Selectively Juggling

At age six I laid sobbing in bed, gripped with the existential threat of one day losing my parents. Thankfully that highly precocious moment of realisation was balanced with a life filled with my parents love and guidance. Fast forward to eight years ago, I was forced to face my six year old self’s fears as I held my dad and his final breaths. Rewind to four months ago, and yet again my six-year old self’s nightmare was fully realised. My beautiful mum passed away. I became an orphan. They were both gone.

If my six year old self could have peeled back the fabric of time, stood on her tippy toes and with snotty tears peered into the future, she would have been comforted by a warm wave of confident reassurance. She would have seen that her future adult self was capable of navigating great loss, of wallowing through tides of radical compassion and love., and not losing herself, She would have seen that I remembered her, the inner child, the young warrior, the black sheep, sociological outlier. She would have seen that I carried the essence of my inner child, honouring her and her resilience. I know that had she/I had the privilege of peering into the future she would have been proud of her adult self, just as I am of her. The mirror of time looks both ways, like a liminal space it provides a vantage point to gaze beyond, and to see what is, and what is not.