Discover and Ignite Your Kid-Like Heart Joy
Do the things that make you feel wild, messy and free.
Every year around my birthday I get extra emotional. I write in reflection about who I’ve become in the last year. I make plans with only my immediate family for dinner, cake and presents at home. And when it’s time to read birthday cards and open gifts I use every inch of me to not explode in loving emotion for my family.
The emotion isn’t so much about getting old, as it is leaving my childhood further and further behind me. I grew up in a loving, adventurous, supportive, and sarcastic household with my two parents, my grandma and my younger brother and older sister.
And I think I’ve already decided that my favorite part of my whole life will be my childhood.
I hold on to this time of my life (from a tiny kid up until I left for college) fondly, tightly with my whole heart. Memories of being squished in the backseat with my siblings for hours when we drove across the country. Or Christmas mornings watching tv before we were allowed to wake our parents up for presents. Weeknight sleepovers in the living room with my brother, Saturday mornings in my sister’s room while she’s cleaning and listening to music. Sundays with my Dad in the kitchen making more pancakes than any of us could eat. And eating peanut butter cookies and making milkshakes with my mom at night. Going on nature walks with my grandma, or sitting in her bedroom on the edge of her bed drooling over cooking shows together.
As I get older, I keep coming back to this longing inside of me to be that tiny little redhead smiling ear to ear without a care in the world. Chocolate popsicle smudged on my face, handstands in the pool, saying goodnight to each of my stuffed animals, eating Lunchable pizzas at the beach, and running after the ice cream truck down our street.
It wasn’t until college that all of this longing really began. I couldn’t help but feel like my time as a kid had come to an end. I was out in the world on my own, and honestly it was time to grow up. And since then it seems like all the growing up never stopped, and amongst the new responsibilities I was noticing that child-like joy became more infrequent and harder to get back to.
And it was then, in my art that I was beginning to explore that feeling I was after, time and time again. Finding the kid-like hearts in adult bodies and allowing them to be free.
My idea of kid-like heart joy
As an adult of sorts at age 27, the moments in life I feel the spark of my kid-like heart joy includes some kind of wild laughter bringing me to tears, a messy food that tastes too good to ever be healthy, losing to a tickle fight, or love at first site with a new stuffed animal.
Kid-like heart joy feels messy in a way like greasy pizza fingers trying to open a chocolate pudding cup. Or messy like soaked in rain and half your hot chocolate down your shirt. Kid-like heart joy feels free like losing control inside a bounce house or running so fast down a hill your legs can’t keep up. It feels wild like the rush of fear, excitement, and bravery all at once. It feels wild like not having a care in the world.
How to be a kid, if you’ve forgotten how.
I acknowledge each of our childhoods consist of something different than happy days in the sun with popsicles and sidewalk chalk and family time.
No matter how your story goes, I believe there is still a little kid inside of all of us. And no matter how old we get, or how far we might feel from our child-like joy, we can find ways to pull them out from the corners of our hearts and let them be free. And it takes practice, or perhaps just a bit of courage.
What’s keeping us from those moments of feeling free?
So much about being a kid is this bubbling feeling of energy and carelessness. This simple giddiness in discovering and enjoying all the happy things in the world. No comparisons, no worries. No fear of looking ridiculous. No thinking about the past, or the future. Just the shiny new toy, the ice cream sprinkles, and the big teddy bear in front of us.
And what is adult hood? Perhaps the exact opposite of it all.
We all have a silliness inside of us, a huge pounding desire to be liked, to be seen, to feel connected, and free to be ourselves. And yet somewhere between all those little desires we’ve freaked ourselves out, made it all feel so serious and we became worried and anxious in the process of it all.
So how do we give ourselves moments to let all of that fall to the wayside?
How can we embrace our kid-like hearts in our adult bodies?
I’ve created a list, inspired by my friends and my family of things they do or things that remind them of feeling like a kid again:
1. Pillow fights, and tickle fights.
2. Jumping/ Rolling around on the bed.
3. Sing/ Karaoke, music with household objects.
4. Bow and Arrows
5. Drawing, painting, making arts and crafts, coloring books.
6. Dancing with socks on, listening to all your old favorites.
7. Playing tag.
8. Climbing trees.
9. Water gun fights.
10. Sleepover parties with friends.
11. Games in the park or playgrounds.
12. Snow sledding.
13. Running through the sprinklers.
14. Ice cream trucks, and messy ice cream cones.
15. Roll down a big grassy hill and get dizzy.
16. Tree houses.
17. Trampolines.
18. Bounce houses.
19. Jumping/ Trick contests into the pool.
20. Playing with legos, remote control cars.
21. Old video games or board games.
22. Reading the comics section of the newspaper.
23. Hand written cards.
24. Playing board games.
25. Creating obstacle courses around the house.
26. Building a fort.
27. Snowball fights.
28. Avoid the cracks in the street, jump on all the crunchy leaves.
29. Play hide and go seek.
30. Jump in the mud, play in the rain.
What is something that you’ve done and you instantly feel younger, or more like a kid?
Ignite your kid-like heart joy and let yourself be wild, be messy, be free.
