Reclaiming Your Inner Teen: Where Do I Begin?
Where structure trumps content, for a moment...
I’ve been mulling over where to start because I know the beginning journey of A Slice of Orange, A Pinch of Sky is, like teenagers, complicated.
In the process of reclaiming the Inner Teen’s rightful place in our collective, cultural consciousness, I’m going to be mowing down some righteously held, common assumptions.
This means I need to meet resistant head on. And at the same time give you, my reader, enough context that you are willing to stay with me on an Inner Teen journey graced with discovery, discomfort and delight.
It also means that, since this journey comes endowed with a specific development sequence, I don’t want to go over the basic, orientation elements with each new post.
And yet, as the number of posts increase, and a new reader jumps into the middle of this journey with us, they will need enough back story to navigate reading a current post.
Understanding this has made my brain hurt, but in a good way. For one, it opens the opportunity to ask you for help.
I’ll lay out what I’ve come up with and I invite you to 1) let me know how these ideas land with you, and 2) give me your suggestions in the comments.
I learned long ago that more brains are always, and infinitely, better than one.
One thing I can do is to embed links to earlier posts, when it makes sense. And when I remember (which could be a sticky wicket).
And still… I can feel something more is needed.
Soooo, where do I begin with reclaiming your Inner Teen?
After mulling this over, I realized that instead of diving headlong into content—so tempting!—I need transparency about the structure of my Substack content .
How can I use the scaffolding of this newsletter to make sure new readers know what’s going on.
Here’s what I’ve come up with: My Premise / My Promise.
MY PREMISE
Our OneSelf-Russian doll nests a great deal of additional Selves: who we are with our friends, with colleagues, different family members, in our private moments, and so on. I call this tapestry of many selves The Inner Family.
Each individual member of our Inner Family navigates day-to-day life within two overarching realities: how we interact with our external reality from how we experience our internal reality.
Within this framework, the articulated stages of human development have escaped their ivory tower to join our collective, cultural consciousness. The golden inner child has led the way, while the ever-evolving adult dictates which Self gets attention and which waits in the corner.
I say it’s time to reclaim the multifaceted gem of our Inner Teen, because… who, among us creatives, would turn away from the full aliveness of a radically creative, Whole Self?
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MY PROMISE
Windy Wild, my inner teen, reclaimed me while completing my doctoral dissertation—Creativity from the Developmental Perspective of High School Adolescents.
She and I became collaborators in identifying a core feature of adolescent development missed for decades by scores of researchers.
Remember, when a thing is not named, it might exist literally, might even affect us subliminally, but it remains invisible and therefore unknowable. We cannot think about the unnamed thing. We cannot speak to, or about, the unnamed thing. We cannot explore, analyze, or even directly experience the unnamed thing.
A Slice of Orange, A Pinch of Sky—sometimes slick, sometimes messy, sometimes marbled with surprise—offers a path to every Inner Teen living within every adult to be seen, heard, and celebrated.
My promise to your Inner Teen: I know you are there, as present now as you have ever been. I know, for the most part, you have been languishing in the shadows of the golden, inner child. I know you are as capable of leading as following. I know you have a carefully guarded treasure trove to offer your adult. I know your gifts might be tinged with trauma and pain, but I trust that your singular truth, resilience and radical creativity adorn the inner realm of your true home.
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Here’s the first place where I need your brain, dear reader: Would My Premise / My Promise be more helpful at the top of each new post?
Or at the bottom?
For new readers, I’d say at the top. But since I’m hopeful some of you will stick with me, and you don’t need to read it every time, I’d put it at the bottom.
Where do you think My Premise / My Promise goes: top or bottom of each post?
If you speak your piece in the comments, I’d be grateful.
What’s Next?
Yay! You just read the the 1st post in this series.
Because these posts are akin to chapters in a book, you can read the 2nd installment/post here: Dear Reader, I’d like you to meet my Inner Teen, Windywild.
Where I’ll lay out my definitions for some core concepts we’ll be unraveling: creativity, Inner Teen, Inner Family, the OneSelf and more. Still mulling over the structure for this.
I’ll also jump right into A Slice of Orange, A Pinch of Sky with something Windy Wild, my inner teen, has asked me to do: tell her story from her inner landscape on an Oregon beach.
Meanwhile, I invite you to …
Use the comment icon and let me know what’s hitting home.
Tap the heart icon if you’re finding this thought-provoking.
If you’re curious about how inspiration changed from a what to a Who, I invite you to Meet The Goddess of Inspiration: an original, guided meditation to elevate your creativity.
P.S. To continue this series, scroll down and hit “next.”
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