Why adults should learn from kids

Growing up, I had the most vivid imagination - as many kids do. At the age of 5, I had completely convinced myself I was a fairy and by age 6 I had transcended into some sort of a combination of Alex Russo and Hermione Granger. Some of my fondest memories are ones of me completely alone in my bedroom, lining up all my toys, and having a tea party with them. The idea of being alone and spending time with myself never struck me as a negative thing. Why would it be? My mind was this wonderful place that made magic possible. If anything, more people could risk ruining the fun.

I don't remember exactly when that shifted for me. Maybe it was the first time I was called ugly at age 7. Or when my parents split up when I was 8 or 9. It could also be when none of the 4th graders wanted to play with me because I still thought fairies were real and tried to make potions to summon them (looking back, I can see how that may scare people off). Or maybe it was at age 11 when I started only associating my body with the words 'ugly' and 'fat' and tried every diet imaginable. All of these things could mark when my pixie dust ran out. However, I still can't trace back the moment when I started to feel not only like I didn't belong - but people didn't want me to belong. If people didn't like me then why should I? And who cares about magic and fantasy? It's all childish and fake anyway.

As I grew older, my creativity and imagination didn't go away - they just transformed. I was an actress that was maturing onto other roles. Instead of playing a fairy or a sorceress, I began taking on different roles with every person I talked to. I took the method acting approach and embodied every role I played. I curated my personality to the liking of every person in my life that I cared about. I completely suppressed every part of myself that that person didn't like and exaggerated all the things they did like. With my parents, I was a goody-two-shoes straight-A student that loved to read. With some of my friends, I was an anime and rock music lover and with the other half, I was a girly girl that liked makeup, coffee, and photography.

Here's the thing: this may make me come off as fake or inauthentic but that's not the case at all. I did genuinely enjoy all of these things, I just suppressed certain parts of myself around certain people depending on their likes and dislikes. However, at the age of 18 I realized I may have taken my self-designated title of 'actress' too seriously. I had been playing so many parts for so long that I'd completely lost my core personality. I had become so agreeable that I had completely lost my spine and sense of opinion. I was just fragments of a self that needed to be bound together.

One sleepless night, I sat there thinking "how could I be so sure of who I was at 5 but so lost at 18". That's when it clicked for me. I had completely broken and lost touch with my inner child. I knew I couldn't get in touch with her with a walky-talky or a string telephone. I needed to look deeper.

The older we get, the most we get told that 'it's time to grow up'. We start to get shaped by society to fit the status quo and lose so much of our childhood innocence and joy. We all need unconditional love, safety, nurture, and reassurance. When those needs aren't met, we can start to feel like we are deeply flawed, lose our sense of identity, or develop a lingering fear that something is going to go wrong. As soon as I recognized that I had neglected my inner child and realized that everyone else has one too, I started to develop a better relationship with my mind and with the world.

Every human yearns to meet the basic needs I listed earlier. At our core, we all have similar fears and aspirations. On a broad scale, we all live in the same society and are all just trying to do the best we can. Once I accepted this I started viewing society as so much less daunting. I forced myself to adopt a 'no matter what it will always be okay' mindset and came to terms that I can't do more than my best.

Secondly, I worked on healing my inner child. I'm still young and I refuse to carry all of the traumas and issues I have into later adulthood without trying to work through them first. I reflected on my life and all of the hardships I've endured and finally allowed myself to appreciate how far I've come. Then, I decided to write a letter to my childhood self. While this may seem silly it was incredibly transformative. Every time I thought something negative or mean about myself, I was inherently saying those things to the little girl I once was. So I wrote a letter apologizing to her and filling her in on my life.

Writing this letter unlocked a dusty treasure chest of memories that had be stowed away in my mind. I remembered everything I found beautiful about life, what made my eye grow wide, and what made me happy. I was starting to remember all of the beautiful parts of myself I once loved and gained sight of what was important. Children tend to be clueless - they just live to live and that's something we all lose sight of. As I went through this process, I felt the fragments of myself begin to get closer and closer. They were sewed together by a safety pin and some yoyo string until they were finally whole again.