Once upon a time, in the kingdom of Prince Gvidon and his Swan Princess, a little girl was born. Her crystal blue eyes, dark ebony hair, and plush red lips mesmerised every passerby though she seldom talked to anyone.

Lost in her thoughts, she always felt in her a deep desire to ride the wind, talk to the stars and play with ice, and dance to the hymns of nature. However subtle her strokes though, there was always something holding her back, something stopping her from spreading her wings and telling the world who she really was!

Surrounded by a cloud of fog and dense mist, that dark something rose like a voice in her head. It was her arch-enemy: an invisible being the world knew as shyness. Every time the voice appeared, Marie could feel the whole world staring at her and she would freeze in shock, unable to utter a single word in fear of being judged.

She fought with it every day and kept her feelings, her longing to fly freely like a bird ebbed in her heart as days went by. Until one day her mother, a charming, sweet lady brought home a golden cloak.

The cloak was anything but ordinary. It glowed in the dark, shone in the moonlight, and was soft as silk. Marie, the little girl adored it and instantly felt connected to the tiny rat in a tutu engraved on it.

That night in her dream Marie came face to face with herself: her real, magical self. As she shut her eyes, she stepped into a world of crystals and crowns. Awestruck by the grandeur sight and confused at the same time, she jumped to her feet when she saw her little rat friend standing by her side.

"In the realm of fairies and nymphs does a girl learns to breathe", said her little friend.

It all suddenly made sense. Her fears and yearning were replaced with a passion to dance. She felt alive at that moment. Her heart skipped a beat as she opened her eyes and saw herself in her room again, clutching tightly to her cloak.

The moral of this story is simple, all we need sometimes is just a little assurance to combat our demons and pursue our dreams. As Einstein put it, "If you don't believe in any kind of mystery or magic, you're as good as dead."

What separates the living from the dead is their power to create, the power to manifest, and the power to bring into existence what they seek. Every now and then we come face to face with our fears, nagging thoughts of self-denial which challenge our potential and limit us like Marie.

A tiny reassurance in that moment of doubt can take us to the town where fairies live.

Our children, especially our delicate Etoiles can sometimes lose sight of their inner charm and in that moment of silence a subtle, subconscious reassurance can work wonders for them.

Embedded in the abyss of nature are ways and means for us to meander and find our way. One such way of unlocking our true potential is keeping in touch with our spirit animals.

Animals have been our companions throughout history and they go hand in hand with ballet, creating visual independence in every single stroke of a ballerina. The art of ballet is almost synonymous with lightness and flight. Its performances are made ethereal with the melancholy of the swan, the symphony of hummingbirds, and magical firebirds and butterflies.

Ballet has a history of teaching us life lessons through the brilliance of tapping onto our imagination. While associating animals like a bumblebee and a nutcracker with a lost prince, ballet has taught many of us how losing sight of our duties and morals can deviate us from our life goals. The struggle which follows is what defines a victor, a champion, an etoile.

Just as Marie, the lost Etoile unlocks her true potential after finding her petit-rat cloak; every child seeks to connect with an identity that speaks of their ideals and magical fellows. Once their imagination is fuelled with the rightly motivating symbols, our children can do wonders.

We as caregivers can surely provide verbal reassurance and motivation to our children, though the visual connection a nutcracker may develop with them may have a much lasting and emotionally engaging impact on them.