Leaping From Inner Child to Inner Teen
Little Sparrow -> Windywild: Their Backstory
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The Question I Can’t Answer
Since my Inner Family journey began in my late forties, and since this entire field of inner awareness has inhabited an outpost in psychology, there is no qualitative research to answer the simple question: How does your adult, human-development stage of life effect someone’s Inner Family journey?
Common sense applied, it seems reasonable to imagine that each adult stage of development, based on age/life experience, might result in a very different approach.
Someone in their twenties or thirties might not be interested in this level of self-awareness. They have a full-on, external life to live where the whole idea of paying attention to a panoply of multiple selves could feel overwhelming, or simply inconsequential.
Then again, they might be extremely curious about their Inner Family, depending on any number of personality/life experience variables.
Was there something specific in my developmental stage of life, in my forties, that opened this door?
Was it age related?
Life experience related?
The peculiar nature of my instinctive psychological curiosity?
The serendipity of life gifting a friend with similar impulses?
All of the above?
As a researcher who is deeply curious, but not resourced, these are questions I can’t answer.
What I can answer, and have determined to answer, are the questions arising from my singular perspective and singular data set of experiences.
I’m intentionally sharing my journey as a kind of blueprint for anyone else who feels a kindred resonance with how this level of self-awareness can impact and accelerate their own creative growth.
The Developmental Leap From Inner Child to Inner Teen
One of the most delicious aspects of the Inner Family is how our lived experience holds clues to our inner realities.
Case in point: Graduate School, Doctoral Program in Human Development and Creativity
When I learned that the Master’s Program I wanted would accept two summer courses before the fall matriculation, as part of the Master’s requirements, I jumped in. Dusted and done!
Then, in the fall, I maxed out every course I could take. 16 credits at the graduate level, I was told, is plain craaaazy! But I was on a mission.
At the same time, I was single parenting two teenagers and holding down three part-time jobs.
All the while exploring my Inner Family.
At the beginning of that first fall semester, I had no specific focus for a dissertation, never mind that I’d have to apply all over again for the doctoral creativity program. I just dove into the basic requirements for the Master’s, which I was determined to complete by the end of my second, spring semester.
I No Longer Remember The Exact Moment…
when I realized my research would prioritize teenagers—as the vital stage of human growth it is—and creative behavior.
Only that somewhere in that first fall semester an epiphany dropped through the top of my head and landed, in full bloom, in my heart: teenagers were not just underestimated, they were developmentally vilified. And in my gut, I knew their greatest developmental gift was creativity.
I suspected, but didn’t yet know, that no previous researcher, in decades of adolescent creativity, had bothered to find out what teenagers thought about creativity.
Which simply made my blood boil. I could feel the unconscious, righteous disrespect beneath the adult assumption that their perspective was superior to any teenager’s.
Now, I had to back this up with both a literature review—in this case a review covering years of material in two fields: adolescent development and creativity—and on-the-ground research.
Within a heartbeat, I had my central dissertation question: How do adolescents define and manifest creativity?
I also realized that I needed to get a jump start on the dissertation requirements, even though I couldn’t applied for the doctoral program until I received my M.A. My mission was so alive in my bones it never occurred to me that I might not get into the doctoral program.
So, besides the required Master’s courses, I received permission to add two independent studies to my upcoming, second semester: my literature review (which I set up for a doctoral dissertation, not a Master’s) and a preliminary research project to determine the validity of my question and research approach.
In the midst of this, I found myself on my Inner Family colleague’s couch, once again, peppermint tea and all. This time, as I was chattering about my research project on teens and creativity, I began to feel an image forming in my inner realms.
Hang on, I said. I need to close my eyes. Something is stirring.
Dropping Into The Inner Family
As I gave myself permission to drop deeply into my inner awareness, a scene began to dawn in shades of black, grey, and white: an Oregon beach.
This was the same beach where, when I was sixteen, I had an unexplainable emotional encounter between my mother, and a young soldier home on leave. The young man was a previous high school student from one of my mother’s bible study classes, who began writing to me from his deployment in South Korea.
I was a shy sixteen, never dated, and utterly unprepared to be courted by someone five years my senior, who also revered my mother. He suggested, when he came home on leave one summer, that we invite my mother for a camping overnight on the Oregon coast, which he’d missed.
So, we did.
Keep in mind that up to this point, my mother—who had been single parenting me since I was two—proclaimed often, and in earnest, that I was the love of her life. For sixteen years she had never given me a single reason not to believe her.
