Identity #4: Inner Child

OK, so this isn't me.

However Princess Katherine is just exactly who I would want my 'inner child' to be. She is beautiful (or maybe I'm biased?), affectionate, social, constantly asking 'Why?' and listening intently to the answer. She loves Angelina Ballerina, crunchy carrots and hurtling round the house in circles with her brother. When things go wrong she bounces back quickly and easily, forgetting almost instantly the trauma of not going first or of 'having' to watch Tom Kitten's choice of DVD.

Inner child is a concept used in popular and analytical psychology to denote the childlike aspect of a person's psyche, especially when viewed as an independent entity. Frequently, the term is used to address subjective childhood experiences and the remaining effects of one's childhood. The inner child also refers to all of the emotional memory and experiences stored in the brain from earliest memory.

Can we choose our inner child? Can we decide what that childlike aspect of our psyche is like? Or, borne of my childhood experiences, is my inner child inevitably the shy, self-conscious little stress-head that I was at Princess Katherine's age?

I'd like to think we can choose. Or perhaps we can at least choose when and how we give expression to the child inside each of us.

Anyway, back to reality, spending time with Princess Katherine and Tom Kitten this afternoon/evening brought light to my soul. I haven't laughed so much for quite a while.