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The first 10 pages Fairy Godmothers of The Four Directions.

Join Cinderella as she reclaims her birth name Charlotte and travels the Four Directions to save a Kingdom. Just a click away......

Life is like a fairytale filled with insurmountable obstacles, enormous burdens, and heart breaking tragedies. Prior to the arrival of the Fairy Godmother Cinderella’s story is composed of unfathomable grief and mind-numbing monotony…or is it?

If fairytales are templates for living a life of wonder and happiness…And who doesn’t believe in fairytales? Be honest. We are all awaiting our happy ending. Then what exactly went on in Cinderella’s life before the arrival of the Fairy Godmother? How many years did she scrub the house, run errands, cook meals, take care of the animals and gardens while living with a wicked stepmother? What goes on inside Cinderella to prepare her for the Fairy Godmother’s arrival? Are impossible circumstances the fertile ground required before the arrival of beneficent-supernatural-aide?

Here is what I think happened. After the death of her parents Cinderella was lost within her grief. She fell into the Great Silence. She scrubbed floors, dusted the furniture and washed the dishes. All the while she felt she was walking across the ocean floor in cement boots.

Cinderella’s solace was time in the woods with her dog Blackie. Together they searched out herbs and cooking mushrooms. Cinderella’s father taught her to avoid the poisonous. Her mother pointed out wild onions they used in soup. Leafy greens were summer salads or steamed over rice and topped with fish caught in mountain streams.

Bay trees, hundreds of years old, offered thick branches Cinderella climbed. She always brought down enough leaves for a wreath at the door or surrounding a single candle as the table’s centerpiece. After her parents death there was never a time when she and Blackie walked forest paths that Cinderella did not relive her life with her parents. Their memories were alive in every herb Cinderella harvested and every fish she caught.

Working in her mother’s gardens she planted and harvested the vegetable patch. Preparing the soil in spring led to countless hours weeding. Hot summer days gathering berries and making preserves gave way to cool mornings that spoke of the harvest to come. Her mother’s spirit watched over her shoulder while she was drying herbs and canning vegetables.

The rose garden was her mother’s favorite meditation spot. Pruning and trimming flowers made way for more blossoms. Cinderella utilized flowers in vases, strategically placed on tables in front of mirrors that reflected their vibrant colors, to heal the grainy tension and striations of negativity cutting through the air. The environmental turbulence of unremitting criticisms hurling throughout the house from her stepmother and her stepsisters was diminished in the soothing scent and colors of roses.

More flowers were used creating laundry soaps and body washes. Late at night if she couldn’t sleep sometimes Cinderella distilled blossoms at the peak of unfolding into diffusion oils. The alchemy of transforming roses into essential oils was calming.

In tending flower beds Cinderella sought her mother’s presence and maintained her established routines. Yes, the colorful blooms scented her home. Dried rose petals freshened linens. Oils were the fragrance added to candles. Rose hips were blended in winter teas designed to heal. But it was sitting curled up under the stone bench waiting for dawn in the rose garden that Cinderella sought to transcend the wreckage of her life. Buried under incomprehensible loss she struggled to meet the demands of the countless tasks imposed each day by stepmother. Cinderella was awkward, a stranger, in a body overwhelmed with sorrow. She was lost to the girl she had been before her parent’s death.

In the Great Silence Cinderella was buried under the difficulties of life as an outcast. She was locked out. The rest of the world continued without noticing her absence. Trapped in her grief, disoriented and fragile, she hid in shrubs to cry unseen. She was a shadow existing along the edges of light and dark, seen but invisible. She was lost within her own home taken over by strangers.

It was in caring for her parent’s house that Cinderella found some measure of meaning and purpose. If she could keep their traditions, the values they lived by, alive through tending their home by their standards maybe she could salvage a portion of their presence. In this way seasons passed.

While Blackie laid in the shade of the apple trees, Cinderella pruned and weeded. Bees hummed, dancing around her as she worked. Once a year in the fall, after lulling the bees to sleep with smoke, Cinderella extracted enough honeycomb to sweeten tea throughout the winter.

