Brave Doesn't Mean Fearless
Cookie will go on any rollercoaster you put in front of her.
She will cheer on every loop. She will throw her hands up on the big drops. She will get off, turn around, and get straight back on. She is the fairy you want next to you when you're standing at the entrance of something terrifying and you need someone to grab your hand and say let's go.
She is also scared of spiders.
Not a little bit. Properly scared. The kind of scared where she hid behind Betty the unicorn when a tiny one dropped down on a silvery thread right in the middle of the Glittering Grove and she forgot completely that the other fairies were watching.
And that's the whole point of Cookie.
We built her because we wanted to show kids something true about bravery that doesn't get said enough.
Being brave doesn't mean nothing scares you. It means you go anyway — on the things that feel right to go on. And it means you get to decide which things those are.
Cookie will ride every rollercoaster. She will never love spiders. She actually did sit down and have a cup of tea with one once, because she believes in giving things a go. But at the end of that cup of tea she knew — this is not for me. And that was completely fine. That was actually the whole lesson.
There is nothing wrong with knowing your limits after you've given something a real try. That's not weakness. That's wisdom.
Listen to your body. It usually knows.
Betty is Cookie's best friend. A unicorn who loves to chill, who doesn't share Cookie's taste for loop-de-loops, who gets on the rollercoaster anyway because Cookie lights up and that matters. And who is also the first one there when the spider drops down and Cookie's bravery suddenly has a very specific boundary.
They don't love all the same things. That's not a problem in their friendship. That's the friendship.
The best ones don't require you to be the same. They require you to show up for what matters to the other person, even when it makes you squirm a little. And they require you to let your friend be scared sometimes without thinking less of them for it.
Betty squeezed Cookie's hand and said: you're still brave. It's okay to feel fear.
That's it. That's what a good friend does.
I'm not a teacher. I'm not a child psychologist. I'm just someone who has pushed herself into things that didn't feel right far too many times, and spent a lot of years learning the difference between a fear worth pushing through and a boundary worth listening to.
I wanted my kids to learn that difference earlier than I did.
So we made Cookie. The thrill seeker who is scared of spiders and perfectly at peace with both of those things being true at the same time.
Because you can be brave AND have a thing that scares you. You can try something AND decide it's not for you. You can be someone's biggest cheerleader AND need them to hold your hand sometimes.
None of that makes you less. All of it makes you human.
And Cookie would absolutely agree. Right before she got back on the rollercoaster.
Cookie is a Little Lightkeeper — brave, funny, loyal, and completely herself. Her book and plush are available now.