Dear reader,

As we roll up our sleeves to bring you more brilliant, wise and game-changing humans here at Dumbo Feather, we thought it’d be a good opportunity to address the number-one question we get asked here:

“Where does the name come from?”

We admit it’s a bit of a mouthful, and confusing—“Dumbo what?”—and maybe even a little odd, but the root of the title “Dumbo Feather” (which dates back more than 70 years) is actually pretty awesome, and gets to the heart of the work that we do.

In a nutshell, it comes from the 1941 Disney film, Dumbo, about a little elephant with big ears who can fly. Dumbo thinks the reason he’s able to fly is because of a feather he carries in his trunk. For him, that feather is the source of all his confidence, a reminder that he’s capable of magical things.

Then one day, while flying, the feather slips from Dumbo’s grip. There’s a moment of panic until he realises he can actually fly without it.

The feather was his enabler, but his ability to soar was in him all along. Dumbo Feather magazine, and our online platform and podcast, work in a similar way: to help readers and listeners do the thing that makes them fly. We don’t necessarily want you to let go of us (!), but we do think everyone’s capable of extraordinary things regardless.

Sometimes we just need a bit of a push, or a bit of faith. That’s why we find and tell human stories to give our audience ideas, inspiration, hope and new perspectives for living wisely and more fully—for living their extraordinary.

We hope the magazine and all the work we put out there serves as your feather to do something meaningful (maybe even magical), and bring about a better world for generations to come.

Love,

The Dumbo Feather team