My Inner child

I have been, all of my life, living with my Inner Child. I never out grew her, she is the the one who always tried to tell me to remember who I am. Telling me when as an adult I screwed up, "it's ok, you are still my friend and then kissed my hurt." I did not know she was there still for a long time. Comfort would not come from inside myself for many long years.
When I was raising my family I called on her to help me many times but never
let her stay or thought of her as still part of me. Only now that I am a Grandmother, a widow and alone have I let her be me.
Getting to know the child inside myself is a journey of joy and wonder over things that I never had time to notice when my life was raging with living and being responsible for my children's lives. I have to give her credit that for the most part, without her I would have not made it with my mind still intact had she not been with me the whole time.
There were the times in the playgrounds with my children that I became a child again, swinging higher than anyone else and showing my children how to do the jump out of the swing. I learned that playing was the best exercise I could have. I looked at my strong lithe children and knew that they did not do exercises on a mat or situps, or jumping jacks. All they did was play. They never had to work at staying strong and healthy, they played. I thought back to my child hood, bouncing on limbs of the vine maple, climbing trees, running to grandmas house, and down through the pasture for fun, without a thought that exercise was good for me, I was doing what was fun. I began playing in the park with my children more to the stares of some parents who did not get it. I felt full of wonder more and more as I played and so my life became simple through everything that followed in the years to come. Divorce, relationship break-ups, raising teenage children, grand babies being born, helping my young parents continue on when their lives were not perfect, as no life really is, the loss of my business and the hardest of all the death of a much loved husband.
That beautiful child in me pulled me through. The power it hung onto, to believe in something larger than myself and the wisdom of simple love it gave me for myself is the soul I was born with speaking to me and telling me to hold on. Here it tells me, listen to this bird song, look at this snow flake falling from the sky, this first pussy willow of spring, this frost, this sunrise, this cloud, these cannot be taken from you. Treasure the simple things, the precious memories. Live in this moment before you and be glad for there is worse in the world and you know it, but this moment here in front of you is yours. Look for the beauty in it.