Is there something beautiful and powerful hiding inside you? What would happen if you let it go?
I think this is the question that captures my five-year-old daughter’s imagination as she and her peer group sing “Let it Go.†The character Queen Elsa sings this anthem in the movie Frozen after she has emerged from years of concealment and revealed her powers to make snow and ice. She sheds the ‘good girl’ she was taught to be, throws off her crown and lets down her hair. She conjures a truly spectacular palace of ice high on a mountain.
Then she shuts herself up in isolation. She is also unaware that she has unleashed an eternal winter in what had been the middle of summer. When her sister asks her to end the winter, Elsa doesn’t know how.
Becoming powerful is more than simply letting it go. We need to be able to both contain and reveal our power. On the dance floor my teachers call it dancing with an explosion on the inside. Rather than moving as dancing flames across the floor, we are glowing embers that are many times hotter. Or as Laura Shannon suggests, we become our own castles, beautiful, protected, and containing treasures – and we are in charge of when we open and close our gates.
Listening to my daughter I realize how hungry she is for someone to teach her to use and reveal her power. How will I help her? How will we collectively respond to this generation’s longing to realize their power to create a beautiful future?
