Count me in as someone who has had problems with fairy tales and how they paint the world to be either all good or bad. If only life was so simple and always worked itself out in wonderful, magical ways.

But life often swings from highs to lows and our world is what we make of it. Those who choose to live with a glass-half-full mentality oftentimes see life as always working out in beautiful ways.

And it's heart-warming to remember the days of being read fairy tales of magical kingdoms when I was a girl. I would get lost in the world of magic, beauty and possibility. The Ugly Duckling turned out to be a regal swan, the downtrodden maid turned out to be a beautiful princess, and the shy, introverted reader managed to charm a beast.

Think back to when you believed the hype — you could imagine yourself as that hero, as the girl who came from the ashes but rose to the greatest heights of love and life.

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Of course, somewhere along the line you learned that the fairy tale was not real, that there was no possibility of a happily ever after. You struggled to keep the dream alive but the world, the culture, the reality was too much and fought you down. You lost touch with the fairy tale dream a long time ago.

You may have started settling for less and if you saw something that seemed almost magical, you pushed it away and even ran away from it. You reminded yourself, the world tells me that magic does not exist. My friends tell me that I should stop dreaming and get my head out of the clouds. Be realistic. Settle... settle for less.

Perhaps there's always remained a small glimmer of a flame within you that refused to be blown out. You still want to believe.

At the core of a fairy tale is usually a misunderstood girl who feels unloved and worthless, like she'll never get what she wants in her life, until some other worldly power strikes her. She falls in love and that man becomes her savior, allowing her to see her own beauty, and bringing her off to live in a castle for the rest of her life in married bliss.

Is this so outrageous? If your greatest dream is to have a handsome, kind husband and make babies together, there's nothing wrong with that. You get to choose your own fairy tale in life.

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Fighting for the fairy tale means fighting for what you grew up to believe is the best possible future for you. You don't ever want to give up on your fantasies or your dreams of finding your soulmate.

Honestly, it doesn't matter what anybody else thinks. If you have family or friends urging you to settle for less in your life or wondering why you aren't married or why you haven't had children yet, don't ever give in and settle for second-best in any area of your life.

You can even create your own fairy tale if you didn't like any of the ones you read when you were little. You can rewrite the ideal life story whenever and however you would like. Believe in the power of the fairy tale, in the power of a narrative written by you.

And maybe you're a woman who detests the idea of being saved by a man but that doesn't even have to be the way you interpret a fairy tale.

What if you look at the stories as simply metaphors for what we can do for ourselves? We can come from humble beginnings, feel like the whole world is against us, perhaps not have the full attention and love that we needed from our parents, but somehow we can break the curse and move forward in our lives, finding that special something or someone that allows us to flourish and live the lives we dreamed of.

Sometimes it does take a new person or a new experience to open our eyes and turn us toward the direction we are meant to move in. Maybe your fairy tale savior is a new job or a new perspective on life gained by vacationing by yourself. The "Aha! Moment" that makes you see life in a new magical way doesn't have to be caused by a man, though it can include a man within its borders.

Isn't a belief in everything working out well, in the end, a wonderful idea to base our lives on? To strive for a sense of moving through all the trials and tribulations to higher places and always feeling that life continues and we can carry on.

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Living with a belief in a fairy tale life doesn't mean you won't have to struggle sometimes, but it does mean that those troubles won't last forever. There's always a rainbow or a pot of gold around the corner.

The idea of the fairy tale is still alive and well. It does exist and there's something worth holding onto. All you have to do is keep believing and fighting for what you know you want deep down.

Trust your life to be filled with magic, peace, and harmony. The fairy tale does exist inside of you. It's up to you to keep the dream alive within yourself and to believe in the possibility that fairy tales can and do come true.