Rings in the tree

 

"Work with your inner child" had never really resonated with or worked for me. Until this year.

As I switched to different, gentler kind of guided meditation, over months I noticed memories - and feelings around them - floating back to the surface asking for attention. So I sat with stages of myself that weren't, aren't, necessarily children, just younger than I am today.

I had already been visualising sitting in circle with a small number of as-yet-unknown women, so I decided to start populating that circle with these versions of me! I'm really not comfortable with seeing myself as some kind of leader, but I can hold space. Why not hold it for my selves?

So there we were. I'm about 8, 15, 19, 25, 32, 40, 50... We said what we needed to say. We were held and understood and appreciated. The "messiest' of us was particularly thanked for hanging on by her chewed fingernails and getting us back on track. She's not the failure, she's The Warrior and I'm beyond grateful for her continuing presence.

Before long I was dropping into that circle not for the conversation but purely for the company. The sense of wholeness.

I started to see us as rings of a tree. Together we make something strong, enduring and beautiful. A beautiful life.

Right now, 58 year old me is on the outside but that will change. I've set up places for older me but none of them have come through yet. Perhaps if I keep going - create and commit to this practice of sitting in the rings of myself and feeling the wholeness - it will carry forward and my 70 year old self will still be doing it. We'll hear her in the circle. I'll sense her there to my right, around the fire pit.

There are, incidentally (because you may try this and I'd love to know if the same happens for you), other versions of me who show up sometimes. Maybe from a distant future or a far past, when I am/was in a different form. Another story for another day perhaps.

For now, rings in a tree is what we are.

Be in your strength. You are eternal. Even in this life you are beautiful and enduring, and able to experience time in a different way to the 24/7/365. Believe it.