Growing up together, retroactively

On rediscovering childhood play and sharing love with our past selves

My fiancée and I are currently long distance for a couple months so we’re experimenting with ways to be part of one another’s lives. One thing we’ve found is giving each other quests or challenges. Like “find play in a situation where you wouldn’t normally allow yourself to play” or “take at least 5 minutes to do nothing”. It’s a really nice way for us to feel connected, learn about each other’s current needs and challenges, and come up with creative ways to support them. It gets us to step out of our comfort zone, but coming from a place of love. It’s really sweet and nourishing!

Well yesterday my quest was: “Remember something you liked to do outside as a child and find a way to recreate it”. It was pretty obvious what I wanted to do because it’s something that I’ve been toying with for a while.

As a child I used to play in my imagination a lot. One thing I would do is walk around our garden, wielding a stick, fighting all manner of foes in all manner of ways. Swords, hammers, axes, guns, magic, you name it. Sometimes I would be a hero, sometimes a bad guy. It was rather detailed scenes but always involving combat. And I would do this for houuurs. Like really really long times. Just would not get tired of it.

This went on deep into my adolescence. In fact, I think it went on quite a few years longer than is usually considered “seemly” for kids. But who really cares ey? It did eventually fizzle out though. With video games having a greater pull on me and the, at least in our culture, apparently normal atrophying of the imagination it just wasn’t really fun anymore. I remember trying it a bit around 14/15 but it felt forced. No longer containing that same spark.

Now, I’ve read on here a number of times that it’s in the joys of our childhood days that the gold is buried. Where we find back to our soul. So what a great opportunity to relive this part of me. Initially I had some trouble but eventually it clicked. I was jumping around my living room with a stick in my hand pretending it was a wand. I was making whooshing and whirring noises. There was this epic battle between an army of wizards and a swarm of demons. I didn’t do it for very long but I got properly into it! It felt really cool and detailed and fun. I could feel the old days in it.

Now this was great on its own but the truly magical blessing was sharing the experience with my partner later that evening. I got to go into full excited kiddie mode. Explaining the scene in vivid detail to her. What the wizards were wearing, what spells they were casting, what the demons looked like. How cool it was when the more powerful wizard came to save the foot soldier wizards!

And she delighted in me! She felt touched that I invited her into my world like that and loved seeing my excitement. I don’t think my child self ever really got to experience that. This was mostly a solitary activity and nobody ever truly took that kind of interest in it. At least I have no memory of that. It felt so so special to me. To feel so loved and seen and appreciated.

I could see me and my partner as children, maybe 7 or 8, utterly in love with each other in that innocent child-like way. This is not the first time I’ve had this image in recent times and there’s something that feels deeply important about it to me. Like we’re traveling back in time to grow up together. From early childhood sweethearts, through the confusing fires of adolescence into the boldness of young adulthood, and eventually maturing together into adults capable of starting a loving family.

Perhaps a relationship on the caliber of a life partnership always deserves to grow through every developmental stage together. Even if your culture doesn’t have tribes anymore, so you only got to meet in your 20s or 30s. And healing often involves returning to a previous developmental stage to integrate what we were meant to at the time. This way we get to carry the love of that relationship back to our younger selves. And so my little warrior Roland got to share his epic battle and be met with love and delight.

I feel very blessed to have had this experience, and to have such an amazing, loving and dedicated partner in my life. We’ve had to work hard to get here, both on our own and together, so it’s always good to cherish fruits like these. May love guide us all.