Free your inner child!

Written By Gugu Bengu

In recent years, there’s been so much talk about the inner child. Yet the topic always remained a little vague to me, hard to wrap my head around.

What I’ve discovered is that the inner child is YOU. Your purest version. Who you were born to be - as you entered the world. Before any kind of input from the outside world. The purity of you. The original software of you.

It makes sense that we would call this most authentic version of you the inner child. Think of the innocence of youth, the optimisim, the ability to believe in the impossible, the expectation of nothing but goodness. And yet, these are the qualities we ‘outgrow’, practicality and being ‘realistic’ are often used as measures of maturity. It’s quite clear that in this growing up, something of what makes us special and unique often gets lost. More often, it is our unique gifts, our joy.

A child is the living expression of genius.

— Richard Rudd

It’s been a revelation for me to realise that no matter what my life experiences have been and no matter what modifications I’ve had to make for survival, my inner child - the real me - is still in there! The natural question then becomes how do I access this most authentic inner me. How do I find a way to go beneath all the layers that obscure my purity?

And the answer came soon enough - the heart. Truth resides in the heart. When the heart speaks we are compelled to pause and take note. And it doesn’t even have to be your own heart. It can be a lyric from a song, a haunting melody, a piece of art that seems to speak to our soul or even an inspirational speaker. When we hear the voice of the heart, we are touched in ways we don’t always understand.

So listen to your heart and free your inner child!

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