Magical Messages from your Inner Child
Jumping timelines
Perhaps like me, you’ve sometimes found the concept of the inner child a little bit cheesy. As a child of the 80’s when the self-esteem movement was gaining steam, I also have my inner boomer mother who is always telling me to get tough. Get real.
The truth is your inner kiddos and teens are extremely tough. If you had a traumatic childhood, they helped you survive it. Now, they can help you thrive!
This exercise taps into the resilience and magic of your inner kiddos and teens.
Prompt Part One: Read this poem
Self-Portrait at Ten
By: Roxane Beth Johnson
A boarded-up house. Ransacked inside — broken glass and toppled tables, chairs overturned, books shaken for hidden money. There are mouths in dreams full of gold teeth, chewing bread and meat. The body is hollow as flame and will burn down anything if pointed straight. A bird flies in through the door, then flutters at the window. Although he is tiny, I am too afraid to help him escape. I’ve made myself another house. I hum to fill its empty rooms. I fold in like saloon doors closing, then swinging out, keeping out thieves.
In the poem, Johnson lists “real” items in her childhood home. Then, she veers into the mysterious with “dreams full of gold teeth…” She breaks into all-out magic with “I’ve made myself another house.” In the mind of a child, anything is possible. The same is true of the world of the poem, though witches take the magic on the page and transform it into the art of their lives.
What resilience and power in how this traumatized child "made myself another house”! The next lines remind me of the 4 of Pentacles Tarot card in the way they are protecting the speaker with clearing and boundaries: “I hum to fill its empty rooms. I fold in like saloon doors closing, then swinging out, keeping out thieves.”
PROMPT PART TWO:
Choose an age you’d like to write about. Then describe that inner kiddo’s or teen’s “real” house. At the end, make a magical break for it! You can create a new house or dwelling as Johnson does here, but you can also fly away or time travel! Whatever you’d like!
NEW CLASSES
The Carnal Uncanny: The Body and Beyond: Begins 9/8
Writing with Witch Archetypes: a 4 Week Online Generative Creative Writing Class Begins 9/16