On a day full of heartache, the cheesy words of a meme floating through my Instagram feed spoke to an unhealed part of me.
“The magic you seek is inside.”
As I read these simple words, I was suddenly transported back in time.
I found myself on a beach standing in front of a younger version of myself.
The smell of the salty air and the sound of the waves crashing against the shore felt as real to me as my own heartbeat.
Standing before me on the warm, squishy sand, was a middle-school-aged version of myself. She was awkward and gangly, with braces too big for her teeth and glasses too big for her eyes. Her freckles spotted her face like an untraced connect the dots picture. Her spindly white legs were more bone than muscle. Her shoulders reached up towards her ears as if on high alert.
I felt a strong urge to gently reach my hands towards her shoulders and rest them like a feather there.
As soon as my fingertips touched her shoulders, her frightened eyes looked up at me. My heart melted. As I peered into her eyes, I saw how little she knew of self-compassion. A wave of sadness washed through me like a hollow gust of wind. As her bright blue eyes received my loving gaze, they started to glisten with tears. My eyes did too.
“I wish you wouldn’t have ignored me for so long,” she said to me with a quiver in her voice.
My throat clenched tightly as I let her words soak in.
“I so desperately wanted to learn from you, but you constantly cursed me away. It hurt. Badly.” Then she started to sob. Heaving, held-back sobs of a voice that has been ignored for way too long.
My heart sunk into the sand as I lovingly grabbed her pale, delicate little hand and held it tightly to my chest.
I closed my eyes, observing a mix of shock, grief, and vulnerability coursing through my veins. As I felt her tender pulse, the shame I held towards this voice all of my life suddenly melted into pure compassion. My heartbeat quickened. I hoped she felt it on her soft hand.
She was me. She was a sweet, timid, frightened, insecure version of me. And instead of giving her the compassion she deserved, I starved her of it. I had starved this love-hungry being my whole adult life.
As I opened my eyes and stared into her watery blue irises, I knew then that I needed her just as much as she needed me. Maybe I needed her more than she needed me.
I could sense in her a deep hunger to be loved. I wanted to feed that hunger with my years of wisdom.
So we sat down on a beach towel and I told her about her inner magic. Magic she had been trained to doubt since birth. Magic that intimidated the people around her and made them silence her. The silence made her feel lost, lonely, and afraid.
Suddenly my words transformed into a song created to conjure the magic out of its silence.
“You, my dear have the gift of a rock-solid intuition. Do you know that? You can read people with great ease. You see beyond their words and into their soul. Don’t you?” She nodded and swallowed hard.
“This is your time to let this gift shine. Other people’s fear and intimidation is their own. You no longer have to let their masks make you second guess yourself. Okay?”
She took a deep breath and ran her fingers through the sand, drawing first a big heart, then a little heart inside of it. I gazed at the hearts for a moment, feeling my body soften.
“Your hunches are like gold. Savor them. Coddle them. Entertain them and thank them. They’ve always been right, haven’t they? Sometimes it helps to look back. Fact-checking our past can be our mind’s greatest tool for transformation.”
She picked up the sand inside of the large heart and let is run through her fingers so that it formed a delicate powder that trickled back down the ground like fairy dust. The sand dust felt hypnotizing to me. I could feel us both fantasizing about romantic love as we gazed at it, starry-eyed.
“I know you want to be loved as much as you love. Trust me, I’ve wanted it too — all of my life. But any love won’t do. I’ve been there and done that and let me tell you: any lover is more empty than no lover at all. So take the gift of my lived experience wisdom on this one, my dear. You need and deserve the perfect love. Don’t settle for anything less. Please. Don’t be conned by the magicians who will play the role but won’t fit the part. Your intuition will spot them immediately if you listen to it. Don’t let yourself be wooed by the attention seekers who know how to take love but not how to give it. Trust me, those are the ones that will suck your soul marrow bone dry. You will be able to see their masks immediately. Trust that. Your intuition is sharper than you know.”
I felt an excitement build inside of us as I spoke. Her eyes were getting wider. I could sense her inquisitive eyes asking me, “How?”
I laughed. “Just be you is how. Love will find you. Trust that, as insane as that might sound right now.” I smiled and thought to myself — I needed to hear this message as much as she did right now. She and I are in this together, aren’t we?
She took a deep sighing exhale and looked out at the water, letting her lanky body relax into the sand. I rolled onto my side and rested one hand softly on her heart and the other on her belly. We breathed there together like that for a minute or so, watching the waves crashing against the shore and the sun sink towards the skyline.
Admiring the purple-orange hues dancing through the sky, I gently whispered answers to questions I sensed her mind was pondering. “And how will you know? That’s what you’re, thinking, right? These parts of your body will tell you. You will use your inner magic that some call your intuitive, heart, and gut instincts. I’ve personally grown fond of calling them discernment. Your body is a wise temple — a barometer of sorts. My years of yoga practice have taught me that.”
She looked back at me a little befuddled, so once again, I emphasized: “You’re a beautiful, perfect human with a lot of love to give. Do not, and I emphasize — do not let yourself be chosen. Choose. Use your fabulous intuition to gauge, not, am I worthy of them, but are they worthy of me? Because that’s the question it has taken me years to learn to ask. My self-love voice didn’t even master that one. The lover in me got confused and thought giving love was the same as receiving love. It’s not. I have faith that you can master this discernment, my dear. In fact, I sense at this moment, you already have, because there is nothing that you need to do but accept that it is a part of who you are.”
I grinned as she looked up at me, wide-eyed and beaming, her braces glimmering in setting sun. I knew she got it. I knew my time travel work was done. We both outstretched our arms and hugged — her head burrowed under my armpit, my lips resting lightly on her brown hair.
“So you and I are in this together now, kiddo. We are trying a new way starting today. I’m so sorry I didn’t give you a chance all these years. It wasn’t you that I didn’t trust, it was me. Your intensity scared me. I didn’t believe that I was strong enough for you.”
My 14-year-old self stood up, put her hands on my shoulders, and looked me boldly in the eyes, resting her forehead against mine for just a split second. The warm touch of her forehead against mine sent shivers down my spine.
“Thank you for trusting me, Sarah. I love you.”
“I love you too, young Sarah — more and more every day in fact.”
She grinned at me as if to say, “I know that already.” Then she patted me on the head and skipped away, singing lightly to herself.
After I watched her skip down the beach, I opened my eyes and gazed around my living room. My cat was licking herself at my feet. The construction workers outside were singing, “My Girl” at the top of their lungs, which made me chuckle.
I guess you’d say what can make me feel this way? My girl (my girl, my girl). Talkin’ ‘bout my….
At that moment, I looked down at my pale hands, remembering holding hers, feeling gratitude and a deep sense of wholeness and peace radiating throughout my whole body. My belly and chest felt light and airy. I put my hands on them and took a deep, releasing breath.
It needed to happen this way. I needed to find my magic and bring it back to the past so that I could create a better future — a future full of a love my 14-year-old self thought only existed in her dreams.
I’ve got so much honey the bees envy me.
I’ve got a sweeter song than the birds in the trees.
As I started singing along with the construction workers, I saw a vision of my girl in my mind’s eye. She was smiling an I’m-worthy-and-I-can-read-through-your-bullshit-in-a-heartbeat kind of smile.
I laughed out loud.
Yes! She’s found her magic and her sass. I’m so proud to call her my girl!
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Previously Published on Medium
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