Once Upon a Time...
Once upon a time, there was a little girl with dark drowning-in-The-Cosmos brown eyes and poodle-tight brown curls haloing a face that always smiled at the world. The world didn’t always smile back at Her but She was so happy and curious, always exploring, that She didn’t care at first. Or maybe She didn’t realise the absence of being loved. Didn’t need encouraging or nurturing because Her world was so simple and it just was. She just was…
But as time passed, a smiling face and sweet nature wasn’t enough to ward off unkind or jealous remarks, especially from siblings or even Her always busy, disenchanted and manipulative mother. And as more time went on, The Little Girl, growing up started to become confused by all the meanness of Her world, exacerbated by overworked, frustrated teachers at school.
The more confused The Girl became about Herself, who She really was, could be, the more often She was bullied… at school and at home. Needing to be a hard worker from a young age, She started a job while still at school but even there, the bullies pursued Her, until one day She unfairly lost her job.
And the more this went on, the more confused and sadder The Girl became. For you see, She had lost Herself… Allowed Herself to be buried deep under. So far, that even before She could find Herself again, She had to dig and dig like a mole. It was such painfully slow going as the ground reverberated daily with the thud, thud of spade strokes trying to re bury Her.
Well… many, many years passed, decades even, and in the midst of all these, the Girl had sons who saw that She was More and could Be again. And the youngest especially, poked and prodded, prodded and poked until the Earth blanketing The Girl began to soften, and slowly, oh so slowly, She began to re emerge. Dark drowning-in-The- Cosmos brown eyes blinking, astonished at the light.
But don’t think it was instant! Oh no! As in all fairy stories that are not, The Girl had to then work and work and work. Over much time, She found the same spade that had thundered down on Her all those years and began to wield it too but never knowingly unkindly, for She had known how that felt…
Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t, but She was, as I have told you before, a hard worker! So when She grew very tired and fell down again, after a little rest She would get back up again. For She was a Fighter too!
I don’t know the end of this story yet for I don’t think it’s quite finished…But I do know The Girl is still battling to find and recover more of Who She was Born to Be.
For somewhere, Deep Inside, She has begun to recognise and claim back that poodle-tight brown-curled smiling One… and She LIKES her!
12/7/25