She had a set of wishes. She wrote them down in her journal, each entry detailed out in her precise handwriting.
When she was a little girl she wished that she would be happily married when she grew up. Not in a marriage like her parents or her grandparents had, full of tension and infidelities, but in a happy one which would last forever. Happily ever after like in the fairy tales.
She was an only child, and she made lots of wishes through the years for a brother or sister but that never happened. She finally gave up on that wish and changed it, wishing instead that she and her fairy tale Prince Charming husband would have four adorable, happy, well behaved children who all got along.
She was in her last year of high school when she found out that she was pregnant. Although the circumstances weren’t perfect – her husband-to-be hadn’t gotten down one one knee to make a romantic proposal and he hadn’t presented her with a beautiful diamond ring – she was very happy to be marrying the boy she loved. She made a wish that they would have a wonderful life together with four great kids and a bunch of cats and dogs and they would all live happily ever after in a yellow house with a white picket fence. Her wishes were very specific.
As time passed her wishes began to change.
Each time she caught her young husband cheating she made a wish that he’d follow through on his promises to never do that again. When he told her that he loved her and only her she wished that she could believe him. But after two years of cheating, staying out all night, and using their money for drugs so that they had to scramble to pay the rent each month, she began to wish for a way out. She figured out how to make that wish come true.
When she finally left him and was alone with her young toddler, she began to wish that she had more skills so she could get a better job that would pay enough to get them out of the seedy neighborhood where they lived. She thought and she thought about how she could do that, and then she made that wish come true.
She began to see that she was strong and that she could take care of herself and her child. She began to believe in herself.
She never again wished for a Prince Charming to come into her life. But, she decided, if she chose to have a man in her life one day her wish was that she would continue to be a strong woman and to believe in herself.
She made that wish come true.