There’s this exercise therapists make you do; you’ll likely find it in some self-help book or another: meeting with your child self.
Closing your eyes, walking into your childhood home, into the bedroom where, on the bed, your 6-year-old self is sitting, joining her, and telling her about how life has gone for you so far.
Holy shit, you have no idea how absolutely blessed we are. How our dreams of escape and adventure have come true in ways we could never have imagined. How we’re living a life our female ancestors, as recent as our own mother, could never have conceptualized. You don’t even know what the internet is just yet; it’ll change our life. We’re going back to Africa next month. We’re doing it alone. We are as brave as Pippi.
And, at some point, you give her a hug; the kind of hug only you are capable of giving yourself, with the weight of every emotion and feeling and life experience that only you yourself are capable of knowing. In that hug, in that moment of complete understanding, we are both the dreamer and the dream fulfilled. This part makes me tear up every single time—she would be so incredulous and happy and proud.
PS: Pippi Longstocking was my favorite book as a child. I even got to play her in the 4th grade. I wanted to be her, with the travel stories from faraway places to tell my Tommys and Annikas at home.
pollyhristova 