How to Make a Myth of a Life

I invite you to join me on a deeply personal journey through the realms of healing and self-discovery. I share how embracing my identity as a fairy has transformed my life, offering a space for my thoughts and feelings to land softly. Together, we explore the interconnectedness of life's challenges and the unexpected beauty that emerges from them. Join me as I navigate the river of life, embracing the process and finding magic in the mundane. Let's make myths of our lives and savor the joy in every twist and turn.

Highlights:

- Embracing my identity as a fairy has provided a new sense of belonging and self-discovery.

- Sharing personal stories on the podcast has been a healing journey for me.

- Rediscovering my mom's old film camera reignited my appreciation for everyday beauty.

- A transformative ayahuasca ceremony allowed me to confront and release deep-seated emotions.

- Viewing life as a river helps me focus on how I choose to flow with its natural course.

- I'm building a fairy universe that celebrates softness, co-creation, and personal mythology.

This episode was produced by six-two.studio

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Fairy Tea is a deeply personal podcast where I share the raw, honest messiness of life—exploring how to break free from societal expectations and follow the heart’s calling. Blending storytelling, spirituality, folklore, and self-discovery, Fairy Tea is both magical and real, whimsical yet grounded. It’s a space to embrace uncertainty, face challenges without fear, and stay curious about the possibilities ahead. Through my own experiences, I invite listeners to see that a new way of living is possible—one that is intuitive, soulful, and uniquely their own.

Instagram: @fairytea.podcast or @akayourfairygodmother

Email: akayourfairygodmother@gmail.com

Transcript

Sophie Bruderer (00:00.362) Welcome to Fairy Tea, where we sip on the thorough wisdom of the Fairy Realm and uncover its ancient secrets for healing, pleasure and rest. I'm your host Sophie, here to sprinkle a little enchantment into your everyday life. Think of this as one great unfolding experiment. An invitation to dance with magic, trust the unseen and let curiosity lead the way.

Sophie Bruderer (00:36.332) Let the sadness rise, not crush. Let the meaning flood the gray. Until the dullness comes undone. This tale is yours now. Spin it sweetly, spell it well. If any of this resonates, maybe today's episode is for you. So welcome back my fairy friends. As you know by now, I'm Soph, your fairy godmother.

And today's topic lives so close to my heart. But then again, which one doesn't? At this point, you're basically my diary. And I just want to pause for a moment and thank you for allowing me this space, for being part of this magical unfolding. I don't even know really how to put this, but I finally get to share...

Memories and thoughts and feelings that for a large extent never found a space that was soft enough for them to land. So speaking these words to life has been so incredibly healing to me. But without further ado, let's get into it. Remember how in the last episode I told you how calling myself a fairy lowkey changed my life?

By the way, if you haven't listened to the last episode, I strongly recommend you to go back to listen to that one first, because my episodes kind of build on each other. And I wouldn't want for you to get lost. But of course, this is entirely up to you. But I digress. Like I said, coming back to my very self gave me a place to belong within myself.

And also somewhere between things, the in between where I'd always been, but I never knew that I was allowed to live there. So I know what you're thinking, but Soph, you're 31 years old. How was your life before that? And can I just say you're the sweetest. Like you're so observing. We love this here. And you're absolutely right. I would

Sophie Bruderer (02:54.36) Go as far and say, before I ever said the word fariad loud, I lived in a different kind of world. I've never been officially diagnosed, but for as long as I can remember, since I was maybe eight or nine, I carried what I now recognize as depression. It was this quiet fog, like a numbness.

It was a sense that nothing really mattered, that I didn't matter. And at the time I didn't know how to name it. Actually, before my burnout, I hardly talked to anyone about it. I just quietly soaked into everything. And it was a highly functional kind of ache that I didn't want anyone to see, so I didn't have to admit to it either. I guess...

Since being a kid, I had this idea of this black hole chasing me wherever I went. I think this hole kind of represented my inner damage and I didn't want to give in, but I was also incapable of getting rid of it. So I felt like caught in this nimbus-like kind of, I don't know, pre-hell. Yeah, that's how I felt.

