Cinderella The Daddyless Daughter Part 3

As daddyless daughters we need to start asking ourselves “Why does our fairytale seem to end with the loss of the slipper?  But Cinderella too is a daddyless daughter and the fairytale doesn’t end there for her.  Think just as the fairytale of Cinderella had an author who wrote its happy ending, us Daddyless Daughters have to realize that we in fact are the authors of our own stories.  It is in being aware of this we conjure up the power as well to write our own “happily ever after”.  So how do we get past the slipper snafu in order to find the courage to write our happily ever after?  Simply put, we must find completion within ourselves.  As Iyanla so eloquently pointed out in Oprah’s Daddyless Daughters Life Class we must first and foremost admit to ourselves that “Daddy’s gone”!  We must understand that we will never ever get the opportunity to turn back the hands of time.  This step is a crucial part of our journey.  We have to really dig deep and allow ourselves to feel the pain and let go of the stories we have made up about Prince Charming better known as our fathers.  We have to understand that just because he couldn’t show up for us for some reason or another that does not give us the right to not show up for ourselves.  Our happiness and sanity depend on it.  The time has come for us to re-dedicate ourselves to ourselves.  This is where the real work begins.  We have to grow up! Part of growing up is learning to love and accept ourselves for who we are.  Learn to realize and appreciate the beautiful creation that your father never got the chance to get to know or see grow.  We must also never forget that we are beautiful.  We are love and we are loveable.  We are truly wanted and important.  We have purpose and are worthy of all the great things this life has to offer us you have to thank your dad for showing up to give YOU life.  And you ultimately have to learn to forgive him for absence and the ensuing mess it has caused.  Remind yourself that based on him not showing up, it is his loss- but the world’s gain.

Hopefully, this blog can serve as your fairy godmother helping you on the path to start healing some of the internal turmoil caused by your “Daddyless Daughterness”.  Yes, I made this term up.  Healing yourself from the inside out puts you on the path to inner fulfillment and completion. This completion will make your Prince Charming- whenever he does appear, be a compliment to your life since you were essentially complete before he got there.  So for the Daddyless Daughters worldwide-our fairytale doesn’t have to end when we lose the slipper.  For it is in that moment we now come to realize that we didn’t need the slippers in the first place.

Cinderella The Daddyless Daughter Part 2

One day Cinderella’s step-mom came up with a plan on how she would get into the Royal circle.  The King and Queen were having a Royal Ball and she would take her daughters to the Ball in hopes that the Prince would fall in love with one of them.  Cinderella also wanted to go to the ball but she was ultimately shut out by her step-mom and stepsisters.  Her step-mom must have been a daddyless daughter too; or just a hater.  On the night of the ball, Cinderella got a visit from her magical fairy Godmother.  She helped her spruce up her outside image, which in turn made her the Belle of the Ball.  Can you image the confidence you would have in seeing yourself in that light?  One in which all eyes are going to be on you.  It gave her a feeling of inner confidence for once in her life.  As a quick side note, we all know that fixing the outside without doing the work on the inside is just a temporary fix.  So when Cinderella stepped into the ball all eyes were on her-just as she expected. She feltspecial and beautiful because she was the center of attention. Of course, her fairy godmother was a professional. Now when Prince Charming and Cinderella locked eyes for the first time it was magical.  According to Dr. Garbiella Kortsch “optimally, a little girl needs to see herself reflected in the love she sees for herself in her father's eyes. This is how she develops self-confidence and self-esteem.” Ladies, imagine the feeling you would get when you are the one that Prince Charming has chosen to be his very own.  Think about it- out of all the women at the ball, he chose you.  In that instant, she became transformed back to being that little girl again, the little girl who dreamed about her Prince Charming coming to save her from all those dreaded “un” feelings that Iyanla Vanzant expressed.  They include those feelings of being unworthy, unloved, unlovable, unimportant, unattractive, unwanted, and unacceptable.  Now as I told you before, this fairytale is ultimately the tale of a daddyless daughter.  So, in essence, who does Prince Charming symbolize really?  Prince Charming for us daddyless daughters is and will always be our daddies.  As the fairytale goes, the clock strikes midnight and Cinderella races out of the castle.  As she exits, little by little, she starts to turn back to the person she once used to be.  She understood the importance of a speedy exit because she ultimately did not want the Prince to see the real HER.  In her haste, she lost her precious glass slipper.

We all know that since this is a fairytale, it can’t actually end at this point right?  So as the fairytale goes, Prince Charming eventually finds Cinderella the slipper fits and they live Happily Ever After.  But for most of us daddylessdaughters, we never usually get past the point of losing our slipper in our everyday lives.  It seems as if once the slipper is lost, so are we.  The loss of the temporary fix knocked us so off balance that we couldn’t recover.  It is in our fathers that we learn to develop our self-image.  With that said, what our wonderful fairy Godmother did was to open our eyes for a brief moment.  She gave us a preview of the beauty, confidence, and power that was buried deep within.

Cinderella The Saga of A Daddyless Daughter Part 1

As little girls growing up, we were constantly flooded with the images of fairy tales.  Truthfully speaking, all of us at one time wanted a life like that of Snow White, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty (maybe not the whole seven dwarfs thing- but you get the picture).  Well, I’m now going to proclaim that in my humble opinion I think the fairytale of Cinderella is loosely based on the saga of the Daddyless Daughter.  Think about this for a minute and let me explain.  In the beginning of the fairytale of Cinderella, depending on which version you read, Cinderella’s father left the home for work and was away for a long time.  He was gone so long that even at the end of the fairytale he still hadn’t returned.  There are even some versions of the fairytale where her father had actually passed away.  There are 4 ways that a girl can become a daddyless daughter; either by death, abandonment, divorce, or by having a father that is physically present but emotionally absent.  Getting into the more familiar part of the fairytale, we all know she lived in the home with her stepmother and two evil stepsisters.  By using the word evil- I mean that the sisters were evil based on how they were jealous of Cinderella they had become and based on how much they mistreated her.  They were also physically unattractive.  In the fairytale she hung out with animals such as birds and mice, all of the animals placed no judgment on Cinderella and in essence they could cause her no harm.   Cinderella seemed to always feel alone and I sense that she may have felt that an important part of her was missing.  The feelings of being incomplete and empty are two feelings that many daddyless daughters can relate to.  Can you imagine how low your self-confidence and self-esteem have to be in order for the only other living things that you feel you are comfortable with are the mice and birds in your home?  In most homes that would mean that people are trying to get rid of the only things you seem to care about.  That’s got to be a depressing way to live........