Dismantling the Fairytale: A New Love Story
I grew up watching stories that taught me to wait for someone else to recognize it —the fairytales, the Disney movies, the myths that said love arrives when someone finally sees you, wants you, chooses you.
Can you remember the first time
you waited to be chosen?
I can.
I remember the silence.
The ache.
The hope.
That’s the fairytale I watched on repeat —
The princess who needs saving.
The prince who is the saviour.
The myth that love arrives
when someone finally says,
“You. I choose you.”
But what no one talks about
is the harm this story has caused us all.
The prince —
taught to be strong,
but never soft.
Taught to carry,
but never collapse.
Taught to save —
but never be saved.
He becomes the hero…
but loses the right to ask for help.
To be held.
To be vulnerable.
And the princess?
She’s taught to wait.
To be chosen.
To be rescued.
But never taught how to rescue herself.
Never taught how to stand,
or soften without disappearing.
And maybe—
maybe I speak for more than myself here—
I witnessed the women before me doing it all.
Raising children.
Working full time.
Carving space for themselves in systems
that were never built for them.
Their strength was breathtaking —
but it came at a cost.
There was no space left
for softness,
for stillness,
for emotional tending.
So I never knew what it was like
to be fully held.
Not in the way my heart needed.
And I learned strength,
but not how to soften.
I learned how to do,
but not always how to be.
I never knew what it was like
to be met by a presence
that stays by the fire —
quiet, steady,
unafraid of the dark.
But somehow,
through going back —
through tending to the younger parts of me
that were never held,
through having their heartbreak witnessed
and processed,
through the healing that EMDR made possible —
I’ve learned.
And because of that,
I can now show up differently
for my children.
They have been my greatest teachers —
not because they taught me how to stay,
but because healing has allowed me
to stay with them.
To soften.
To listen without fixing.
To hold without rushing the return.
What I never received,
I am learning to give.
And in giving it,
something in me is finally being held too.
We all experience heartbreak —
real, deep heartbreak.
The kind that takes our breath away
at stoplights.
In the quiet hours no one sees.
And the world?
It rushes us.
“Get over it.”
“You’re better off without them.”
“Time heals all wounds.”
So we numb.
With food.
With substances.
With scrolling.
With work.
With anything but stillness.
But no one tells us the truth:
That we can honour it instead.
Tend to it.
Hold it.
Witness it.
And what I now know to be true is this:
No one can meet us
in the depth of our hearts
unless they’ve journeyed
to the depths of their own.
That’s not love.
That’s longing — wrapped in abandonment.
So one day…
I stopped.
I stopped waiting.
Stopped hoping.
Stopped wishing.
Stopped praying for my life to be different.
I chose me.
And without even knowing it,
I started writing a new story.
One not built on waiting,
or rescue —
but on surrender.
A love story where:
Knowing my own heart
became the first vow.
Sitting with it daily.
Drawing a line in the sand.
And no one enters my life
without a willingness to do the same.
This is the new fairytale.
Not one where we are saved —
but one where we finally
save ourselves.
Where we walk forward —
not frantic,
but faithful —
heart in hand.
The greatest love story
is the one where we have met our hearts deeply.
Witnessed it.
Healed it.
And learned to hold it —
no matter who stays or goes.
May that be the story
I teach my children.
And their children.
From the quietest place in me…
to the tenderest place in you…
This is my offering.