It was several seasons of pruning roses and canning vegetables before the Great Silence loosened its grip. Until then soft summer days carried rose fragrance on the hint of breeze while bees hummed around Cinderella’s still blank features.

Five times early spring trees renew their green canopy under blue skies and thickened with summer’s heat. Five times the seasons changed revealing winter’s bare branches, pristine and stark under the grey sky. Cinderella feels a kindred spirit with the tree’s loss of foliage. She too has lost the comforts of her outer life. Trapped in the Great Silence it is at once hard to care or feel and simultaneously the anguish is overwhelming.

Slowly Cinderella begins conversing with the garden and cadre of farm animals. Beginning with the stirring of power in spring, while feeding and grooming the animals, she finds she can laugh at their gentle bumps. Goats, lambs, cows, horse and pig all have their distinctive nudging. They press and snuffle against pockets looking for apples and carrots she brings them from the garden.

Slowly returning to the beauty in life, on days bright edged after rain, Cinderella follows mountain streams. Gathering moss she carefully layers the fluffiness to store in her mother’s leather bag. She rescued the medicinal bag from the trash, thrown out by her stepmother. The leather’s decorative flowers, embedded and dyed, are now faded. One day she promises herself she’ll repaint the flowers. She’ll follow the lines and curves of her mother’s design.

Lost in reverie, imagining colors, sometimes she feels her mother looking over her shoulder with a smile. It makes her heart beat fast. The moment passes in a flash leaving her shaken and so alone. But Cinderella would never trade the split-second communion for the renewed loss.

As the Great Silence loosens its grip she breathes freely. Deep in the forest, sitting with her back against a tree, at the edge of the stream, Cinderella sighs and dozes. She drifts along the edge of sleep pulling her toward a destiny she can barely remember. The warmth of summer sun softens stiff muscles. Dappled shade fragrant with Bay Laurel, the abundant leaves and tree arms create a lattice. Light shines through in greens and hazy gold. In the safety, the congruency of life embracing her, Cinderella dream walks with the Fairy Godmother. In the dream’s depths she prunes shaping dreams with her Deepest Desires.

It is Deepest Desires buffering her from the gut wrenching pain of living with people who will destroy genuine love without a backwards glance. Cinderella’s antidote to the stepmother’s cruelty is beauty and love. She weeds the gardens with love. Inside scrubbing and polishing she remembers conversations, time spent together as a family. She cleans her parent’s home, maintaining its beauty, in honor of their memory.

She walks Blackie, in the forest communing with Mother Nature. Although she knows “communing” is a laughable offense under a stepmother’s task-urgent-time-sensitive demands.

Enduring fives seasons of the Great Silence something has changed. By calling on her strengths each day; morning, noon and night she waits on a wicked family. But now Cinderella does not focus on who she serves. She is engaged in giving and receiving love. She is filled to overflowing with the Deepest Desires to love well. The kitchen is scrubbed. Furniture is polished. Rugs are beaten free of dust. Food is prepared with a prayer. The world under Cinderella’s care shines with love. In this way she is preparing to meet her Fairy Godmother.

           When reason triumphs over love beauty is lost.

Thank you reading world. This appears to be The Year of The eBook. The New York Times has a separate eBook Best Sellers list.....still dominated by the big publishing houses. The prestigious Midwest Book Review and Writers Digest are honoring Self Published eBook authors. That is the realm where we dwell.

The March edition of Midwest Book Review will feature Fairy Godmothers of The Four Directions  and Writers Digest Magazine honors The Way of The Fairy Godmother in their May/June edition.

 

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Just in, a review from Midwest Book Reviews. A top tier reviewer that is read by the New York Times and thousands of high school and university librarians. They only review books they feel are above the 5 Star rating on Amazon. I am very honored.


