9. Connecting with the child inside
May 16, 2025
There are books and podcasts and webinars galore on self-awareness. Knowing that you may be living on autopilot and that you are quite disconnected from and understanding of what you want and what is important to you – this knowing is the first step. Dr. Deepak Chopra calls this “the conditioned mind.” The steps you take once that awareness is upon you depends on what resonates with you, what makes sense to you, what calls to you. If you try a book and don’t like it, don’t give up! Try another. And another. There is a whole industry of authors and thinkers who have suggestions, ideas, practices, journal prompts, etc. for you to choose from.
One of the tools I learned about that has been very engaging for me, is to think back to your childhood – think about what you loved doing. What you were drawn to, before maybe someone told you that you weren’t very good at it, or someone told you that you can’t make a living that way, or someone made fun of it or mocked you. Once one of those things happened, you set what you loved to do aside. Now is the time to pick it back up. Go back to the time before you cared what the world thought – some research that I’ve seen puts that around 10 years old. Dr. Amanda Hanson says that around age 10, girls start abandoning themselves, as a response to societal pressure (her new book is listed under the resource tab). Go back to that person who you were before the world intervened. And start there. Think about what lit you up, what you really loved doing, what made you feel happy.
When I was a child, I spent a lot (A LOT) of time reading. We moved every few years when I was young, and one of the first places my mom would take us to in a new town was the library. Weekly every summer, we’d bustle out of the car with our arms full of books, spend a lovely hour or two perusing the stacks, and then return to the car with a new tower of stories. We moved to the Chicago area when I was in fourth grade, and starting then, my other primary fair-weather activity was climbing my tree. We had a tree in our front yard and it was the perfect size and shape for me to scramble up.
Those are my two core childhood memories. I am working on taking those two core ideas (reading and climbing a tree) and figuring out how those things I loved translate into something I can enjoy doing as an adult. I do still love to read. I also love trees though it’s less climbing and more admiring them on walks and hikes. I was in a session recently on “Finding sacred in the every day” and I told that story. The facilitator looked at me and said, “but have you tried climbing one?” So that’s something to think about.
This world we live in is so loud and demanding. Making an effort to think about our own personal preferences, the things that are important to us, this is an act of moving our attention away from what the world around us is demanding we pay attention to and making our own choices about that. As I mentioned, I am still a big reader. So many stories I have read reach a turning point when the woman character starts to listen to her own voice. If you are reader, start to look for that. It’s everywhere. All the stories turn to light when the main character finally listens to her intuition. By using this lens of remembering our childhood, we are working to find a way back to that inner knowing. That confidence in who we are.
What comes to mind when you think about things that you loved fro your childhood? What joys have you left behind, that you may be able to re-discover as part of your elder-in-training journey?
