ahhh! this made me smile so big. playing teacher was really the BEST. it's amazing to see how much little us still exists. thank you so much for sharing ❤️
It is still very early as I am reading this and I am not 100 % awake, so I am not sure I can respond in the way your post deserves. Hm... It feels like a hug. To yourself, then and now. And that is really beautiful :).
I think the reality is, I don't. And it's something I've recently been grappling with. I almost don't remember being her, and the snippets I do remember are fleeting.
Little me, from what I remember, just wanted to belong. To fit in. To have friends like the friends you saw in 90's sitcoms and movies, but they never seemed to come. Or to stay. Or to be around for the right reasons in the first place. So, she found space for herself in sports and on the "honor roll".
Little me was always told she was an old soul and that "my people would come", but even now I am still waiting. And while Little Me waited, she immersed herself in books. Not just as a means of escape, but as a way to envision worlds where she belonged. Placing herself within the stories in her mind, or, eventually, imagining her own stories altogether.
Little Me didn't grow up in an environment where boredom and experimental failure were permitted. They were cloaked as laziness or something to be shielded from, evidenced today by my lack of ability to sit my ass down for a break and even in my deviation from my passion - food and cooking - to a career in construction management.
I feel for Little Me. Whose life was so regimented and eventually so self-policed, she forgot that having fun mattered. That frivolity was an essential part of life, and creating just for the hell of it mattered.
An empathetic, intellectual, compassionate, and misunderstood girl whose ability to imagine and articulate those imaginings into words on paper was an ability so secret and overlooked, not even she knew how rare it was. Absorbing books and perspective far beyond her years, yearning for a life bigger than the one she was in. Finding the pen as her safe space when everything else fell away, including her voice...
I am trying to find her. Deep in my chest, the part of me that has worked to heal. To pull her into the light, to release her from the heavy chains of expectations and excellence. To remind her that a life without curiosity, and creativity, and creating is no life at all. To be her, to live out loud and hand her the tools to be her own person, even now. Even at 30. To tell her it's not too late. To ask her to show me the way, because it's time for me to learn from her now more than ever.
So often we forget to honor the child within. Thank you for sharing and for the reminder!
so, so often. thank you for taking the time, Jetaun!
Little me was outspoken, playing teacher, reading books, and collecting magazines
I’m honoring her now by teaching here online and home, still reading books, and becoming my family’s archivist/genealogy researcher.
I’m just releasing it’s no wonder I’m this way, that little girl was like this too
ahhh! this made me smile so big. playing teacher was really the BEST. it's amazing to see how much little us still exists. thank you so much for sharing ❤️
This felt like a hug.
“I know I don’t thank her enough for surviving, somehow. Miraculously, in a world that shames, and shrinks, and silences little girls like her.
Sometimes I can feel her fidgeting, tugging my arm, asking if I’m having fun, if I’m proud of her. To which I always answer, yes yes.”
Thank you so much for taking the time, Riley! ❤️
Beautiful!!!
thanks so much Juan!
It is still very early as I am reading this and I am not 100 % awake, so I am not sure I can respond in the way your post deserves. Hm... It feels like a hug. To yourself, then and now. And that is really beautiful :).
Thanks so much, Christine!
Let down myself🥹
she's proud of you, Shona!
You never fail to make me feel seen! Thank you so much for sharing and reminding me to honour the little me who made big me possible!
This made me cry...it made me remember in the most beautiful way. Thank you, Nneka.
I think the reality is, I don't. And it's something I've recently been grappling with. I almost don't remember being her, and the snippets I do remember are fleeting.
Little me, from what I remember, just wanted to belong. To fit in. To have friends like the friends you saw in 90's sitcoms and movies, but they never seemed to come. Or to stay. Or to be around for the right reasons in the first place. So, she found space for herself in sports and on the "honor roll".
Little me was always told she was an old soul and that "my people would come", but even now I am still waiting. And while Little Me waited, she immersed herself in books. Not just as a means of escape, but as a way to envision worlds where she belonged. Placing herself within the stories in her mind, or, eventually, imagining her own stories altogether.
Little Me didn't grow up in an environment where boredom and experimental failure were permitted. They were cloaked as laziness or something to be shielded from, evidenced today by my lack of ability to sit my ass down for a break and even in my deviation from my passion - food and cooking - to a career in construction management.
I feel for Little Me. Whose life was so regimented and eventually so self-policed, she forgot that having fun mattered. That frivolity was an essential part of life, and creating just for the hell of it mattered.
An empathetic, intellectual, compassionate, and misunderstood girl whose ability to imagine and articulate those imaginings into words on paper was an ability so secret and overlooked, not even she knew how rare it was. Absorbing books and perspective far beyond her years, yearning for a life bigger than the one she was in. Finding the pen as her safe space when everything else fell away, including her voice...
I am trying to find her. Deep in my chest, the part of me that has worked to heal. To pull her into the light, to release her from the heavy chains of expectations and excellence. To remind her that a life without curiosity, and creativity, and creating is no life at all. To be her, to live out loud and hand her the tools to be her own person, even now. Even at 30. To tell her it's not too late. To ask her to show me the way, because it's time for me to learn from her now more than ever.