"We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing."
-George Bernard Shaw
Who would you be without the overlays of "maturity," without society's expectations of what it means to be an adult? Most of us are so concerned about meeting other people's expectations that we lose sight of what it means to live a self-realized life: a life free of harsh constraints and rigid boundaries. Truth be told, most of us would like to let our hair down a little more often. If nobody was looking, we would dare to kick our shoes off and run in the grass barefoot, twirl under the sun, or let our feet dance when they start to move all by themselves. Maybe we'd even like to dare to reach out to another human being when they least expect it...even giving someone a peck on the cheek just for fun. So why don't we? What's so scary that we gag back genuine and warm expressions of love? In psychology there's a phenomenon known as the Inner Child that counselors have been trained to work with. It is the part of every human being that survived childhood not because it was kind to them, but because they had to survive it. That version of you never grows old. She is the "eternal sunshine of the spotless mind." She is your spontaneity, your whimsy, your innocence, your curiosity, and your wonder. She is the wisest, and yet simultaneously the most reticent part of you. She is the forgotten child within who catches your breath from time to time with her simplistic truth as she glitters and shines brighter than the sun. For most adults, she is also terrified to come out and play. It's because she was hurt in childhood, and she's been sitting back observing life as it shoveled heaps of disappointment and pain her way.
Some people lose their innocence early. My daughter ended her life at 15 due to severe depression, but her little girl gave up on life long before that. At age 11 her dad died and left her alone in a very uncertain world; it was then that she locked her little girl up tight, never to be seen again. Like my daughter, we recoil from living freely because we think we are doing ourselves a favor. The "adult" is trying to protect our inner child from the harsh realities of a cruel world. Our inner child sits in a tightly locked room for a very long time like a doll put away in a glass case. For some, the wait becomes a lifetime of denial and fully living never comes. The Inner Child sits longingly, gazing out the window where the other children play. She watches miserably from the sidelines as others laugh and love with wild abandon. She gets so used to being alone that she becomes a fading shadow. Her vitality is snatched away in an effort to protect that more vulnerable part of her so nobody can touch her heart without her permission. At the center of it, it's all about control; protecting the fragile and tattered heart. We are "showing" the world we will never be broken again. However, there's a problem with jailing that part of us-we turn our backs on our Inner Child and simultaneously turn our backs on vulnerability and intimacy.
Without that one key ingredient-vulnerability, we can't bond well with other human beings. We can't open up or be carefree. We can't be silly, we can't dance, we can't laugh freely, we can't, we can't, we can't...we can't BE OURSELVES. So worried about getting hurt, we let spontaneous moments slip through our rigid fingers; little fingers pressed up against the window, longing to play with the other kids but not able to break free. We jail ourselves early, the key to the lock hidden away. It takes another human who dares to pick the lock of our hearts for us to surrender to love. When we stop fighting the inevitable, our stubborn resolve melts into nothing more than a puddle on the floor and we are finally free to open the door and peek out and then to do what our feet and hearts have been aching to do for a lifetime-to run and play.
I was in my mid-30's before I finally set my little girl free. She'd been locked up for 18 years...18 very long and frightened years. At an adult self-actualization seminar, the facilitator had us write out our childhood story, including all the childhood traumas and abuse. A room of 40 adults sat silently, grimly scribbling for 30 minutes. There was a rule of no talking. There were lots of sniffles and some silent tears steaming down faces as we quietly and respectfully passed the tissues among ourselves. I remember thinking it felt like the air weighed a thousand tons. After we'd written our childhood story, we were asked to pick a partner we knew absolutely nothing about, to face them squarely, and to remain silent. I recall being filled with dread, thinking: "Oh hell no...I'm NOT going to read this to a stranger!" And that's exactly what we were asked to do. But if my pitiful partner who sat quivering with fear before me was brave enough to do it, then how could I not? I could tell by her stricken face that she was as horrified as I was. I remember her hands trembling so I said in an effort to comfort her: "Maybe we can get through this together," and she solemnly nodded with big innocent eyes, and I loved her in that moment. We were told to squeeze the pillows we were holding and cry through it if we had to-but to get to the end.
I took a deep breath and dove in. I choked out the words, stuttered a lot, and felt acute shame. I didn't look up, not once. With wide and tearful eyes I looked up from the floor where my partner's eyes had fallen and she said quietly, "Thank you for sharing." What else do you say to a lifetime of abuse? Then it was her turn. And it went like this...ping-ponging our pain, we took turns telling and re-telling our childhood story. We let loose all the horror: the guilt, the seething resentments, and worst of all, our crippled and violated innocence. After each reading we were only allowed to say one thing to our partners: "Thank you for sharing." Fifteen minutes into it, something fascinating began to happen. The room's energy started to lift, like dark storm clouds clearing for bluer skies. People were beginning to giggle as they read even the most horrific parts. I mean, how many times do you have to read your story before it begins to dawn on you that even the worst parts of your life are getting a little stale, seeming a bit too dramatic, or even boring after re-telling it an obnoxious number of times? Soon the entire room was sighing and giggling and feeling silly, and the facilitator had to remind us to keep going until he finally yelled out, "Time!" The room let out a collective yelp of relief.
We were asked to stand and say something about what we'd experienced without divulging any specifics. The comments were very similar: at first it was excruciating to tell the worst parts of our life to a complete stranger; shame-inducing and reprehensible. But we all agreed that we hadn't expected what happened as we continued to tell our stories of whoa. The pain seemed to fall away from the story like a tire falls off an old car, and we were left with something like shared pain-a knowledge that indeed we had all endured the hell of childhood but we had all survived. Yes, we were a room full of survivors. I think we felt proud of ourselves for having been so brave. The magic of this exercise was in realizing that our past was simply that-the past. We learned not to take ourselves quite so seriously; we had survived it, and no matter how horrific, it was over. Holding onto the pain of the past was about as ridiculous as re-telling a story a thousand times to a disinterested partner.
The facilitator asked us to face him and bow our heads. The lights were lowered and he led us through a visualization, what can only be described as a rescue scenario. He had us go to our locked inner room and find our child. My girl had waited 18 years. I'll never forget seeing her tiny body in that cold, barren room. I visualized her so clearly: she was sitting silently in a crouched position in the corner. Her hair had grown long over her empty eyes; she was frail, thin as a wisp, tattered and dirty. Miraculously and suddenly, her serious face became radiant and hopeful; her eyes began to shine. Somehow she had survived 18 years of prison and she knew I had finally returned to let her out. The miser "adult" in me who had taken the key away and had never returned all those years ago had finally come back. She stood and threw her dirty body against mine and whispered, "Thank you." Then in a flash she was gone. She didn't walk-she ran. She ran fast as she could to the big tree that had been just beyond her reach, the tree that she had climbed a million times in her mind. With her dirty bare feet she skillfully climbed the beloved tree. It was as liberating as she had imagined it; she sat swinging her legs. Tears streamed down my face as I watching her sit on the branch loving that tree, and I willed: "Stay up there as long as you like, darlin'. You've waited a very long time for this moment."
The adult in us locks the Inner Child away not because we are mean, but because we think we are protecting ourselves. But that part of us, the preciousness of our souls-our inner child, is not so worried about what happened all those years ago as much as she is concerned with getting out to play. In order to be unlocked, she needs to be loved unconditionally by someone. She needs to be loved just as she is: through the bad days and the good, loved whether she is dirty or clean. That kind of love has to start first with the adult you. You must love your inner child, loving her enough to set her free, because she has been waiting all her life just for you.
