Your Inner Child is not broken

Foto Aimee Vogelsang

Little Girls with Big Eyes

There’s a kind of ache that never goes away. Not really. You learn to live with it, like a crooked tooth or a limp you pretend isn’t there. Most of us carry around some younger version of ourselves. Little girls with big eyes. Boys with backpacks too heavy. Kids who waited at the window for someone who never came. And we carry them—into jobs, into relationships, into our art.

There was this model in Madrid once. She painted these wild, brilliant things—rusty reds, swirls of green like bruises, little figures huddled in corners. She said, “I only paint when I’m about to fall apart.” Already then it made so much sense. I just didn’ know it yet. Sometimes the only way the pain can get out is through your hands and through your tears.

That’s what this work is about. Giving those inner kids—those scared, ignored, invisible versions of us—a place to speak, to be seen. Because if you don’t, they’ll find ways. They’ll sabotage the novel you’ve been meaning to write, or pick a fight with someone who loves you, or just crawl into bed and not get out for three days. Not because they’re bad. Because they’ve been waiting too long to be held.

Creativity is dangerous. You have to be naked in front of strangers, sometimes in front of people who remind you of your father, your teacher, that one friend who smirked when you showed them your poem in seventh grade. No wonder so many artists never start. Or stop.

But when you begin to turn toward those wounded parts—hold them, love them, even just listen—something cracks open. You don’t have to be brave all the time. You just have to be kind. Especially to yourself. And maybe that little girl, the one who used to sing in the backyard or draw on the bathroom mirror with lipstick, maybe she finally gets to come back. Maybe she gets to make something again.

And it won’t be perfect. It never is. But it will be yours.

That’s healing. That’s freedom.