We women are often so bogged down with our daily tasks and obligations that we fail to honor the dreams and hopes that we once had as children. We become who our mothers were and many generations before them, although we had always said we wouldn't.
Occasionally our children remind us of those creatures we ourselves once wanted to become, but were never able to accomplish in real life.
Thus this fairy tale of two daughters, one on the left (I'm left handed.) and one on the right. Both are different, but both are good. Enjoy!
Once upon a time in a beautiful kingdom, a mother had five children. She was a poor mother who was very busy washing clothes at the stream, ironing the clothes, wiping dirty noses with the clean cloths and hunting and gathering for her husband and beautiful children.
Our mother loved her five children very much, but they gave her very little time to rest and to thank the Great Goddess for her beautiful and healthy children.
Of her five children, two were daughters. She looked at both with pride.
She thought of her two daughters as her right and left hand. Each could help the mother with her many tasks as she hunted, gathered, laundered and swept.
One daughter named Faithful was always at her mother's side. She also loved to hunt and gather. They would talk for hours about hunting wild fruits, mushrooms, greens and nuts as they spun the wool from the sheep and made beautiful garments for the family.
The other daughter named Grace meanwhile loved to dance, to talk with her friends and to dream wonderful dreams of fairies, stardust and handsome young princes. Often the mother of these beautiful daughters would confide in Faithful that she didn't know how to talk to Grace. Grace was a very strong young woman. She did not want to live the hard life of her mother. But she did think that her mother made many of her own problems.
She would often remind her mother that the family's small hut was a mess. In a huff, she would straighten the hut up because a dirty hut made Grace very irritable, and she and her mother would quarrel, and often cry.
Meanwhile Faithful continued to help her mother hunt and gather. They would laugh and cry together. Neither one knew how to get Grace to be more like them.
One night after a very hard day in the fields, the mother had a dream. She saw her two daughters. Faithful was holding her left hand and Grace was holding her right hand. Together they formed a circle and sang songs outside the king's castle.
Grace kept drawing the circle of women towards the castle and all that was beautiful, while Faithful pulled the circle to all that was familiar. In her dream, the mother was happy in both places. She had no cares when she was pulled one way or the other. At last she admired her daughter on her right, for she was challenging her mother to step beyond into beauty, dance, music and mirth. But she also clung to her daughter on the left who shared and loved what she knew and had experienced with her mother, her grandmother and all the grandmothers before her.
Startled, the mother awoke from her dream and called both daughters to her side, even though both were asleep for it was the middle of the night.
She told her daughters to join her outside. Together they built a big fire and watched the flames reach up into the heavens. It was at this time that the mother spoke to her daughters the following story.
Once there was a mother who had two wonderful daughters, one at her left hand and one at her right hand. One daughter she understood very well. The other daughter she did not. But in a dream the great Goddess spoke to the mother and explained to her that her two daughters were really part of who she really was. Of course, the mother recognized the daughter who cried when she cried, hunted when she hunted and laughed when she laughed.
But she didn't understand the other daughter who loved all that was beautiful in the world, who liked order and song, dance and mirth.
In a dream the Goddess came to the mother and told her that she had given her two daughters for a special reason. The one daughter Faithful was to bring her comfort, to be her helpmate and share all that was held in honor in the traditions of the women before them.
Grace, on the other hand, was to be the reminder of the dreams that the mother once also had as a young child. She also loved to dance, to party, to have a pretty house, to believe in fairies and to make the entire world beautiful. But family traditions would not stand for all of this head in the clouds, the dancing and revelry. The dreams of the mother became veiled by what was expected from family tradition.
Now the mother could see that Grace was she the mother as a young child. She had wanted to dance and to sing and wonder at the magic all around her. Grace was at her right hand tugging her along, to reclaim the wonder of womanhood.
So it was through a hard working mother with two daughters that we now can understand that we all have two sides. We have the side we are comfortable with, but we also have the side that leads us ever so gently into our shadow self, the self we have long forgotten, but which is now tugging at us to reclaim.
After the fire turned to dying embers, the mother hugged both daughters. And they hugged her back, continuing the chain of womanhood into the next generation, knowing that we all have the person we have become as our comfortable force with us day in and day out. But we also have that hunger to explore that which has been forgotten from many years ago, or perhaps never really explored at all. As women, we are obligated to search for that magic and wonder that will at last bring us full circle into the wonderful nurturing creatures of magic that the Goddess always intended us to be.