Your Happily Ever After

An amazing friend said today that our “Once upon a time” is now. We are all traveling through this life battling to insure that good triumphs evil, that happiness conquers sadness, and that we find our own path to our “Happily ever after.” I never thought of this life as a fairy tale, but it’s not far off. We start out full of hope knowing that we are going to find our prince charming and that we’re going to have all our dreams come true but, just as Cinderella learns, life isn’t quite that easy. Adversity is a fact of life, and when it comes to fairy tales, it’s also a fact of fiction. The promising young woman must spin straw into gold or endure torture from ugly stepsisters and evil witches jealous of her beauty. And, even harder, some must wait like Sleeping Beauty for someone to help them get out of their mess. We, too face many villains threatening to ruin our happily ever after whether it’s divorce, sickness, difficult children, financial trouble, or something else from the ever-growing list of trials women face.


Fairy tales teach us that it isn’t possible to avoid the bad stuff, but it is possible to control our reaction to it. Embattled would-be princesses sing while they work, enlist help from the most unlikely of places (namely woodland animals), and most of them manage to save themselves despite the fact that their princes thought that they were the ones doing the saving. The reward for perseverance despite adversity? Happily ever after.

We have practically no control over some of the things that happen to us. Living in a chaotic world guarantees, no matter how much we try to insulate ourselves, that some of the chaos will blow back and hit us smack in the kisser. But we can control our reaction to adversity, learn a lesson, and see the silver lining. We have to, because I don’t know about you, but I’d like my happily ever after to start sooner rather than later.

I’d love to hear from you! What’s your happily ever after and do you agree that we have to fight for it.