Archive for the ‘Self Help’ Category
We have the Ruby Slippers
Sunday, February 15th, 2009Life Mimics the Movies
For those of you who are too young to remember the movie “The Wizard of Oz”, it is about a young girl named Dorothy who is whisked away from home by a tornado, and dropped into the middle of a fantasmical world called the Land of Oz. The Munchkins guide her to seek out The Wizard – and she does, because she believes she needs the help of someone with magical skills to return her “home”.
Throughout her quest to find The Wizard, she encounters many dangers and pitfalls – even flying monkeys. And although these challenges interfere in some ways with her getting home, they also allow Dorothy to use her own strengths. Thus, when she discovers the wizard is nothing more than a little man who has no more magical power than she has, Dorothy is open to the possibility of taking on the responsibility for her circumstances and using the power of her ruby slippers to find her way home.
How Does the Wizard of Oz Relate to Mental Wellness?
Such is the journey most of us make in our attempt to return home – to that time when we felt a sense of wellness and the place where we belonged, even if it isn’t the home of our childhood, but rather the home of our hearts. We need to believe we each have within us our own pair of magical ruby slippers and understand that they comprise not only the personal responsibility to get ourselves home, but also the skills we need to accomplish it.
We need to acknowledge the strengths we’ve developed facing our own flying monkeys… difficult childhoods, parents who were unable to parent… difficult relationships established repeatedly in an effort to find one’s way home… losses of various kinds. Violations of heart, soul, or body… denial of one’s authenticity either by others, or more often by one’s self… messages of inadequacy instilling in us the belief that we are not enough – that we require a wizard to make us whole – to take the lead – to offer us the magic solution or pill, perhaps, to help us find our way.
You Have the Ruby Slippers!!!
The ruby slippers represent all the strength of character and fortitude we developed surviving the flying monkeys… the wisdom of our own hearts… our intuition that something is not quite right… anxiety when we are not being treated as we should… betrayal when we are asked to change… to be something other than our authentic selves to be loved… The ruby slippers represent all the answers we have inside us. Sometimes just remembering we have the Ruby Slippers is enough… we can click the heels together three times and say “I want to go home”… and sometimes, its true, we need some help to remember how to work them. But we never need a wizard to save us because we have our own magic and its contained in the ruby slippers.
