Today I Met a Miracle

Today I met a miracle...and it was me.



When I present the 7 Childhood Treasures, I often speak about a freedom that is our birthright, the freedom that young children demonstrate in spontaneous, completely-in-the-moment expressions of who they are. Young children, in their natural state, are never inhibited by regret for the past or fear of the future. They live in the Now of their own greatness.
  
Not sure what that looks like? There's a video that circulates now and then on Facebook...maybe you've seen it? A girl of about 4 is standing on the bathroom vanity

counter, her long, blond, corkscrew curls bouncing as she half-talks, half-sings to herself in the mirror. Her little spur-of-the-moment ditty simply catalogues the many ways she likes her life. She begins:  "I can do anything good...." and continues, "I like my hair. I like my pajamas. I like my cousins. I like my brother. I like my mom. I LIKE MY WHOLE HOUSE!" She wraps it up by going back to her opener as she climbs down to the floor, "I can do anything! I can do anything good!"
 
This video is a great exemplar of pure, unadulterated freedom of expression; it's how children behave when they are fully supported in mining all the Childhood Treasures. Haven't seen this vid yet? Go to YouTube and look for "Jessica's Daily Affirmation." (One day soon, I'm going back to watch the video titled "Jessica's Daily Affirmation 15 Years Later"!) The short little film of a young Jessica is a reminder of how we all started out feeling about ourselves...it seems that Jessica's family has successfully nurtured and sustained that freedom of expression for the first several years of her life.

Unfortunately, many children lose that joyful celebration of self much earlier. Adults beat it out of them, with physical blows on the backside; with the relentless emotional pummeling of authoritarian, punitive, or shame-inflicting parenting and teaching; or with what Alice Miller called the "poisonous pedagogy" of Western parenting. Too many children learn--very young--that to freely express the simple yet profound joy of simply living as themselves is to attract this oppression by adults. For some children, this freely-expressed self attracts jealousy--even soul-murdering attacks, either physical or sexual--from adults still in pain from the loss of this freedom in their own childhoods.
 
Even the "good" or "great" parents you may remember from your childhood might have killed this joyful freedom in you, doing what they (and you) saw as a pretty good job in the parenting department. Other children in your neighborhood or school grew up with trauma, abuse, or neglect; narcissistic, alcoholic, depressed, sociopathic, or bipolar parents; some children grew up with no stable home at all...no matter what socio-economic stratum your family occupied.

Young children live in such open-hearted vulnerability that it is easy to crush them, even when it is not your intention. It is easy to tear apart their belief in themselves, their love for all their parts, their joy in expressing themselves fully, in any and every moment.

Yes, it's true that children are also resilient. Yet, their ability to survive often comes at a high price. They lose an integrated self; that wholeness that revels in its freedom to express the highest and greatest possibilities for this one life...that wholeness is lost. The child may still live and function, go to school, graduate, get a job, marry.... But the life that remains is one filled with fear, self-censoring, self-limited choices, self-destruction, and--likely--becoming the kind of adult who unwittingly crushes self-expression in a new generation. Actually, that's a pretty good summary of what life is like without the 7 Childhood Treasures filling up your personal treasure chest.

So, today I met a miracle and it was me. I met that wholeness, that freedom of expression in myself. I met that vulnerable, trusting, beautiful, dancing, singing child on the vanity counter. A version of "Jessica" lives within me, too, and she's been in hiding for nearly 60 years.

I've met and engaged with dozens of my former-child selves across my decades of therapy, recovery, therapeutic self-help, and re-parenting myself. Until today, every single one of those former selves lived after I lost the innocent vulnerability of joyful self-expression. Every one of those little girls within me was in pain, suffering from some crushing attack upon her freedom to BE, to manifest her greatest potential.

Today I met those children's predecessor. Today I met my wholeness for the first time. I've been committed to and working toward reclaiming my wholeness for about three decades now. Today I finally met the part of myself who knows that feeling:  freedom of expression with no fear. In fact, not just self-expression without fear--as it that wasn't enough--but fearless self-expression bedazzled and glittering with the absolute certainty that it is how I am meant to live. I now know this freedom is my birthright, not just in my mind, but in my heart and soul.
 
My friends, this feeling is sweet beyond description; profound to a depth I've never imagined; breathtakingly, achingly beautiful.
 
I am forever changed.