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“Hello, I’m the Fairy Godmother!” Donna McCallum says, holding out her hand with a wide smile. The Gateway coffee shop where we agreed to meet has suddenly fallen silent. This beautiful, vivacious young woman is decked out in a swish, formal black suit - complete with large blue, glittery fairy wings!
“Here’s a bottle of stress relieving bubbles and, by the way, I’ve also got my wand,” she promises as she sits, orders a red cappuccino and begins her story.
Once upon a time in Cape Town, Donna became an entrepreneur. She started her first business at 19 and worked her way through the ranks. However, by the time she sold her marketing and advertising business a few years ago, she was a burnt out workaholic haunted by a deep empty feeling. She had realised that her highly successful advertising and marketing business was not what she wanted in life and opted for a lucrative buy-out.
Then what? Donna says she was faced with a blank page and decided that, as she had always wanted to learn to speak Spanish and travel across South America, this was the perfect opportunity.
A magical moment
Five months into her sabbatical, she had a unique experience that resulted in her current successful business and first book. Whilst on a night bus in Argentina, she suddenly woke up with an urge to write. “I grabbed my travel journal and the words just flowed out. It was the most incredible experience. I saw my life and even ended up with the chapter headings for this book. It was a cathartic experience.
“At the end, after a few hours, I had two paragraphs (that gave me) the purpose of my life. I would become a fairy godmother with the power to do what I wished for myself and the same for others. It was an amazing life changing experience - an epiphany.”
She says she knew she could not just sit back and look at this revelation without doing something about it. That was before her “negative voice” kicked in and explained exactly why this was completely over the top.
But, she had never had such a strong vision in her life and headed for the very first Internet cafe where she emailed all 423 people in her address book to inform them she was about to be transformed into a fairy godmother!
“I got some interesting responses. My mother was beside herself!” Yet, even her mother has converted and is one of the people to which Donna plays special credit in her book.
She returned home still fired up about becoming a fairy godmother. Most of the people she encountered believed she was crazy. “People don’t support people having big dreams. Mine is to create a society that will support our greatness.”
The first six months back in South Africa marked her own journey. “People were so negative about it that I started getting negative about it. After three months, I began thinking I was going mad,” she says, adding that she was now working towards establishing a business partnership that would have kept her within the confines of the professional world.
“I woke up one morning and felt like I was being strangled. Our bodies are often the key indicators (of things that are wrong) but we live in an era where we numb ourselves to these (signs).”
Again, she began journaling and says everything came out very clearly - all would unfold as she went. She went to her prospective business partner and pulled out. This didn’t mean that she intended becoming an idealistic pauper, though. “This is a vicious society. People believe that you can’t do what you want and make money - but when you do what you love, you will make more money than ever before.”
Donna digresses into one of the theories at the heart of her book - we exist in a world of bigger and bigger boxes and, as your journey evolves, grow from smaller ones into larger and larger ones. She shares that it is amazing how those in bigger boxes than you are eager to pull you to the next one while those in smaller ones than you are keen to pull you back.
Nine months later, she returned to Argentina which she describes as her muse. A friend had suggested that she create a workshop where she could help others have their “aha moment”. She was inspired all over again and wrote the workshop in just two days.
Broadly speaking, it involves dream mapping and goal setting via a “fun, light and creative” day long workshop. Her first workshop in 2006 included 12 people. “The next thing we were flying and the workshops were fully booked,” she smiles. She was invited to conduct workshops by large corporates, then expanded her workshops from Cape Town and Johannesburg in 2007 to Durban and beyond to London, Germany and, very recently, to New York.
She has also created a 12 week programme called ‘Growing Wings’. Very few people manage to simply transform their lives after a single workshop. Many need support during the process.
Growing wings
Donna got her first fairy wings a year and a half after her return and started “doing fairy antics”. This eventually earned her a slot on 5FM where she was behind a number of memorable public frolics aimed at teaching people about living life with an element of playfulness - offering people free hugs, organising gigantic pillow fights and even creating a 700m naked dash. People dropped their clothes as they ran and these were collected up and given to charities.
“I even spread fairy dust on the opening of parliament in 2008. As adults, we get so serious about life. When you are playful and have fun, that’s when life works. We need to spend most of our adulthood remembering what it feels like to be a child. ”
She says it is exactly this dilemma that is evident when she dons her wings and walks through a shopping mall. People glance at her in delight and then the rational mind kicks in. After that they either look at her in horror or laugh and continue to watch her with joy.
She describes her book as “a beautiful manifestation” and one of her dreams. Although the idea or goal was with her from the very beginning, she says she “didn’t shout about it”. In March last year, she received a phone call from Struik publishers saying they would be interested in doing a book with her. She ended up back in Argentina.
Overall, the book took her six months to write with the last six months spent in her beloved Argentina marking an extremely focussed working period. “(Writing the book) was one of the most effortless things in my life. The universe conspires with you to make things happen.”
‘A Fairy Godmother’s Guide to Getting What You Want’ appeared on bookshop shelves around the country three weeks ago. Now she’s looking to publish it worldwide.
For further information visit – www.fairygodmotherinc.com |
