By now I am guessing that many of you are so sick of hearing the song “Let it Go” that you want to hide in a hole and come out when the craze is over.

I finally went to see the movie about four weeks ago with my cousin. There were a bunch of teens sitting a few rows in front of us.  They were singing all the songs, quoting numerous lines. and “Hmmming” and “Ahhing” in all the right places. They simply LOVE this movie, and there are a lot of great reasons to love it – from Elsa allowing herself to “let it go” and just be who she really is, to the power of sister love, to the fact that the hero does not always have to be a man, to the lesson that passion and love are not the same.

But what I want to talk about today is what I find disturbing in the movie, and that is the choice the king and queen made regarding their daughter.

Elsa is unique and powerful and this scares them. She is different than they are, and they do not know how do deal with her. The choice they make is to lock her away and pretend that this will solve all of the problems.  Somehow this will make it all go away.  Instead of diminishing her strength, despite everyone’s best efforts, including Elsa’s, her powers only get stronger.  She can’t help it.  It is who she truly is.  Had they not dramatically died, as in all good Disney films, Elsa would probably be locked away in that room forever.

We do this a lot in our life.  We do this to ourselves and we do it to the ones we love.

Our intentions are good as were those of Elsa’s parents. We think we are protecting ourselves and our kids, but what we are really doing is squashing the unique gifts we were all given from God.

I have a wonderful relationship with my parents. But as I often remind my mother, the person she is today is not the person she was when I was a little girl. She was always a wonderful mother, but when I was younger and would share my premonitions, or strong intuitions with her, she would often dismiss them.

She was not being intentionally mean, she simply did not get that kind of thing back then. In return I very quickly learned not to share. I locked myself behind a closed door, and did everything I could to hide and abandon my gifts. Who wants to be different, misunderstood and made fun of?  No one.

It took me many years and a lot of hard work to reconnect with what comes to me naturally. As my mother has grown and changed, we can now openly share in my gifts as well as the ones she has reconnected with that were deep inside of her, and for this I am grateful and blessed.

What gifts of yours have you been hiding or “disappearing”?  What gifts might your daughter have that you don’t really understand and might be dismissing?

I challenge you this week to take a moment of self-reflection, for yourself and for your daughter. It is NEVER too late. We can’t turn the clock back, but we can give ourselves and our daughters permission and support to be our full selves, with all of our gifts and talents.

Remember that what Elsa discovered was the answer to controlling her power was LOVE.  Let’s go out this week and share some love with others, and love ourselves just a little more.

Much Love and Support

Tova