We're All A Little Mad Here...

"Before Alice got to Wonderland, she had to fall pretty hard down a deep hole. "

"It's no use going back to Yesterday, because I was a different person then." 

"You're mad, bonkers, off your head.. But I'll tell you a secret... all the best people are"

 -ALICE IN WONDERLAND

     When I was a little girl, my favorite Disney movies were the ones that had happy endings full of pretty princess's (like Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty), prince's that would save the day by rescuing the girl in distress. I then became a teenager and started to like the girls who could kick butt and conquer hard things.  Or the ones who tried to fit in a place they didn't belong, like Mulan and Ariel. They all had one thing in common though and that was having their dreams come true. In all of this chaos, I missed one HUGE Important lesson by overlooking my new favorite, Alice In Wonderland. No one came to save her, in fact her dreams didn't come true... instead, SHE WOKE UP FROM HER DREAM. She was so grateful that her dream wasn't reality!  Now that I am older I see the parallels of Alice and mental disorders from a lot of the characters. While she was chasing her dream of the white rabbit, she fell. She fell hard. "Nothing was as it seemed" .  I love that emotions range from frustration, anger, fear, laughter, confusion, and peace. No matter what we go through in our life, it can all be summed up by the characters in this Disney movie. Alice had to find her own path. She had to take many turns by meeting people who had their own issues. In the end chasing her dream wasn't what mattered most, it was living in a world that made sense. "If only something would make sense for a change" For a lot of us, we don't wake up from our dreams. We are living it. "I can't explain myself, I'm afraid, Sir, because I'm not myself you see." 

Alice- "This is Impossible." Mad Hatter- "Only if  you believe it is."  When we believe that we can win this mad nonsense, we realize that "Not all who wander are lost". In fact most the time we can learn from those who have gone before us (even if they didn't make sense to us when we first met them) whether they talked in riddles like the cat (For me the fork in the road and the cat represented many of my faith issues. It's hard enough having bi polar but add a faith crisis to the mix.....) , those who seemed overly happy and out of their minds like the Mad Hatter, angry and OCD like the Queen, whose heart must have truly been broken, or the tired mouse singing "twinkle Twinkle." I feel like that as  a mom at times... tired, and yet still trying. ....(what sorrows did each of these characters go through to become the way they were ? What losses must have taken place for them to settle their minds and tick them into madness?) I could go through all the characters and name something that each probably struggled with, but we forget one important part....."Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly." Maybe in the end, each of these characters were parts of Alice herself. She too would blossom, just not in the way she expected by chasing the white rabbit (maybe this color symbolized his mind was untouched, white, clean, pure)... but he had one problem... he was running out of time. Maybe this symbolized Alice trying to reach perfection, and in this life there is no time or even such a thing.  Alice had to fall in order to find the messy, colorful, full of chaotic characters who threw her for a loop in order to understand all aspects of herself. How many times have we felt like our tears are going to carry us away?How many times do we chase things in our lives, when in reality we just need to learn to accept and embrace the messy, brilliant colors of our broken pieces in the lives we lead? When we can love all the confusing pieces of us, we can find the path to our own peace even in the mist of this dream, that can truly be wonderful in itself.