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Child in me
Wild and free
Wise and weary
-安天美
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Let me tell you something I've learned about talking to adults - how it feels like touching the most guarded part of ourselves, the part that remembers dancing in supermarket aisles but now calculates the cost of being seen. In boardrooms, you measure your smile. In meetings, you package your joy into "professional enthusiasm." I see you there, holding back the laugh that wants to bubble up when someone says something unintentionally funny. The child in you is alive, waiting.
Sometimes in the middle of a serious presentation, your eyes catch a cloud shaped like a dragon through the window. For a moment, you're torn between the spreadsheet and the sky-beast, between quarterly projections and pure wonder. This too is sacred - this moment of remembering who you were before the world taught you to compartmentalise your joy.
You think they tell you how to be - don't be too loud, too bright, too much. Especially as a woman, the world has opinions about your joy, your power, your presence. Be serious but not stern, confident but not intimidating, professional but still approachable. Meanwhile, your wild heart beats its own rhythm under your carefully chosen clothes, remembering what it feels like to be utterly, unquestionably free.
You feel it in client meetings, in performance reviews, in every space where success means fitting yourself into predetermined shapes. The pressure to be taken seriously wars with your natural exuberance. You've learned to modulate your voice, to measure your excitement, to package your brilliance in palatable portions. But sometimes, in moments of unexpected alignment, your authentic self shines through - and paradoxically, these are often the moments when you make your deepest connections.
Watch children for a moment - how they speak their dreams out loud, how completely they trust their own hearts. That same freedom lives in you, beneath the weariness of navigating expectations. Your wisdom isn't in choosing between these states but in knowing when to let each one lead. Sometimes the boardroom needs your child's creativity. Sometimes the playground needs your adult's careful watching. Both are you. Both are true.
This wisdom shows up in surprising ways - in how you can shift from analysing market trends to building blanket forts with your niece, in how you bring storytelling into data presentations, in how you know exactly when to be the voice of reason and when to be the spark of imagination. Your weariness comes from the constant navigation, but your wisdom lies in knowing that both these energies serve a purpose.
Consider how children move seamlessly between fantasy and reality, between serious play and playful seriousness. They haven't yet learned to fragment themselves. When they're doctors in their pretend hospital, they're fully doctors. When they're explorers, they're fully explorers. Your journey isn't about unlearning adulthood - it's about remembering this fluid wholeness.
In your professional life, this might look like bringing creativity to problem-solving while honouring necessary structures. In your personal relationships, it might mean being both vulnerable and strong, both playful and profound. The integration isn't about perfect balance - it's about authentic presence.
Here's what I want you to know: your wholeness doesn't require choosing between the one who knows how to run a meeting and the one who wants to run through sprinklers. Between the woman who understands office politics and the girl who still believes in magic. Your wild and your weary aren't enemies - they're dance partners in the art of being fully alive.
When you speak to children, let their freedom remind you of your own. When you speak to adults, remember you're speaking to someone else's hidden wild heart. In that recognition, in that gentle understanding, we find our way back to wholeness - not by choosing one self over another, but by finally, bravely, being all of who we are.
✨ Welcome to wholeness ✨
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<aside> <img src="/icons/backward_blue.svg" alt="/icons/backward_blue.svg" width="40px" /> Shedding Skin
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<aside> <img src="/icons/forward_blue.svg" alt="/icons/forward_blue.svg" width="40px" /> Opening Hearts
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