One might anticipate from its title that Fairy Godmothers of The Four Directions will be a fantasy or a retelling of a fable; but Jennifer Morse's background is in psychology and here she uses the parable of the fairy godmother to examine choices and attitudes. Yes, this is couched in a fairy tale format; but it's anything but fantasy leisure reading, as readers will quickly discover. Picture Cinderella's stark world after her parents died, for example. Unloved and grieving, she throws herself into work in an effort to cope with the loss of love and the cruelty that newly dominates much of her world. This process paves the way for a fairytale rescue - but not before she moves past her grief to arrive at the heart of what she truly desires and wishes to be, in her life. (In this case, in keeping with the original story, it all revolves around the Prince.) The Cinderella character and fairytale is neatly juxtaposed with psychological insights in passages that pair a young girl's changing priorities and perspective with the arrival of a miracle in her life. Under Morse's hand, these hurdles, barriers, and transformations are exposed as what must take place in order for Cinderella to be able to receive her gifts and perceive the truths of her world, and the idea of the singular rescuer becomes much more complex in Fairy Godmothers of The Four Directions. As the story's retelling embraces psychological concepts, scientific insights and science-based research evolves, readers will be pleasantly surprised by a tale that succeeds in the difficult effort of taking a well-worn fantasy and injecting into it a completely different avenue of understanding: "Your mirror neutrons live next door to motor neutrons. Mirror neutrons are activated by your imagination, dreaming, even intuition. When the mirror neutrons ignite they cause a ripple out effect to the motor neutrons. In this way you are, literally and physically, preparing to live your goals by first dreaming them." What a fine way of absorbing psychological insights! It could be said that Cinderella doesn't dream high enough: that her goals of achieving love and centering her psyche around a man are, in fact, self-limiting, and that the power of the fairy godmother is reduced by Cinderella's objectives. Feminist readers will undoubtedly take issue with this part of the focus; but Cinderella undertakes these journeys alone, builds independence, and discovers newfound strengths, and so her goals evolve beyond the singular purpose of finding a man and basking in love. The wider-ranging strength of Fairy Godmothers of The Four Directions lies in its ability to serve as a guideline to translating ambition, opportunity, and life goals from fantasy into reality. Cinderella's growth process embraces mystical as well as psychological and scientific concepts and sweeps readers along for a walk into (and out of) her world. The result is a powerful examination of vulnerability and change that takes the trappings of a well-worn fairytale and injects it with new life. Readers of psychology, fantasy retellings, and self-help books will find Fairy Godmothers of The Four Directions a satisfyingly different approach that succeeds in packing much food for thought into what initially appears to be a simple retelling.

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We targeted middle grade and teens and found a large audience of moms and dads.

And we learned something new....in Europe and Russia fairy tales are used as tools in family counseling and mental health.

Also a nice review just on that subject:
5.0 out of 5 starsWorth every penny By Karen E. Proctor on 20 Jan. 2016

Format: Kindle Edition

The idea of using fairy tales in counselling and therapy has been gathering momentum in recent years and Fairy Godmother Of The Four Directions is a good example. It is not only an enjoyable book to read but provides for instruction and reflection. Personally I could plough through a text book and not garner anywhere as much as I got from reading this book. Life is certainly filled with obstacles but addressing but articulating them in the form of a fairy-tale makes them seem far more surmountable.

There are many reasons an author rises in the morning, has that cup of coffee, then gets right back to researching her next novel. Karen from the United Kingdom writes this wonderful review.......

 

 

5.0 out of 5 starsWorth every penny

By Karen E. Proctor on 20 Jan. 2016

Format: Kindle Edition

The idea of using fairy tales in counselling and therapy has been gathering momentum in recent years and Fairy Godmother Of The Four Directions is a good example. It is not only an enjoyable book to read but provides for instruction and reflection. Personally I could plough through a text book and not garner anywhere as much as I got from reading this book. Life is certainly filled with obstacles but addressing but articulating them in the form of a fairy-tale makes them seem far more surmountable.

 

                                                                      http://goo.gl/rUvXm4