That's how I felt. Which in turn made me feel so much shame. And that in turn made me try to control my every move. It felt like I was watching my life through glass. Like I was always kind of outside of it. What it really was was an attempt to cover up my

but I felt inherent brokenness. So I became an expert at watching myself. I was constantly observing, hyper analyzing my tone, my posture, my face. And I wish I was joking when I say that every word I spoke went through maybe 20 filters. I wasn't just trying to be good.

Sophie Bruderer (05:17.71) I was trying not to be wrong. And in that constant self-surveillance, I lost all connection to the moment, to my body, to joy, to spontaneity. I think at some point I kind of forgot what natural expression even meant. And on top of that, or maybe because of that, I guess, I was suffering from severe social anxiety.

It was so intense sometimes I would spiral into fully fledged panic attacks. Because I somehow convinced myself that I had embarrassed myself beyond repair. My brain was relentless. You talk too much. You're so awkward. They're just being polite. You're too much. You're not enough.

my god, I was performing a version of life, but I wasn't living it. And the worst part was I knew this all was kind of self-fabricated because I was so controlling I was natural anymore, but because I couldn't do anything about it, that then turned into even more self-deprecation. It was this crazy vicious cycle. And I remember how so many people told me

Just be yourself. And honestly, it made me want to scratch out their eyes sometimes. Because I thought to myself, do you actually think if I knew how to do that, I would prefer whatever the fuck I was doing instead? And of course they meant well. But it just spiraled me into even more shame, if that makes sense. Anyways, whatever I did, I couldn't escape the feeling of something being deeply wrong with

And I couldn't talk about this to anyone because I didn't want anyone to know because what would happen if they did? No one could offer me an exit. No one had the time or maybe the capacity to really sit down and ask, why are you so sad? The Western world's answer in those cases usually is antidepressants.

Sophie Bruderer (07:42.786) But I didn't want to patch the surface. I wanted to know where the sadness came from. What the root cause of all of this was and there was a feeling deep down inside of me that I could get there. I just didn't know how. What was it that I lost so young that I couldn't even name it? And logically displayed a big part in regards to the burnout I told you about.

Like I said, it's all connected. I think it's also kind of beautiful, isn't it? It all kind of culminated. And at the worst of it, when everything felt utterly hopeless, something small and unexpected began to stir. So around two years ago, only shortly before I had my burnout, I started using my mom's old film camera again.

It's actually the very one she used to take our childhood pictures with. And there's another cute interconnectedness. So there are so many wonderful pictures taken by my mom with that camera of me as a child, where I totally look like a little fairy. Like I have them on Instagram if you want to go have a look and let me know if you see it too. So my mom wanted to get rid of that camera.

She's all iPhone now. So funny, so anachronistic, right? The boomers are all iPhone and the children go back to film cameras. I think it's funny.

So I didn't think or expect much of it. The last thing I needed at this point was more pressure. So I told myself it's just for fun. And I remember carrying the camera along on birthdays. Shout out, by the way, to my mom for keeping the camera in an impeccable condition. That girl has lasted decades by now. I think it's from the late 90s. And so a couple months in...

Sophie Bruderer (09:52.578) without knowing it. This was kind of the initiation for me to finding back to creation, to life really. And something beautiful happened because even when I couldn't feel the magic in the moment, I started to see it in the pictures. I remember every time I went to develop a role, I was stunned.

Not by my own skills, but by the beauty I'd somehow been inside of. Beauty I didn't even notice at the time. Someone very special once told me that film doesn't calculate pixels like a phone. It more so captures the light. It holds energy. And I believe that. That camera helped me remember that magic existed.

even if I couldn't feel it yet. And looking back now, I feel like it gave me just enough hope to finally start looking for more. Do you see now how everything kind of beautifully connects? I just, I just love life. So essentially, that's how I ended up in the jungle of Peru shortly after.