But on that beach—and I won’t go into specifics—when it came time to be on my side or his, she not only choose him, but schooled me to also “Be nice to him. He’s on leave and won’t be here long.”
In fairness, the young man did nothing wrong; only unintentionally triggered a deep emotional reaction that took me (and him) by surprise. When I couldn’t explain myself to myself, or to him, or to my mother, it threw me into confusion, dismay, and a panic I had never experienced before. All I desperately wanted was to pack up and go home to my room.
When I turned to my “loving” mother to beg her to leave the beach, instead of registering my distress, she felt bad for him. The betrayal was shocking and double barreled. Not only were my own baffling and battering emotions leaving me stranded and alone, but the only person in the world I thought had my back was siding with the source of my panic.
Now, thirty-two years later, that exact beach was resurfacing. Slowly, as I sat cross-legged on the couch, a figure began to appear, crouched over a small fire of beach driftwood, elbows on knees, staring thoughtfully into the flickering flames.
As she, and the beach, came more and more into focus, I could see it was night time and she was dressed in nighttime: all black and silver chains. I could also tell that she was, more or less, about sixteen.
Sidebar: One of the fascinating aspects of the Inner Family is how each internal member maintains their individuality—from each other, and from their counterparts in the external world.
The sixteen year old you would have run into, in the high school halls of South Salem, was as far from the Goth expression as imaginable.
I was socially shy, but eager to speak up in class. I dressed inconspicuously, was a serious student, and wouldn’t have dreamed of trying out for student council or cheerleading.
My crowd was the artsy misfits who talked the principal into a senior-year philosophy class by our favorite English teacher: the dedicated ballerina who walked bow-legged down the hall, the classical pianist, the nerd who specialized in all manner of flying machines.
I avoided drawing attention to myself, but oddly enjoyed small theater productions. I wasn’t athletic, but loved my short stint in downhill skiing. I didn’t date, and had one best friend. I considered myself a willing wallflower, secretly craving male attention (as only a fatherless daughter can), and simultaneously a bit terrified of that attention (as only a fatherless daughter might be).
Goth? Oh, the hot-cheeked embarrassment!
Yet here she/I was, a Goth archetype, owning it, comfortable in her own skin.
Slowly, she turned around and looked at me. I knew exactly what to do next.
Hi, I’m Ariane. I’d love to know your name.
I know who you are. Her cool expression was willingly present. I’m Windywild.
Windywild, is there anything you’d like me to know?
By this time, she was standing up, and I could see her right hand reaching around behind her, and then another smaller hand reaching around from the back to hold onto her thigh in front.
Windywild stepped to one side and Little Sparrow slid into view. They were holding hands and Little Sparrow was glued to Windywild’s side, the night ocean rolling onto the beach behind them, the moonlight casting shadows on the sand, sea salt lingering in the air.
Sidebar: At this point in writing the post tonight, I realized that my conscious, adult brain was failing me. I could no longer remember the exact details that followed, or exactly how Windywild answered my question.
Time to ask Windywild, right now, what she remembers.
Windywild’s In-Real-Time Response
Me:
Hi Windywild, what do you remember telling me when we first met on the beach? I asked you “What would you like to tell me?” I thought I might have a journal entry, but no. All I have now is you.
Windywild:
I wanted you to know I was the Family Council and keeping Little Sparrow safe. Also for you to check in with me whenever I nudge [you] through your inner knowing compass.
Sidebar: Here’s a great time example of something I mentioned before: how the adult brain attempts to insert its opinion into the conversation with an Inner Family member. As I was getting ready to write “check in with me…” what I heard in my mind was “stay in touch with me…”
But that was not Windywild’s voice; it was my adult voice. And even though I was hearing “stay in touch” in my mind, I was actually writing “check in with…”
This particular quirk to the Inner Family approach suggests that it’s not easy to manipulate individual members as long as we remain open to our own, adult fallibility and willingness to be wrong.
What’s Next?
Turns out that Windywild was not the last of my Inner Family members to show up.
So, before we head into the Land of Radical Creativity, and how your Inner Teen can both elevate and deepen the creative projects that propel your personality into soul territory, next time I want to give you the same tools that have served me so well in exploring the Inner Family.
So, continue with the 9th post in this series: Elevate Your Creative Life: The Treasure Map
Meanwhile, please…
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