1958
With my instructor watching, I was trotting on a horse seventeen hands high on a trail outside of the corral where I usually practiced. At my own height of five feet five inches, that horse was three inches taller than I was at its withers.* Losing my balance, I pitched forward and instinctively clasped my arms around the horse's neck, ending up clinging under its head. I hung scared—until finally I safely dropped my feet to the ground. A day later, I was crying my way through a case of poison ivy each time the calamine lotion wore off and had to be reapplied. And that was the seeming end of horseback riding for me, something I had longed to do since reading every horse story in the children's room of the town's public library.
Years later, when I was much older and had begun reviewing my life with intentions of change, strong-delayed feelings of regret emerged that I had not had a mother who told me to return to riding lessons. Even if I had felt afraid getting on a horse again, I would have regained self-confidence and felt happy and successful at returning. Instead, failure grew in their place… hiding in my inner child.
1999
Our playful child enjoys simple pleasures: running on
a beach, playing with a pet, eating a juicy piece of fruit
with our hands.*
Over the years, I bought children's books for myself. When I learned this was a way of being in touch with my inner child,* I began buying them for my newly established counseling practice clients.*
One night in my weekly True Self: Inner Child–Inner Parent* group gathering, five members and I repeated the opening poem, "To Our Children,"* then put our drawing pads on our laps in readiness. We were about to dialog with our playful inner child. We had read Lucia Capacchione's Recovery of Your Inner Child, so at this point, we already knew that play was an aspect of the child of our inner self, one who is waiting to be recognized and to contribute to our adult life. I asked my group members to pick up a colored marker in their right hand to write what our adult voice might like to say to our inner child, such as, "Inner child, would you like to come out to play?" Then exchanging hands so the marker was now in our left hand, we paused in anticipation of hearing our inner child's voice. We drew what our child told us about their feelings and the activities they would have us do, and then shared our new insights with one another, learning from others' inner child at play as well as our own.
My counseling ended when I moved to India, specifically to Meherabad* for the purpose of spiritual training and, in time, the development of my writing. After fifteen years of service in different positions there, I met a woman from Great Britain with whom I discovered a shared view that adult play was important. We agreed that badminton would be our choice as the equipment could be purchased in the city I frequented. Meherabad Trust land provided room to play in a large parking area of hard-packed dirt. It was fun without competition, as our basic effort was to keep the birdie in the air as long as possible—not very! For months, we batted and missed, and laughed as we retrieved birdies over our heads or wildly far off from our positions. Eventually, a change in circumstances ended our "friendship tournament," but our accomplishment stood as witness to the truth—play was fun!
2018
On a visit to my family in America, I learned there was an opportunity to ride. My granddaughter would do my tack at a stable where she both rode and worked. As she galloped her horse around the large indoor ring, I walked my horse around its outside lane, happily following the directions my instructor called out—heels down, pull back your left rein a little.
My realization is, "An experience may return to us years later in which a door has already been opened, and this time we know the joy of accomplishment and its benefit of greater self-confidence.
* The withers are at the top of the shoulder where the neck joins the body.
* Lucia Capacchione, Recovery of Your Inner Child: The Highly Acclaimed Method for Liberating Your Inner Self (New York: Simon & Schuster /Fireside, 1991), 212.
* Capacchione, Recovery, 228.
* Children's books for True Self: Inner Child, Inner Parent: When Sophie Gets Angry—Really, Really Angry, Molly Bang; Rudi's Pond, Eve Bunting; Rain or Shine, Ronald Heuninck.
* The principle of this work is to recognize our parents as having done the best that they could with their own children; what they missed understanding in their parental role due to its absence in their own childhood the group members would now provide for themselves as parent to their inner children, their true selves.
* To Our Children
To our children We love you.
To our children We will protect you.
To our children We will open the windows and
Doors of our hearts and minds
So you may take deep breaths
Of sunny, blue-sky love.
To our children We will help heal what hurts you
And make safe what scares you.
To our children We will teach you, play with you
And take you to new places.
To our children We will listen to you, look at your
Art and not make fun of you.
To our children We will take you with us
Or let you know where we are.
To our children We will grow from what
You teach us
And always be grateful.
© Prema Camp
* Meherabad. The site of Avatar Meher Baba's Tomb-Shrine (Samadhi) and site of world pilgrimage as well as His early primary residence, ashram, and headquarters of His activities until 1944; now overseen by the Meherabad Trust.