157 A Story of an Exile Who Wants to Be a Princess
Transcript
"The Queen of Sheba, having heard of Solomon's fame, came to test him with subtle questions. She arrived in Jerusalem with a very numerous retinue and with camels bearing spices, a large amount of gold and precious stones." Welcome back to Scripture for Your Inner Outcasts. It's February 11th, 2026, Wednesday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time. I'll be providing the reflection for today's episode. My name is Elizabeth and I'm the producer and host of Scripture for Your Inner Outcasts. In today's first reading, we hear of the Queen of Sheba visiting King Solomon. First Kings chapter 10, verses one through two, say, "The Queen of Sheba, having heard of Solomon's fame, came to test him with subtle questions. She arrived in Jerusalem with a very numerous retinue and with camels bearing spices, a large amount of gold and precious stones." I have an exiled part, whom I call my princess part, that really perked up at these verses because they are about a queen and she loves princesses and queens because she wants to be one. This princess part, when she was integrated into my system when I was less than five years old, would playact Cinderella again and again and again, always as long as I was Cinderella and whomever I was playing with was every other character in the story. And then later in my life, even though this princess part was exiled at this point, she still exerted influence. When I was 15 years old and picking my confirmation saint, all the other girls in my confirmation class picked saints who were martyrs. But I picked Saint Margaret of Scotland because she was a queen who lived a long, healthy life.
And that's what my princess part wants for herself and for myself. Over my four years of membership in the Resilient Catholics Community, and with my four years of receiving individual private IFS therapy, I've really gotten to know my princess part. She's still burdened and still exiled, but less so than she was four years ago. She's received piecemeal unburdening over these years, so that she is more present to me now than ever since her exile, when I was around five years old. So I'd like to share a bit about this princess part, and perhaps her feelings and her experience might resonate with you. My princess part is very feminine. She holds a feminine delicacy and beauty in her that is rarely valued in the world. She wants to be the object of love and admiration, and she's uniquely built in my system to be adored and to receive love. She loves sparkles and shiny things and beauty and manmade objects. But she especially loves beauty in the natural world because through that she feels connected to God. She loves stories that are good and virtuous, and she naturally dislikes things that are evil. And of course, she wants to be pursued by her Prince Charming. My princess part became exiled when she began to receive the message from the world around her that femininity is bad and that delicacy and gentleness are bad, and that it's not okay to want to feel loved or admired, and that it's not okay to want to feel pursued by a prince.
More recently in my life, though, my princess part exile got the chance to feel really seen, heard, known and understood when my husband proposed to her. And of course, my husband proposed to me and to all my parts, but she felt like he was proposing just to her. So when my husband proposed to me, he said, "Will you marry me? I love all parts of you." Which is very meaningful for me, of course. And the ring that he bought me was a ruby, not a diamond, which is more common for engagement rings. And he told me that he picked out something slightly unconventional because he knew my princess part, and he wanted her to feel like she stood out from the crowd and to know that she was different from others. And my princess part really, really liked that. And she especially liked it because Princess Diana and Kate Middleton also had engagement rings that were not diamonds. So in this way, she felt some connection to real life princesses, although my husband didn't know that part. So I share this story just to reflect on one of my exiled parts, who is slowly but steadily becoming more integrated into my system through years of receiving love in the ways that she needs it. To learn more about the Internal Family Systems concept of unburdening, check out our sister podcast, Interior Integration for Catholics, episode 115. With that, we'll end with our invocations. Our Lady, our Mother, Untier of Knots, pray for us. Saint Joseph, pray for us. Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.
