I’ve walked many roads, but one changed everything

 

         

Where the Forest Begins

When I was a little girl, I lived very close to the Danube. By the river, there was a small patch of woods. For me, at that age, that little grove was a rainforest. A wild place where I would go to play.

I remember the way into the forest — you slip between two tall trees and suddenly you’re there, standing on a tiny clearing. Sunlight filters through the leaves, and you can see thin golden streaks on the wings of bees and butterflies. I would sit there for hours. Barefoot, feeling the grass under my feet, lost in my games. I was a forest fairy, and that was my kingdom. That was me.

When Concrete Replaced the Grass

And then we moved. Concrete replaced the grass. Insects no longer had golden streaks on their wings.
And me? I started learning — you must, you should, you can’t…
There were so many lessons that shaped me into what a “proper young lady” is supposed to be.

From time to time, the Forest Fairy inside me would cry. Until I learned that last, saddest lesson — to stop hearing her.

I’m sure you know that feeling. The moment when everything you’ve built, that carefully crafted balloon, suddenly bursts. Sometimes because of illness — yours or someone you love. Sometimes because of loss.
“You’re not going any further,” life tells you.

But how?! I did everything the way it was supposed to be done!

You rebel. You feel anger. Even though you were taught that “good girls don’t scream in the street” and that only crazy women howl, there is a knot in your throat. A scream pushing to get out.

The Forest Fairy inside each of us, trapped for far too long, starts screaming then. She doesn’t care about labels or good manners.

“Why don’t you do what you want, no matter what others say?” — she cries.
“You have to forget everything they taught you. You have to come back to yourself. Come back to me. To us.”

The Mountain, the Forest Fairy, and Me

One year, I finally took that step and went into the mountains, into the wild, to find my Forest Fairy again. She was right where I had left her, a long, long time ago.

She was in curiosity and adventure. She was in the smile that comes when rain drums on your raincoat and your hiking boots are covered in mud. She was in the courage of hanging onto a rock face in the middle of nowhere. She was in the game of autumn leaves rustling under my feet, while the forest in front of me — all golden — threw its leaves straight at me.

Curiosity. Joy. Courage. A smile. Imagination. Play.
In one single moment, I remembered who I was. She was in the life that started moving forward again. Exactly the way we had wished it for us.

And somewhere between the trees and the silence they keep, a song that follows the footsteps of a hidden wish. 

A Forest, The Cure.

You can find my book Whispers of Veloria and more about my work on Amazon

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