What actually happened to Cinderella? Storytellers make it easy for themselves. They always stop when things threaten to get complicated. I'd love to know what happened to Cinderella.

What happened to the girl who was told from an early age that she was worth nothing?

What happened to this child who was excluded, laughed at, bullied and mistreated? Is it enough to marry a prince to turn Cinderella into a happy, self-confident, contented princess?

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Today, dear ladies, I'm going to tell you the second part of Cinderella's story. The part you should definitely know, because it is much more important to us than the romantic entanglements of Cinderella's youth.

So when the prince picks up his sweetheart, he doesn't have to wait long. Cinderella doesn't have much. So it doesn't take long for her to pack everything - the few rags and ... all her beliefs and ideas about who she is. Even before the altar, she should eye the prince suspiciously, convinced that it could only be a terrible mistake. He will soon realise his mistake and leave her. At the latest when he realises that she really is just Cinderella and only wore this beautiful dress on that fateful evening. He has certainly fallen in love with the dress, not with her. He can't possibly mean her.

Making others happy and neglecting herself - that's what she does best.

Cinderella won't be able to be herself next to him. It's a good thing she was allowed to practise telling others what she wants at home for years. from her eyes. She will always know what the prince wants even before he says it. She will be the perfect woman and try to make him happy every day. Because that's what Cinderella does best - making others happy and neglecting herself.

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She knows no other way of receiving love and affection than to earn it. No matter how much loving attention the prince wants to give her, she can't take it. She wants to be the one who gives. Being needed gives her security.

She never learnt to relax and have a nice time.

She doesn't just carry out this programme with her prince. She can't take anything away from her subjects and the many servants either. She feels dissatisfied without being able to say why. She looks for the fly in the ointment everywhere. She takes all the work to herself, convinced that no one can do it like she can. What her servants resent as a lack of appreciation is actually Cinderella's inability not to work. She has never learnt to relax and have a good time. Her creativity is unconsciously working at full speed to invent reasons why she can't rest. Can't enjoy. Can't relax. When she's not working or caring for someone, she doesn't know what to do with herself. If she relaxes for a moment, she feels guilty.

Cinderella fears nothing as much as ridicule and malice.

She hardly realises any of her numerous ideas. She fears ridicule and malice. She prefers to deal with trivialities.

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Although there are things she would love to do and theoretically she could, but... she immediately hears the laughter of her stepmother and stepsisters in her mind. "Who am I," she thinks resignedly. "After all, I'm just Cinderella". She knows she wouldn't be able to bear to expose herself to such ridicule again. So she is constantly busy, but without doing anything worth mentioning.

Serving and giving.

She concentrates all the more on serving and giving. If only because she always has to do something. This inability to relax constantly creates new tasks before her eyes.

She doesn't realise how she is gradually training the prince to be lazy. How he slowly but surely loses respect for her and takes her love for granted. That he slowly gets into the habit of taking the stress of the day out on her. How, unnoticed, she seduces him into her old pattern, which is her very own - to be bullied.

Make me a victim, my love.

Together they now play the game "the hypothermic ruler and the love-addicted burdock". They alternate it with the game "hurt me so that I can suffer". Because when the prince hurts her, this familiar feeling spreads through her: I am a victim. This suffering from a sick relationship is like coming home. She would never admit it, but it is more familiar to her than any other feeling in life.

Too nice for this world?

I think that would happen in the first few years in the castle.

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She would often wonder why this always happens to her, she's a good person. She would go around saying things like "my only fault is that I'm too nice. I'm always being taken advantage of". She would ask herself a lot of questions and possibly become depressed. Because unlived life weighs heavily on the soul. The inability to integrate an "I" into a "we" drives every relationship to the wall at some point.

Go and meet yourself.

We can only hope that the doves who once helped her to her beautiful ball gown will help her out of her predicament this time too. That one night they will interrupt Cinderella's lifeless loneliness and tell her: "You must find out who you are when there is no one to serve." Cinderella might rebel, because she is only trying to be a pious and good person like her deceased mother. But the doves remain adamant. "Go and meet yourself!"

Of course, this is almost an impossibility for someone who grew up like Cinderella. For someone who has long since become invisible to herself. So the doves still say tenderly: "Return to the source, there you will find all the answers."

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Cinderella has no idea what the doves mean by origin. Lost in thought, she wanders through the village where she grew up until she suddenly finds herself standing in front of her mother's grave. A sharp pain seizes her heart and she wants to leave again. Then the voice of the doves sounds in her ear again: "If you can bear the pain, everything will change."

Recognising your own innocence and responsibility.

The pain burns like fire. Cinderella fears that she will go mad in its flames. Only when she gives up her resistance and surrenders completely to the purifying fire does the pain subside, leaving her body with an unprecedented feeling. Cinderella feels relaxed, soft and powerful at the same time. She is filled with realisation and love. She now sees her life, her past, her present, her innocence and her responsibility with complete clarity. She sees herself clearly for the first time. Her neediness, which she constantly projects onto others. The suffering and injustice done to her, which still fuels her fears today. She sees herself as a child and she sees herself as a woman and can now differentiate between the two. She recognises her opportunities and her freedoms. She realises that only she herself can give herself permission to be happy.

In this painful moment, in these flames at her mother's grave, she mentally reads lentils from the ashes, she fishes her gifts out of the mental rubbish.

If the inside is intact, there is nothing to lose on the outside.

She is not the same when she walks home. And she knows that her marriage will either fall apart or get better because of her growth. But feeling herself, being with herself, is worth the risk. As long as the inside is intact, there is nothing to lose on the outside.

Her transformation does not escape the prince's notice. His wife's awakening self-confidence is striking and the vitality she radiates casts a spell over him. The lifeless servant has become a woman with rough edges. Someone you can laugh and argue with from the heart, someone you can desire and sometimes even fear a little. A woman with healthy boundaries. How well the crown suddenly suits her!

When your own vitality counts more than the affection of others.

Cinderella smiles to herself. She is happy about her husband's newly awakened love, but is equally happy about herself. Past are the times when she needed the affection of the outside world like a junkie. The spring is now bubbling up inside her. She has stopped denying her own neediness and started taking good care of herself. She asks for help or a hug when she needs it.

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Courageous and confident, she puts her ideas into action and is not afraid of her own mistakes. She is not afraid to do things differently from her mother. She is not afraid to make demands. Cinderella has become a self-determined, free person and is now starting a new relationship with her husband and her environment. One in which she will no longer lose herself. One in which her own vitality counts more than the affection of others.

And only now, dear storytellers, can you say: And they lived happily ever after!!!