I really want to do a whole episode about ayahuasca one day. Maybe even with someone who works with it regularly. Wouldn't that be fun? I'm just so in awe with this magical plant for real. It's not a one size fits all experience. It's alive and it surprises me times and times again with its power and its softness. But the first time I sat with it,

Here we are again, the jargon. Sitting with it is how we refer to it, you know, in the scene that doesn't exist. No, no, I'm just kidding. Like there is no scene, at least none of that I consider myself part of. But this first time I had a moment I'll never forget. It happened during the third ceremony. I remember that I didn't feel much in the beginning.

Sophie Bruderer (12:19.416) But suddenly I started to shiver. I was freezing. And there was this one sweet woman, she was helping facilitate and she came over to check on me because I probably was like moaning or something. So instinctively I reached for her hand and that touch, I don't know, it somehow catalyzed something deep, deep, deep inside me.

For the first time in my life, I felt safe and carried enough to reach the darkest parts within me. And I didn't know what was hidden in there. And I definitely didn't expect what happened next. So as I was laying there, I felt like there was this heavy, ancient wooden door at the bottom of my stomach. And it finally kind of

cracked open slowly and then I saw dozens of memories, like little ones and big ones, they were like little arrows that were shooting up from my belly to my mind. There were so many moments of my childhood that hurt me so deeply that I had buried them under layers and layers of silence. And that I started crying.

Nay, I'm talking weeping. More than I had ever done in my entire life.

I cried that old sadness out of my body. And after that night, that black hole that had followed me for so many years, the one I always feared falling into, it was gone. And only now in retrospect, I see that me avoiding the hole was me suppressing all this grief. Unfortunately,

Sophie Bruderer (14:27.148) You can't run sadness and you can't suppress just one emotion either. When you shut down grief, you also shut down joy. When you block sadness, you flatten beauty.

It's impossible to numb selectively. And numbing was what I was doing. And that terrible middle zone I was trapped in, it was the worst about it all. And I swear it was the ayahuasca that made me understand all this, but not just intellectually. Something happened on a cellular level. And I mean, this is not to say I never have bad days, but that

unbearable, that ever consuming ache. To this day, it hasn't come back. Isn't this just crazy? You know, obviously I'm not a health practitioner. What I'm sharing here is merely my own story, the path that luckily worked for me. And I don't think ayahuasca is a fix for everything. It helped me process some

very unconscious stuff. And I will be eternally grateful to myself for being brave or maybe just desperate enough to have given it a chance. And I think I wouldn't be where I am today without it. I definitely wouldn't be here. But it's, you know, it's kind of radical and confronting. So I think it isn't for everyone. But again, I'm not an expert. I think

I think many ways lead to Rome. This just happened to be mine. And this whole experience, it kind of gently reframed my outlook at life, you know? I think, I now think of life as a river. And I'm sitting in a little boat, trying to change the course or the pace of the river would obviously be futile. I'd lose a lot of energy.

Sophie Bruderer (16:38.38) And I'd only get stuck. There's no way of changing the current of life. But what I can choose is how I move with it. Where I place my attention. Do I look where I'm flowing or have I lost focus? What direction do I steer my little boat? How can I support its flow? Ultimately, isn't that what taking ownership of my own narrative really means?

I'm not pretending I control everything, but I realize I do get to decide how I respond, how I relate, what I make things mean. That's kind of how I started turning ordinary moments into little tales. I romanticize everything, not to escape reality, but to reclaim it, to make my life feel textured.

Vivid, worth living.

There was a time when I could talk the meaning out of everything. I was in denial by choice, but my brain kept erasing the meaning out of everything. I could rationalize myself out of joy. I could convince myself that nothing mattered. And I actually thought that meant I was smart. It turns out it just means I was suffering. And what scared me even more

was that at times I could even convince others. Which kept me quiet even more because the last thing I wanted was to pull others into this dark place with me. But here's the thing. If you have the power to make everything mean nothing, you also have the power to make everything mean everything. Because everything goes both ways.

