Ladies of Hive #300 — The Nose That Taught Me to Question Everything 💜
Published on HivePostify by @dimante · Sun Aug 02 2026
I was a sharp little thing growing up. My mom raised me to be strong from day one, and she was clearer with me than most moms were with their kids back then. And here's something I still treasure: TV time and story time were precious. We didn't have a screen in every pocket. We watched together, as a family, and it meant something. But even in those magical moments, my mom would always remind me, "This is just a cartoon, sweetheart. It's not real. Don't believe everything you see."
You'd think that would have turned me into a little skeptic. And yet.
There was one thing I believed with my whole heart: that lying makes your nose grow longer. Yes. Pinocchio got me. I had a cute little nose as a child, small and neat, and I was completely convinced it stayed that way because I didn't lie. I was so sure of it that I started quietly judging people by their noses. Bigger nose? Clearly a liar. 😅
My downfall came at school. A cleaning lady overheard me sharing my nose theory and told my teacher, who laughed kindly and finally set me straight. That was the day I started questioning every story I was told. Was it true? Was it fake? From then on, I checked everything. (Some things never change. I sort of do that for a living now. 😄)
But here's the strange part. Even after I learned to question everything, there was one fairy tale I chose to believe anyway. Snow White.
I knew it wasn't real. I knew no prince was coming. But as a little girl, I loved it. The kindness, the beauty, and most of all the idea of being surrounded by a whole world that had your back. The animals, the dwarfs, the prince. Everyone looking out for you.
And I think that's the real reason so many of us fall for these stories as girls. It was never really about the prince. It was about wanting to feel safe. To feel cherished. To believe that when life gets hard, you won't have to face it alone, and that someone, somewhere, has your back.
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Funny enough, becoming a mom myself changed how I feel about all of this.
My mom set me straight from the very first moment, and I'm grateful she raised me strong and clear-eyed. But I've chosen to do it a little differently with my own three. These days our kids are surrounded by screens and endless fast, noisy content, and honestly? A lot of it feels like it's quietly killing their imagination. There's no room left for wonder when everything is handed to them in thirty-second clips.
So I've decided to protect that space. I let my kids imagine. I let them wonder and invent and believe for a while, and explore their own little minds before the world rushes in with all its answers. And when the time is right, we sit down and figure out what's real together, gently, side by side.
They still believe in the tooth fairy. And I let them. 🦷✨ Because in a world moving this fast, that innocent little belief feels precious. It's one of the last soft, magical corners of childhood, and I'm in no hurry to take it from them. There's plenty of time to grow up. For now, I'd rather guard their wonder for as long as I can.
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The beautiful twist is what we learn as we grow up. The rescue we dreamed of doesn't always come from a prince. Sometimes it comes from us. We become the strong ones, the way my mom raised me to be. And that "bunch of people who have your back"? They turn out to be real. Our mothers, our sisters, our friends. The ones who show up, storm or no storm.
But I'll let you in on a little secret. Even now, after all the questioning and all the growing up… a part of me still wants to believe the story. 😄 I still want the fairy tale. I still love the idea of being swept off my feet and saved from it all. And you know what? I think that's perfectly okay. Being strong doesn't mean you have to stop believing in a little magic.
Maybe the real trick is holding both. Saving yourself when you need to, and still leaving the door open for the fairy tale. Just in case. 💜
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The image(s) in this post were created with AI (Google Gemini).
Thanks for reading 💜 Dima
Tags: #ladiesofhive#life#childhood#parenting#women#story#archon