Cinderella 3 Don’t Let Dream Stealers Take Your Dreams Away

Cinderella had great ammunition for her helplessness- her evil step-sisters. These wretched creatures were more evil on the inside than anything else. They had not a kind word for anyone or anything including each other and especially not for Cinderella. In truth, they fear anything that threatens their version of reality, which is that they too only have 2 choices – poverty or royalty. In their truth, poverty is the only choice. But like so many people we know and meet, their only way to accept their lot in life is to prove that somehow, they are better than someone else. Their prime target is Cinderella.

Cinderella, in her learned helplessness, has learned to believe that what these women say is true. Once again, she is predisposed to expect the worst. Every time her step-sisters tear her down, she has proof of why she is as she is. She daydreams safely in her little corner because she believes her Dream Stealers’ version of reality.

We all have our own version of these evil step-sisters in our lives. If we want an excuse for why things are as hopeless as we know they are, we just look around and there is an evil step-sister to validate our fears. These victimizers come in all types. 

There are the well-meaning, but destructive step-sisters. These are the people in our lives who tell us to not expect too much so we won’t get hurt. They want to protect us from pain, but in doing so, they feed our sense of helplessness. There is no use in striving for our dreams because we are only destined to fail. Why would anyone deliberately want to fail? So why try at all?

There are the militant and angry step-sisters. These are our fellow women (and men) who feed the victimization theories. All of this dreaming and striving is for no purpose because we are destined to fail because of the society we live in. Women can’t get ahead because of our male-dominated society. With all of the bluster and rhetoric, these people are just as destructive to our dreams as those who wish us harm. It is easy to blame our failures on society. It is easy to excuse our lack of success on glass ceilings and old-boys networks, sexual harassment, spousal abuse, and all of the other thousands of ills society, men and other women have perpetrated on us. We’re mad as hell, but we are going to keep taking it because we have no choice. These are the women who see evil lurking in every corner. They see subliminal, male-dominated messages in fairytales. They see how life is designed to keep women down. If you look hard enough, you WILL see evil lurking, but if you look with a more open mind, you can get beyond the blame and victimization.

This does not dismiss the horrible ills that have been done to women in abusive relationships and those who have legitimately been sexually harassed. But by using these truly horrible things that happened to someone else as our excuse for not being more than we think we can be, we are unintentionally trivializing legitimate abuse by using it as an excuse for all the ills of those who never were touched by such horrors. We are victimizing ourselves into our own helplessness.

There are the back-biting, petty, jealous step-sisters like Cinderella’s. These are the people we all know who begrudge anyone else’s success. These are the people who perpetuate the myth that anyone who has broken beyond what is expected has gotten there through treachery, deceit, and most likely through some man. 

These are the type of women who spend their time and effort tearing down other strong women instead of applauding them. These are the people that applaud the underdog. Then they accuse her of “selling out” once she has actually made it. These are the women who despise Hillary Clinton for being vocal while applauding Nancy Reagan and Bess Truman for wielding just as much influence over their men, but doing it in the socially acceptable confines of their own bedroom. 

These are the women who will accuse others of sleeping their way to the top. These are the same women who will claw their way to the top then step on any other woman who dares to ask for help. If they had to fight for every gain, then dammit, so does everyone else. Then these same hateful creatures will turn around to complain about how unfair the “old boys” network is while refusing to be a productive part of an “old girls” network.

Cinderella’s step-sisters were just hateful, jealous people. They found it much easier to criticize Cinderella than to look in the mirror to see their own hatefulness. After years of conditioning, Cinderella came to believe that they were right. In her dreams, she could imagine that she was more than plain Cinderella. She knew in her heart that she was a better person than her step-sisters allowed her to be. But she couldn’t envision that she would ever be any more than the hard-working, helpless Cinderella the world could see.