Walking the dogs along the creek path behind our house recently, we came upon a little girl, who was about five, and her mother. They were gathering moss, sticks, bits of bark and leaves into a basket that the child was carrying. When she saw us she looked up and said, “We’re looking for pretty things to build a fairy house with!”

Then she threw her arms open wide, her face alight and her whole being filled with the magic of nature and humanity, and she said, “SO THAT THE FAIRIES CAN LIVE IN OUR BACK YARD!!” (She didn’t shout, but feeling the radiant power in her makes me put that in caps!)

Bless her mother for standing smiling in the background, and not rolling her eyes or diminishing the importance of her daughter’s work. How many of us started life with this love of the earth, and our own capacity to invite and shape its magic, and the certainty that if we create a holding space for spirit it will flow in as surely as water flows downhill —only to have that spirit constricted in us by shaming or neglect?

This encounter with this little girl, a fairy herself, has been held suspended and twinkling in me ever since. I want my work in the world to restore, support and foster the creative confidence in all of us that I saw and felt in her.