Windywild, I’d like you to meet My Reader. Dear Reader, I’d like you to meet Windywild, my Inner Teen.

(Psst…I hope you get along.)

Windy Wild’s home on an Oregon Beach

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Windywild roams the untamed shoreline of an Oregon beach. Tonight, she’s gathering more driftwood for her evening fire. After tossing a few weathered pieces onto the small pyre, she crouches in front of its warmth and light. Firefly sparks spiral on an updraft of wind smelling of sea salt and fields of underwater algae.  She’s listening to the low, gravelly roar of the Pacific waves rolling endlessly onto the beach as she stares into the fire.

The night air, floating off the warm, sun-drenched sand, mingles with the cooler air off the ocean. It’s a physical paradox that Windy Wild relishes.

Paradox, she understands.

And since Windywild came to my doctoral classes on adolescent development, she knows that paradox-awareness is a critical feature of her teen brain that she bequeathed to me, her adult.

Let’s note this, for later, as Inner Teen Gift #1. Paradox-awareness—a critical quality of our teen brain, which becomes the literal foundation for generating any adult-specific, creative project.

Tonight, she’s running fingers through her long, dark brown, and slightly wet hair. Her Goth garments, like the night sky embracing her, are equally dark: slick black pants weighted with loops of fine chains that twinkle back to the stars overhead, tough black boots laced up to her knees and worn at the toes and heel, sturdy black shirt—suited more for the beach than a rock concert—open to her chest in a V that glows pink-white behind the spiderweb chains gracing her bared throat.

Tonight, she’s taking a break from her self-appointed post as Sentry for the Inner Family. Because of our (hers and mine) intentional, conscious relationship, she has learned how to take care of herself even as she takes care of the Others.

Long before she and I established our Inner Teen/Adult relationship, she came pre-loaded with this instinct: self-care = better care for everyone else.

In fact, my relationship with Windywild highlights how the tenet of self-care/other-care holds true inside this domain we are working with: The Inner Family. (Note: I will address my Inner Family framework in future Substacks. )

In order to reliably and wholly take care of my adult self, I discovered (the “how” of this is coming…) that establishing intentional, conscious relationships with different aspects of myself feeds the aliveness that comes with living life whole.

This too is a paradox, an emotional paradox: consciously recognizing individual members of my Inner Family strengthens the psychological fibers unifying my OneSelf.

Back on the beach, Windywild squats comfortably on her heels, forearms resting on her thighs, chin cupped in both palms, her smoke-ringed, cat-eyes edged in Goth red and deep-black are staring into the burning driftwood as it offers her an evening display of controlled chaos.

She leans into the smell of burning embers and the ever changing images of driftwood devoured by fire, fire titillated by wind, wind ruled by the ebb and flow of the ocean.

Unlike the earlier, historical version of her teenage self, Windy Wild enjoys fire-image following fire-image, moment by moment, without any desire to do more. This is one of the great pleasures of living alone on an inner beach on the Oregon coast.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. She is not essentially alone; just self-reflectively alone in this moment of internal time—which is as close to eternal time as any of us will get here in time and space.

Windywild calls an Inner Family Council anytime she wishes. Other members show up on her beach whenever they wish. I show up on her beach when I wish. Just as gravity, time, and consensus rules our external domains, intention, awareness, and consensus rules our internal domains.

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When I asked Windywild what was important for me to tell you about her, she wrote this:

My beach is a metaphor for my inherent wildness, my deep love of the natural world where all the elements—earth, air, water, and fire—coexist and nourish me day by day. And it’s here that I keep a watchful eye on Little Sparrow.

But, How Did Windywild And I Find Each Other?  

Great question. I thought you’d never ask.

However, the entire back story needs another Substack post, which I’ll get to next time.

Here’s The Short Version, Circa Mid-1990s

At the cultural level:

The psychological terms “inner child” and “inner family work” were barely trickling into the collective consciousness.

A nascent Internet and Social Media could not create the viral impact of today, so if you weren’t working or studying the field of Psychology, these terms were downgraded to psychobabble.

At the personal level:

A friend and I were experimenting with self-awareness through a series of exercises that allowed us to connect with internal aspects of ourselves.

The process was raw, vulnerable, and while we adopted some psychological constructs, we re-imagined the methods, and developmental stages, based on our real-time experiences.

Personal experience, times two (a miniscule data base, I realize), shined the light we needed to travel beyond the path of conventional counseling.

However, because all of us are in, and of, a specific culture, we began with the most current psychological trend: the inner child. (Notice that “inner child” is not capitalized. This will become important later.)

In an early exercise, my Inner Child appeared. In subsequent exercises, she told me her name: Little Sparrow. Following a series of connections with Little Sparrow, I had a discussion with my friend about a time on an Oregon beach when I was sixteen. I realized that alongside my Inner Child, lived my Inner Teen.

At the time, I was just beginning my doctoral program at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in Human Development and Creative Behavior.

Enter Windywild.

You would assume that as The Adult, I would have orchestrated and led our connection.

But in fact, it was Windywild who reclaimed me in the early stages of graduate school, and before settling on my doctoral dissertation—Creativity from the Developmental Perspective of High School Adolescents.

Through the self-awareness exercises, Windywild revealed how she was behind my unbridled enthusiasm and pure love for the teenage stage of human development, and my righteous anger over the dismissive, negatively-weighted attitude our adult culture has toward teens, then and now.

Windy Wild was at the beating heart of my desire to earn a doctorate that would right a grievous wrong.

Let’s note this, for later, as Inner Teen Gift #2: believing you own the inner mandate to right wrongs.

She and I worked together crafting papers and my dissertation, which would support an entirely new perspective on teenage creativity. (More on the “how” we did this in future posts.)

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The fire on the beach is dying down. Windywild, who has approved of all that has been said here, turns around to take a good look at you, Dear Reader.

What are her eyes telegraphing?

Can you feel a spark somewhere in your body, a sensation just short of a whisper…Do you hear me? Feel me? See me?

Windywild turns toward me now.

Windywild, I tell her, thank you for agreeing to meet My Reader.

And Dear Reader, thank you for taking the time to meet Windywild.

(I hope you enjoyed each other’s company.)

What’s Next?

Great… You just read the 2nd post in this series.

As I’ve said, these posts are akin to chapters in a book, and it will make the most sense if you read in order.

You can read the 3rd installment/post here: What’s Up With Exiling Our Inner Teen?

And, yes, I know, I know… I prematurely promised some definitions (creativity, Inner Teen, Inner Family, the OneSelf, etc.). I also told you that setting up this multi-layered tapestry of a Substack newsletter might be messy.

Warp under and over weft threads, or is it weft over and under warp threads?

Launching this newsletter might test my patience more than yours, but I’m grateful for yours.

While writing this post, I realized that what’s next is The Back Story: How, Where, and Why an Inner Teen Appeared. (working title)

Meanwhile, please…

1. Add a comment to this post because I really, really need to know what’s intriguing you, if there’s anything else you want to know/hear, or if you have a question or a thought. Controversy welcomed!

2. Tap the heart icon if you’re finding this thought-provoking or just because it lights up my day to know you’re out there and care

3. Discover why Inspiration changed from a what to a Who. Come Meet The Goddess of Inspiration and expand your creativity: an original, guided meditation for any time you hit a roadblock or doubts are taking over.

P.S. To continue this series, scroll down and hit “next.”

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 Selfc

MY PROMISE

Windywild, 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.

Your support inspires me to reach higher, breathe easier. Your free subscription is splendid. A Paid Subscription helps support my independent writing so I can offer you more!