A Dream is a Wish: The Anatomy of a Story

A Dream is a Wish

When I was little, my family used to call me Sleeping Beauty after Princess Aurora. It was a gentle teasing at first, mostly because of how easily I could drift away into sleep, but my grandmother always said there was a quiet, delicate peace in the way I rested.

Looking back, I think I was just a little girl who found a quiet sanctuary in her imagination. My absolute favorite story was Cinderella, and I still remember the magic of slipping into my favorite Cinderella dress—believing with all my heart that the world was full of happy endings and that life itself was meant to be a fairytale. 

Even to this day, my grandma still calls me her - la princesa.

One of my favorite lines in the world has always been from that story:

"Even if your heart is grieving, if you keep on believing, the dream that you wish will come true."

As I’ve grown, I’ve realized that the most beautiful, timeless stories are never simple. Every classic fairytale we love has a very specific architecture. There is always the beginning, filled with wide-eyed hope, and then there is the middle—the quiet, heavy winter where the path gets difficult, the fog rolls in, and you are tested on how tightly you can hold onto your belief in the dark.

But a story cannot go straight from the struggle to the happily ever after. There is always that breathless, quiet moment right before the resolution—the transition where the light begins to break, the sails catch the wind, and you finally realize that the journey was shaping you for the horizon all along. That transition is where the magic and beauty live.

Happily ever after, in itself, is a beautiful life.

Sitting out on the open water today, wrapped in white with the endless blue ahead, I feel so connected to that little girl who believed in magic. Every chapter has its purpose, and the greatest gift we can give ourselves is to believe in the goodness, beauty, and love that has been in our hearts, and in the ones we love, all along... believing the best is yet to come, and quietly watching the unfolding of the most beautiful tale.