Straight from the mouths and hands and bodies and hearts of babes.

When I was little, I used to sing at the top of my lungs. I didn't care who heard me. In fact, I wanted people to hear me. It felt amazing and I thought I sounded beautiful. 

When he was four years old, my little brother Adam used to belt out Whitney Houston songs into our garden hose in the backyard. He’d be wearing one of our dad's big t-shirts and my 4 inch high heel shoes and he’d kick his legs out like a rock star on tour. 

Straight from the bodies of babes. 

When my daughter was two years old, she used to love to take a pile of markers and a blank piece of paper and draw boats all over that piece of paper. And these boats were simply oblong circles in all different colors, colored in the middle - with plenty of stray swirls outside the lines. 

She would hold up her picture with so much pride. And she'd give it as a gift to anyone around her. This beautiful piece of art that she created. This page full of boats.

Straight from the hands of babes. 

When I got a few years older, still singing my heart out, the response started to change. “What did you do with that money I gave you for singing lessons?” They’d say.  “Why are you so dramatic, Chelle?” they’d ask. 

I started singing only inside from there, not outside. 

Around fourth grade, my daughter started hiding her drawings. I’d hold them up to admire them and she’d grab them and put them away. Her art got quieter until it was virtually silent, for years.  

Sometime between six and eight, my brother Adam, stopped wearing those high heels - for a few years, anyway. He wore little boy khakis and his uniform polo shirt. This is how he made friends. 

When does it start? That we make ourselves smaller? Quiet our voices? Stop singing into garden hoses in a grown up's t-shirt and too big high heels?

When does the sheath of constriction and rules roll onto the edges of our expression?

We don't know that we're holding the constriction in place. That when we let go, there's room. 

Room to discover what we might say or do, how we might be.

In a world obsessed with performance. Showing what we're made of. Excellence.

Excellence that's a reflection of refinement and correctness.

How do we begin something brand new, when we simply don't know how to do it? And when the price of failing just feels so high. 

But we were made for this. For all of it: the freedom, the constriction… the trust, and the letting go. Trying to be good, right and correct… and for the total surrender moments. 

So we find our way back to that place within us - the mouth, hand, body and heart of the babe within us. And imperfectly and messily, we let go.