My late husband used to tease me because I believed I lived in a Disney world. Well he teased me because he loved my innocent take on being able to see the good in the world and the moral in the story. I believed, like a Disney princess, that happily ever afters exist and honestly I was living so happily in my Disney world with my Prince Charming and I counted my blessings everyday because I had found true love.

Then my life was torn apart and my Disney world crushed. My happily ever after was taken from this life. I no longer believed in my Disney way. Then today I figured it out. I am still living my Disney life but I’m not the princess. My beautiful daughter is the princess, who like most of Disney’s main characters, has lost her parent. I’m the widowed parent left to raise this beautiful child in a cruel world. I need to remind myself to teach her to see the beauty in it. To believe in the Disney world and true love like I once did. To believe that even without her birth father she will rise up and become the woman she is intended to be.

Honestly though I will struggle to watch Lion King again as much I loved it. Simba’s father was murdered. I will probably even cry through Frozen when their parents die in a shipwreck. And even Lilo and Stitch. And don’t even get me started on Bambi and Fox and the Hound. Let alone Snow White and Cinderella. Oh goodness and then there’s Pinocchio, Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, The princess and the Frog and Pocahontas who all grow up in single parent households. Bloody hell and how traumatic is the beginning of Finding Nemo. I will most certainly also not be watching the beginning of Up ever again.

Oh Disney. I thought it was all fluffy clouds and rainbows and now I truly understand the hardships and pain. Life will never be the same.