Dear Shadow Child

My attention is immediately drawn to a beautiful, little girl who sits alone on the terrace stairs.

Love is seeking her out, just as she is being called back into its center. It continuously recreates itself, alters and shapes us. Everything returns in love.

Lay down your weapons of defense, you no longer need their deference. Rest softly, as I breathe you in and back into me. Sometimes, the soul plans an escape route as it senses an imminent human assault. It splinters, and parts of us flee. We may not understand the trigger warning, but we all know how to do this instinctually. I am working backwards now. Gathering the pieces of myself I have lost along the way. I am summoning them home. 

I allow my mind to wander calmly, as it locks onto a memory. I have entered what feels like a meditative, walking dream. This world tilts and exists only in shades of muted grey. The air is dense with ancestral feelings stirring to life. I am in the garden surrounding my childhood home. I have not been here for 20 years. I am seeing the house for the first time as an adult. Everything looks smaller, slightly distorted. The truth is that I am the one that is irrevocably changed.

My attention is immediately drawn to a beautiful, little girl who sits alone on the terrace stairs. Before I can catch sight of the torrents of tears streaming down her face, I can feel her sadness. A sonar distress signal echoes within her heart and mine. The pain is old, but it has settled into her young body, and has ravaged her. She is left vibrating with residual anger.

I walk up the stairs one at a time. I have sat at the top of them so often as a child. I have played with my dolls here. I have colored, drawn, and read entire books while bathed in bursts of sunlight. I have raced down these stairs with expectant jubilation, and I have sat here listening to the adults weave their tales of history.

I sit down next to this seemingly inconsolable child. She does not move away from me, in fact, in a way, it feels like my presence is calming her. Her small body heaves a little slower with sobs. Her physical form is almost ghostlike. She shimmers like a holographic fabric coming undone. When I am this close to her, I am overwhelmed by the waves of sadness mingled with anger as they rise from her tiny heart. They ripple with longing, and sorrow through this dream world. 

She and I do not speak out loud. We have no use for words, as we are already exchanging thoughts. I ask her why she is so sad. Between dark and long eyelashes, orb shaped tears burst to life. They shimmer with prisms of color. I can feel her begin to scream like a wounded animal. There is no sound, but this entire world threatens to collapse under the weight of the echo of her grief. 

I moved closer to her. I am strong enough to hold her pain, without fear of it consuming me. I hold my arms open to her. I see the faintest outline of a smile edge itself into existence across the corners of her lips. How exquisitely beautiful she must be when she is joyous. She hesitates slightly, forgetting how to trust her heart. It has been lonely for so long, but love is her nature and she will always call it home.

I encircle this childhood memory cast adrift in time with all the strength I have been given in life. I will offer her every ounce of love I have encountered, and let it seep into her cellular memory. She has been waiting for her future self to grow strong. She has been waiting for me to become myself. 

Big, brown eyes burrow into the center of me. She asks me if I will leave her like everyone else. She wants to know if I will stay with her. I shake my head instinctually. I will not lie to her. She settles softly into my lap. Tiny, tear tainted fingers wrap themselves around my neck. I can feel her warm breath nuzzled against me. I inhale the scent of apple shampoo, the kind my mom used to wash my hair. I hug her tighter, and we begin to cry. Her sobs echo deep into my own chest, her head cradled against my shoulder. I am completely overwhelmed by love for us both.

I ask her why she has remained here, alone, all these years. We search each other’s eyes, flooded with recognition. She is a prisoner trapped in time, waiting for everybody to return to the only home she has ever known. She has lived isolated here for years upon years. She has watched her childlike hopes turn into grief. Our greatest fear is that we are not loved.

My mom was the first to leave. On a stormy night in March, before I turned 6, she set off alone, across the world. Two and half years later, I would also leave to be reunited with her. My grandfather will pass away, his loving, dying breath reaching out to us both. After his death, my grandmother will sell the house, unable to bear the ghosts of stillness alone.

My young self was split and shattered here, anchored in memory, divided by both love and fear. I can hold her and the weight of her sadness. I will not stumble, nor falter with her in my arms. I had to grow strong enough to bear this memory for us both. All around us the fabric of this world is beginning to vibrate at light speed, and its foundations are starting to collapse. 

We walk away from the wreckage of time. The sky lies torn open. A heavy rain soaks us in light, as it pounds fiercely against the grey outline of memory. She and I are swept up in a tidal wave of emotion. I can navigate these waters. I can hold both of us afloat. I can bear the weight of remembrance, and not hold on to it. I had to learn how to become buoyant. I had to understand my nature. My capacity to dive deeply into the realms of emotions, to invite them in as my teachers, and always to return to my natural state of being which is that of wholeness. Wholeness is the natural state of all human beings. 

I let her know we have to leave now. She cannot stay here, and I will not return. We must leave together. She is now a spark of light, a puzzle piece placed back in its rightful, sacred place. She is safe here where I hold all those I love dear. The immortal caverns to which we all return. I will visit them in my dreams, these caves of remembrance. I will lie still against their crystal might drawing from their strength. Spine pressed into the earth like the original umbilical cord. I will teach her how to come here of her own accord to heal. The wisdom that is now mine, I have it because of her, and it belongs to both of us now. 

There will be moments when the avalanche of old fears will shake her violently. She will call out to me, awoken from dreams with the palpitation pull of remembrance, fearing loneliness and loss. She will be afraid to be abandoned, but love will anchor her safely. Always. Love is our nature. She will learn she does not have to flee from it. Love is seeking her out, just as she is being called back into its center. It continuously recreates itself, alters and shapes us. Everything returns in love.