03/04/2026
People talk about “finding their inner child.”
That always makes me laugh a little.
Mine was never missing.
She’s been here the whole time.
For years I thought she was anxiety—that little feeling when something didn’t add up, when the room felt wrong but nobody else seemed to notice.
The first time that feeling showed up, I was just a kid. Something confusing happened and suddenly every emotion hit at once. Nobody explained it. Nobody slowed it down.
So I did what kids do.
I ran to apologize.
I tried to fix things.
I tried to make everyone happy again.
That’s when the noise started.
Years of trying to understand people. Years of trying to make sense of things that never quite added up. At the time it felt like confusion. Looking back, it was just roadwork.
And the whole time she was still there.
My eight-year-old self.
Sweet. A little shy sometimes. Completely goofy. But also quietly brilliant in that way kids can be when they see something adults pretend not to.
She never throws a tantrum or anything dramatic. She just gives me this look.
Head tilted. Eyes sliding off to the side like she’s watching something ridiculous unfold.
Sometimes she even does that tiny violin thing with her fingers like, okay, drama queen… keep going.
And then she’ll say something so simple it makes my entire complicated adult problem look kind of dumb.
For years I thought she was just a voice.
But one day I caught myself saying, half joking, “Sweetheart, I’m basically an eight-year-old acting like an adult.”
And suddenly it clicked.
She wasn’t separate from me.
She was the part of me that refused to give up.
The part that kept asking why.
The part that kept looking for meaning.
The part that refused to let one confusing moment decide the entire direction of my life.
Some people hit a moment like that and something inside them shuts down.
She wouldn’t let that happen.
She just kept nudging me the whole time like, hey… this still matters. Keep going.
And honestly, she still gives me that sideways look when I start overcomplicating things. Which, if we’re being honest, is basically twenty-four hours a day with this whole adult thing.
But here’s the best part.
For the first time in my life, I’m not even a little embarrassed about it.
I’m a complete goofball.
And I love it.
Life gets a lot lighter when you stop trying to be the adult everyone expects and start listening to the eight-year-old who’s been making sense of things the whole time. Turns out she wasn’t the problem—she was the compass.
