I do believe in faeries! I do! I do!
When I was a young child I saw small spirits among the plants. They resembled people with exaggerated facial features. I didn’t always see them clearly, but I felt them. Often in the summer, I spent time at the corner of my parents’ backyard where a patch of wild buttercups grew. I sat there alone and gazed at the tiny shiny yellow flowers. Sometimes I picked one, held it upside down, thinking that it would make a nice skirt for a little doll. Twirling it, I envisioned myself dancing in a yellow dress.
There was heightened happiness I experienced in the buttercup patch that I didn’t feel anywhere else. It was an inner joy, a bubbliness that I felt inside that made me laugh.
One day, I was outside with my mom as she trimmed hedges. I watched as little spirits that resembled butterflies flew around the tips of the branches. I called them butterflies because I didn’t know about faeries when I was young. I didn’t read any books or see movies about them. It was the pre-internet age and resources were scarce.
I mentioned seeing butterflies to my mom and she gave me a look of complete disbelief and motherly concern. “There are no butterflies,” she said. The faeries immediately disappeared. Vanished. I never saw them again at my childhood home. That very moment a part of my consciousness closed up and I took on the dense prevailing conviction of the society that I lived in: the belief that faeries did not exist.
Now I must say that I prefer the spelling of faerie to fairy. This a personal preference, nothing more. Faerie is the archaic spelling of the word. It contains the word fae, which is used to describe otherworldly magical beings and the world they inhabit. I’ll have to elaborate on them in another blog post.
In my late 20s, I began to question everything that I was taught to believe. Sometime in the early 90s, I attended a lecture at the Theosophical Society. The lecture itself was dull, a topic that really didn’t interest me but I went there to try to make friends. I was looking for like-minded people. But my introverted personality stopped me from talking to anyone.
After the lecture, I went into the woods beyond the parking lot. The headquarters of the Theosophical Society in America is located in a vast park-like setting in Wheaton, Illinois. I went walking on the grounds at dusk and felt contentment and inner peace. Then I saw the first faerie I had seen in years. She was hiding behind a tree, poking her head out and looking at me in the way that shy toddlers do among strangers.
What astonished me was that she was not like the small butterfly-like spirits that I had seen when I was younger. Her height was about knee level and she looked like a young girl with slanted eyes and pointed ears. The most curious thing about her was that she was pink! All pink, from head to toe! I didn’t know if it was a pink glow that she was emitting or something else. My interaction with her lasted a few minutes.
Over the years, I have had other experiences with the Fae. I will write about them more in future posts. But right now, I’m focusing on the one I encountered in 1992.
Let’s fast-forward in time.
About five years ago, my beloved boyfriend gave me two garden statues for my birthday. They came in cardboard boxes that had their names printed on them. One was a gargoyle named Trixie and the other was a faerie named Fern. Fern reminded me of the spirit I saw in the woods over 20 years earlier.
When the idea of writing a story about Alice in Wonderland came to me, Fern began to talk to me in my thoughts. I found out that she is my guide to the world of Faerie. She is much like the shy child I was but wise beyond belief. Trixie is more of a silent master who engages with me in conversations occasionally.
You may say that this is just my imagination. That’s OK. But I know that we exist in a multi-dimensional reality. Only when we let go of our learned limiting beliefs can we touch them.
Why do I believe in faeries? Because a part of me is fae, a magical being that is learning to remember who I am on all levels. I believe in faeries because to believe in them is to believe in myself.
Always,
Alice Always