Sophie Bruderer (18:39.234) The glass is always half full and half empty. The beauty is always woven into the ache. The magic is always hiding in the mundane. And when you realize that, you stop waiting for permission to care. You start coloring in your own life. And it sounds so easy, but it's actually really hard when you grow up in a world full of contradictions.

You know the ones. Be special, but don't stand out. Be beautiful, but don't be vain. Be confident, but humble. Be successful, but not too ambitious. Be emotional, but never messy. Be soft, but never vulnerable. Be everything, but never too much.

It's exhausting and it never asks, does this even fit me? We inherit all these dogmas and they're rarely offered with a door out. So I figured I have to make the door and that's what I'm doing now. I'm not just telling stories. You're real time witnessing how I'm explaining life to myself and in doing so I'm making peace with it.

I live in a world that's fast, cruel, unjust and confusing. But I've decided to meet that world as a fairy. That's my personal mythology. Not an escape, but a lens. Because I believe that myth is not a lie. It's a way of relating. A way of saying this matters. This moves me. This makes me feel alive. And through this lens,

The very same world is almost painfully beautiful. A place full of wonder and magical creatures. It's still challenging, yes, but there's also just so much to uncover, to learn, to experiment, to create, to fall in love with and maybe also fall out of it again. And this kind of opened the door for me to ask.

Sophie Bruderer (21:06.508) What would I build if I could dream something new? To which I say with sparkling eyes, a fairy universe. Because why not? If you think about it, and I touched on that before, the world around us, every system, every structure, every role was once imagined. Like I said, there was a time when accountant wasn't a job, when countries had no borders.

when work weeks didn't exist. These are just ideas. Ideas that became systems and systems that became norms. I guess here comes the lawyer and me out. And here we have another beautiful full circle moment. I'm on a roll today. But seriously, why not come up with new ideas? So you see, my fairy universe is more than just a brand.

It's my horizon. I don't know what it will become, but I know what it feels like. I've always carried a memory of a place I've never seen. A place that is soft, gentle, playful, real. A world I know in my bones, but have yet to find. That for a while just felt too painful to hope for. A place

where softness is a superpower, where co-creation and synergy are nourishment, where people are seen for their essence, not just their output. And maybe the reason I remember it is because I'm meant to build it. So that's what I'm doing now. I'm building it in real time, through this podcast, through photography, through presence.

And it's not finished and maybe it never will be. But I want to share it now, imperfect, evolving, because maybe that's the point. Maybe the process is the magic.

Sophie Bruderer (23:18.07) I don't know how many times I said the word process over the course of this podcast so far, but that's because the process is really where it's at for me. I was never that kind of artist that forever waited for her work to get done to only show it once it looked absolutely perfect to me. Like, ask my friends and family, I literally entertain them with every little detail on the way. Because I don't really care about the end result.

If I actually finish something, you know, if I haven't abandoned it already before that,

I only get bored of it and move on to the next thing that excites me. So to me, the process is really where life is happening. So as you can see, even the hardest chapters of life can become tales worth telling. And not because they weren't hard, but because telling them is how we get to make peace with them.

Romanticizing to me isn't about bypassing difficult experiences, but integrating them. And honoring the whole spectrum of experiences I get to make. So go ahead. Make a myth of your life. Make peace. Make magic. Make meaning. And if you ever feel like sharing any of it with me, I'd love to hear the myths you're writing, the tales you're telling.

And I'll meet you, somewhere between the seen and the unseen, with tea and a boat full of stories. Until next time, stay wild, saviour your joy, and if the plot twists, make it poetry.

Sophie Bruderer (25:36.152) If this episode stirred something in you, I'd love to hear about it. Send me a little whisper on Instagram at fairyt.podcast or just write the words fairy wings in my DMs. That's how I'll know you were here.

This was a 6-2 studio production. Find us at six-two.studio for all your creative sound needs.