An Ontario mom is thankful the Ice Queen came to the rescue of her six-year-old daughter after her “magical” hair brush – which gives her confidence and strength — broke.
It all started when Adriana Gutierrez, who has high-functioning autism, asked her mom to cut her long hair short just like her five-year-old brother last summer.
“Kids started calling her a boy, they made fun of her and social interactions are already difficult for her so to have that on top of it, it was really hard for us.”
So in came the magical hair brush.
Adriana loves the movie Frozen and her aunt had given her an Elsa brush for her sixth birthday.
“The magical hair brush helped her hair grow beautiful, strong and long, so every day we brush her hair with the magical hairbrush and that helped her have more courage to go and face school,” Gutierrez said.
Adriana feels a kinship with Elsa due to the Ice Queen herself feeling isolated because of her special powers. Gutierrez said the family calls Adriana’s autism her superpower because of her ability to fixate on things.
“She’ll learn everything about that one thing and that’s her superpower — her hyper focus,” she said.
But one night in late May, Adriana noticed that one of the bristles on her brush was missing. She was crushed and cried into the early morning — Gutierrez said didn’t know what to do. Adriana didn’t want a new brush — she wanted her same magical brush.
Gutierrez called several stores, she searched the internet and was having no luck, so she decided to make a plea over social media, posting about the “case of the missing piece of the magical Elsa brush.”
“So many people came together, offering their own brushes to Adriana,” she said. “People wrote beautiful letters from Elsa for me to give to Adriana.”
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One of the people who responded to Gutierrez’s plea was Esther Vallins, who owns a company called Forever Fairest, which provides high-quality princess entertainment, and while she couldn’t fix Adriana’s hairbrush, she could make a video for her from the Ice Queen herself.
“I thought obviously I can’t help replace a hair brush but one thing that’s important to me as a business owner of this princess company is that we’re not just going to the party and having fun with the kids for an hour, we’re empowering them to be the amazing people that they are,” Vallins told Global News on Monday.
When Adriana saw the video for the first time, Gutierrez said she started crying and said, “I don’t know why I’m crying, I’m very happy — I’m not sad anymore.”
“Those are tears of joy — you can cry when you’re happy too, that means you have a grateful heart,” Gutierrez responded to her daughter.
Gutierrez said the video has been on repeat in their household ever since.
Vallins said the message she wanted to send Adriana in the video was that “no matter if she had a brush or not, the most beautiful royal she was is the one she’s in on the inside and if that she was brave, kind and confident that she would absolutely have the strongest magic of all.”
Vallins wouldn’t accept compensation for the video so Gutierrez did the next best thing – she posted an update to her original post along with Vallins’ gift.
The response, Vallins said, has been overwhelming.
“It kind of just set me straight on why I do what I do — it’s for these kids to empower them and change their lives and to make them feel confident in who they are already without having to put on a tiara or a dress or makeup,” she said. “So for me, just to see all of these people reviewing me and saying how great it was, just reminded me what it was all about.”
The Gutierrez family and Vallins hope to get the chance to meet in person one day in the summer.
“I’m very, very thankful and we’re never going to forget what she did for us.”
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