Member-only story
My Inner Child
Pair with Fix You by Coldplay
She is my biggest responsibility. Even bigger than my children, I think, because without her I am not fully me and if I am not fully me I am no good to my kids. She is where my creativity lives. Without her, my art is stiff and pretentious and not really art at all, but just some ego exercise. No one likes people who are all ego. There has to be some softness in the middle.
It took a while to get her to come out. That was because she had been hidden for so long. She kept getting hurt, and I thought it was better, easier, to tug her away. She seemed so fragile that I was afraid she would paralyze me. She would always be on the floor crying, and I wouldn’t get anything done. I thought I didn’t have time to not get anything done. Then I learned it is not about getting things done. It is about creating a space to be. Without a space inside of us where we belong we die. We become two-dimensional robots. I don’t want to be a blank piece of paper.
I made space, and now it is where she dances and laughs and sits and reads books. We are still getting to know each other. It is a wondrous journey to get to know your inner child. Her thought patterns are so different from mine and have more flowers and elephants. She is not afraid of anything but uncertainty. If there is too much of it, she thinks she will be shown the door…
