being real – Aspirational Adventures

Magic of a river in full flow after a storm. Abergywngregan August 2023 Photographed by myself

Did you know you could do magic? In fact you do it every day by the things you think and how you hold on to your feelings.

I tried to write this without mentioning the people concerned but realised it didn’t make sense otherwise so I’ve had to name the relationships. Bit of tough vulnerability here!!!

This revelation came to me whilst I was having negative jealous insecure thoughts around my daughter-in-law. As I was journaling and pondering and, I suppose, justifying my feelings, I got a picture in my head of the Snow White’s wicked stepmother. From that picture this came.

Snow White’s stepmother would have been a kind and beautiful woman when the Snow White’s father pick her as his second wife. He didn’t have to marry to have someone to look after his daughter after he was widowed as some men do. He could have had servants to do that for him. He chose her, I am sure, for her beauty and beautiful nature. But she had been wounded in childhood by someone so as Snow White grew into a young woman she got jealous. Then I am sure there were times when Snow White went off and did things just with her father. This would have exasperated the stepmother’s wound. I wonder too if she also pondered whether the father looked at his daughter and remembered his love for his first wife. All this added to the stepmother’s insecurities making her feel angry dark thought inside. She then chose to act on those thoughts and, if she had been successful, instead of helping her step daughter through teenagehood and out into the wider world, she as good as killed her.

It made me realise that we can choose what magic we use and how we act on our feelings. I had a choice – 1. to be jealous and angry with this person and to send out negative vibes. Ok not a poisoned apple but something close to that which would have killed our relationship and killed my relationship with my son 2. I could accept that this was how I felt but then let those feelings slide from me, know that my relationship with my son was not based on who they were with now but on some “deeper magic”.

I could trust in the depth of the relationship with my son and no longer be jealous of his wife then give life to our time, or I could spoil everything with my jealousy.

[I was going to say petty jealous but actually it was very real and I had to accept it before I could let it go. I think too often we dismiss our feelings and so they fester about because they haven’t been truly banished.]

The stepmother did not accept her jealous feelings, instead she acted on them and went into destroy mode. I decided to accept my feelings, let them go, go to my safe place of deep gratitude, and allow a better magic to flow.

And of course as you know the answer to the Snow White story so you can guess the answer to this story. Yes we all had a great time together. There was no negative animosity. I grew in love for my daughter-in-law and got some great times on my own with my son.

The magic I made was my choice, but it comes through the healing I’ve gone, my relationship with myself, my trust in God/The Universe to have my back and love me unconditionally. Without all that I would still have that wound and be wanting to hold too tight, to poison what was, not be able to enjoy what is going on around me.

Though sometimes I think we don’t realise we can do magic so we say things about a situation or person that are not uplifting or positive, we work towards a worst case scenario, and we are not disappointed. Snow White’s stepmother “knew” that eventually Snow White would be more popular and more beautiful than her so she had a plan on what to do with her then. If I had planned in a “I know this time will be hard work” I am sure it would have been. But instead, once I’d free wrote/journaled around it, accepted what I was feeling and accepted that this was not a good place to be, ANSed myself, etc then I could believe this was going to be a lovely magical time with my son and his wife.

Because it was deep magic from being healed and knowing I am an amazing person then it wasn’t a “trying hard” but was from a place deep in my heart.

We need to all remember we are all making magic every day by what we think, feel, do and believe.

Diane Woodrow's dog Renly barking at "the world" on near the top of Conwy mountain — Renly barking at the world on Conwy Mountain

I have just started reading “Warrior Goddess Training” by Heatherash Amara, which was recommended by a friend. I’ve only got as far as the Introduction and I’m scribbling away in my notebook. It all fits in so much with what I have been doing with QEC therapy.

In fact I said almost word for word this quote the other day

I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I have just lived the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well
Diane Ackerman

As Amara says fifty years ago women were told their lives would be complete with a husband and children. I know people who still believe that. We think things have changed so much but really it is just the “things that make one complete” that have changed – and I think this is for men as much as for women. We’re told we will be complete with either a beloved/a partner, a “proper” career, a chosen spiritual path where we are involved with the group we are part of, a good income so we can afford a good car/house/clothes/things. Add in your own things that you know you have been told that will “make you compete”

Also too often we base our worth on who loves or doesn’t love us, whether that is parents, children, spouse, partner, boss, teacher, friends, people we meet in the park/shop/cafe. Or we base our worth on our size, shape, talents, skills at multitasking, our behaviour. The book goes on to say that we need to bring ourselves back to discover who we are on the inside – and that is not who we wish we were or who we think we should be – in our relationships, with our jobs, with our families, or even how we wish we were.

The book continues by saying that the irony is that the firsts step on this path is not about gaining insight but rather we need to relinquish some things that we have been holding on to. We need to let go of the stories we’ve been telling ourselves for a long time, those false beliefs that we have spoken over ourselves for so long that we believe them and they limit us. This is something I have being doing myself during my QEC sessions; finding out the false beliefs in me and replacing them with truths of who I truly am

If we are living a life that is working so hard to “make us complete” but not knowing who we are we can easily suffer with anxiety, depression, stress, eating disorders, addictions, which in turn can lead to more serious, life threatening illnesses. If we were willing to let of of the baggage that we carry with us, find out who we truly are and “live the width of our lives” I wonder would we be calmer, would we be healthier, would we be freer and from all that would the world be a gentler, kinder place to live?