I’m not sure I understood what people meant when they expressed that something was “healing their inner child” until yesterday. Rich and I are on a cruise from Tampa to Panama. Last evening while waiting for our 8:30pm dinner time (which feels basically like midnight because we are old people now) we participated in the newer trivia game they hold, where you use your phone to ring in answers. (Side note, I won. I maintain this is more about technique and not wasting time looking at the screen when you can just read the question on your phone.) Immediately following trivia was family karaoke. Rich was dorking around downloading pictures and trying to post some, so we continued to sit there.

The first person up was a 4 year old girl who was going to sing Party in the USA. She bravely stood up at that microphone and her parents and baby brother were in the front row of the lounge cheering her on. The little girl tripped (understandably) over the words in the intro, but when she hit the chorus she was belting out loud and her parents were on their feet waving hands side to side. There were only about 15 other people in the lounge, including us, but you best believe everyone in there was waving their hands. And her mom is filming her and her dad is dancing with the baby brother and each time she belts the chorus the whole room is waving their hands and the parents are letting her own it and celebrating it.

And suddenly I have tears running down my face and I get it. Watching these parents hear their daughter, find a way to let her do her thing, and be supportive…is that all I wanted?

I have a generally firm rule with therapists about not “exploring my childhood.” My current therapist has blurred that line more than anyone else with middling success. But I can’t wait to tell her about this. I didn’t need someone to tell me I was the best singer, or help making this a career, but seeing that some of this outgoing-ness could be channeled and, I keep coming back to these words, seen or celebrated. Yup, this is our daughter and she has different tastes or hobbies than we expected, but I can sit in the front row and wave my hands and she’ll know we support her. I have to balance this with the fact that I did follow paths not like my family. They did show up to theater performances I was in, they did let me paint my bedroom blue with puffy clouds, they did let me move to Disney for an internship. But it seems like all of this was tolerated or explained away. (Again, I certainly did not have a bad childhood, which might be why I don’t want to get into it with therapists. It was good, in some ways above average, I imagine. I like my family, etc.)

Anyway, I don’t know how to explain this, but I know watching this 4 year old belt out Party in the USA with her parents and all having their hands up cracked something inside of me. And now, it becomes part of the self-examined life I try to live.