For a scrap of time, I made so many big plans for my adult persona. I knew that someday I would live on my own, travel the world and have an apartment in a far away city. I’d shop in little boutiques and thrift stores, and sit on a river somewhere eating fancy sandwiches. I’d hang out in coffee shops, read amazing books and be somebody of my own making. I’d get a degree, have a career and start a family.
I did it all.
It’s so bizarre and wonderful to try to understand and make peace with memory, loss, grief, joy, courage and persistence as we make our way.
It’s a genuine honor to travel back to the soul that guided you forward, to the see the face that built your dreams and gave you purpose.
Seeing little Kim, she’s no stranger, but picturing her face attached to all my movies is a revelation.
I clearly looked in the mirror as a child…the vision looking back at me was a portal. She was a starburst to a far away land of bewilderment and awe. She wanted to take me there someday. We were a team. I simply got slightly side-tracked along the way. There she is, Kim Kyle, my navigational beacon.
My whole life I have loved the feeling of being a vessel-of-experience rather than any kind of documented and proclaimed success. Nonetheless, I had tracked down and mastered the prescribed indicators of overcoming my broken childhood. I had proven the naysayers wrong.
In some ways, I paid the price for all my eagerness to overcome.
In the worst of circumstances, I was on a voyage to a greater reckoning, one that made sense of the chaos I swam in and oddly enjoyed as a child. Now, I have a visual of this young girl, her voice is more clear than ever. She stares back at me lovingly. I find her to be beautiful and hopeful, which was exactly how she made me feel flying through Oklahoma prairie grass.
My younger self had so many reason to be broken and not believe in life.
She is one of the most hopeful brave soul I have ever known. She is the best part of who I am. Her voice now coupled with mine is as clear as it was on that summer day in 1978. She’s confident as she commands me forward…