You as child


Attunement to wholeness as liberation work

 

The wholeness of you includes you as child.

Not once were.

Not memory, cliché, or fantasy wish.

Now.

Do you know this to be true? Does it seem close or far away?

Anything of distance isn’t real. Step back to see the frame, and the framing of the frame. It’s flimsy. False. Held in place by separation. Framing “you” as separate from all of you.

You are not of calendars.

You are sky.

Ocean of oceans.

Stardust seeds.

Wisdom of feathers and falling.

Childhood may be of memory, but you as child is always.

You as child is you as soul.

Your soul.

Open, true, longing for you—

to listen,

root your most ancient knowing

inside your heart

and be

free.

You are free.

You may have forgotten amidst the boxes, news, and patterns

you thought were paths.

Yet, your soul is not once upon a time.

You are always, miraculous, continuous.

All of the world in all of you.

As child, as light, as song.

 

Attune to this, to you as child.

Release, breathe, melt.

Find that place inside—tender, defenseless, true.

Stay here.

Don’t turn away or grip too tight.

Let your heart open.

This is you.

 

I’m not speaking of ideas.

This isn’t of agreement or preference.

It’s not connecting with your “inner child.”

Not “if, then” logic to care for yourself first so you can then care for others.

You are more than this.

Children are more than this.

 

Ideas for what children need, what caregivers and community must provide, the essential actions to ensure all children thrive—these are important, yet…

when they exist as ideas, in spreadsheets and strategic plans, on whiteboards and policy statements, they aren’t whole or resonant as the essence of children.

We get so busy trying to fix things and argue with ideas, we forget who we are.

We forget to be reverence,

to attune to the frequency of children,

attune to the wholeness of ourselves.

This is the work of love.

It aches to see and hold as true the mess, injustice, death, pain.

Yet the outer response pattern of fight, you’re wrong, be louder, do more, feel struggle is an inside pattern.

It’s what you’re doing to yourself—fight, you’re wrong, feel struggle— what you’re saying to your soul, to you as child.

And this is what we’re doing to children. Not what “they’re” doing, not “them” not over “there.”

What we, as caregivers, educators, family members, neighbors, have been doing to ourselves and each other for far too long.

Here, inside us lies the responsibility and the potential of liberation.

It’s simpler than we think it is.

It’s softer.

It’s of and from that place inside you—tender, defenseless, true.

It’s from here that we attune to the frequency of children.

You as child, as love.

 

From this inside place, you can see the whole without story or fear—what’s dying, dissolving, burning, on its way, composting to something else.

And you can see why you’re here, what you’re creating with the soil, you as soil, as star, as seed.

Always, magnificent, continuous.

You plant your feet, stretch your arms, open your skin, awake your eyes.

What you see is what you grow.

You let yourself see what you know.

What you know as child.

 

love+light, Melissa

 

You are not of calendars. You are sky.

 

Inside us lies the responsibility and the potential of liberation.

 

We get so busy trying to fix things and argue with ideas, we forget who we are.

 
 
 

If you like this content, subscribe to my Noticing Matters Substack for weekly writings.

 

I love to take things that feel like “big ideas” or “impossible ways of being” and translate them into tangible, practical, everyday actions for people and contexts who resonate with the energy, but aren’t quite sure what to “do.”

Reach out if you’d like to chat.

 

Melissa A. Butler

writer + educator + noticer of small things

https://www.melissaabutler.com
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