aha, I do that too; aha, maybe lots of people deal with this, and there’s another way to handle it.

Not So Fair Fairy Tales offer two endings – a good one and a bad one. This shows readers the consequences of their own choices and reminds them that they can decide their own fate: we choose how our story ends, and we’re the ones responsible for it. Marta also follows each story with questions for reflection and practical tips for working with the body, so readers don’t get stuck in theory but can carry the solution into everyday life.

Marta approaches the subject with great respect. She consulted the stories with several psychotherapists, and her ambition isn’t to replace therapy but rather to connect it with the power of art.

“I’ve had ‘aha’ moments from a single book, film or theatre performance that were transformative for me – more powerful than weeks of therapy. And looking at expressive therapy, I ask: when is what flows out of a person the result of a therapeutic process, and when is it already a work of art? Don’t those worlds naturally spill into each other? Just as medicine is returning to wholeness and psychotherapy to the body and spirituality, I try to combine the power of art with a safe space where you can experience acceptance and get tools to change the patterns that don’t serve us.”

Which topics do Not So Fair Fairy Tales open up?

“Basically, you can see them [Not So Fair Fairy Tales] as a gentle way of opening up the different issues people – mostly highly sensitive people – deal with. The book’s therapeutic reach isn’t only in the fairy tales themselves, but also in the “exercises” that follow and the tips on how to work with yourself.”

Marta names them: the insecurity of talented people, a feeling of inner inadequacy, the fear of living up to your own potential, and setting boundaries. In her practice she meets lots of capable people who, paradoxically, believe in themselves the least. It comes from realising that we live in a culture that rewards conformity, performance and quiet overload. A culture that produces people who can’t lean on their own worth. Readers love the stories’ playfulness, but also the harshness of the two endings. Many of them find themselves in the stories and want to change something in their lives.

“One of the main aims of Not So Fair Fairy Tales is for readers to lose their illusions – for example, that others will take care of them if they’re very good, that someone will always stand up for them, or that what they dream of will fall into their lap if they’re obedient and humble enough.”

Besides the book, Marta also opens up these topics in workshops and coaching. The participants (mostly women) say the experience helped them return to themselves, to their bodies, and to the priorities and dreams they had put aside.

“The time at a workshop is often a time to pause, recharge, find encouragement and even heal. One sixty-year-old woman left a weekend course saying that, at her age, she had finally accepted her own name.”

This article was originally published (in Czech) on the Impact Hub blog: https://impacthub.cz/blog/velmi-spatne-pohadky-zacatek-naseho-pribehu-si-nevybirame-konec-muzeme/