Yesterday I Rescued A Little Girl

Yesterday I rescued a little girl. She had been caught in a trap she couldn’t escape from, powerless, for 48 years.

This five year old child didn’t want to leave her Mum to go to school. She was like many other four and five year olds, since school began. On her way to school each morning she planned how she would escape, what routes to use. She considered kicking the teacher really hard in the shins, biting her arm even. Because this little girl had to be wrenched from her mother every morning. And each time it happened, she didn’t hurt the teacher, because she was a good girl, and knew hurting people was wrong.

Yet hurting her was OK, because the adults said it was. Hurting her was allowed, because they knew best. She had no power to refuse, no matter how hard she screamed and cried.

It was OK because after about half an hour, she stopped crying and got on with the school day. She was fine. No need to worry.

But it wasn’t fine. She stopped crying because she was exhausted. She was out of options, beaten, again. She knew, over time, that there was no escape. There was always going to be someone who knew better than her, what was good and what was bad. She had no choice but to accept and get on with it. And she didn’t want her Mummy to be upset. She loved her Mummy. She didn’t want to hurt her.

This little girl never liked school. Yet she loved to learn. She loved to find out new things. But she never liked school.

Skip forward to ten years ago. I was learning Emotional Freedom Technique and when looking at my issues around authority figures I found this little girl, still kicking and screaming, still hoping that one day she would escape. I tapped on her story, on where I felt her in my body, and something shifted, things changed….but she didn’t go. I could see past her, to how she affected my life, still. I could start to work on myself, being aware of when I reacted negatively around authority, either by becoming aggressive or being passive aggressive, or just giving my power away completely.

The little girl still haunted me. Her story was so sad. Sadder because I had done this same thing to my sons.

Yesterday, after some journaling around my business, I realised how this little girl was affecting things at a deep, deep level. So, I went on a quest to meet her. I used MY method, the method I had developed rather than someone else’s. Because it works. (The Magical Community of I Group can be found on Facebook).

I arrived as she walked up to the teacher, clinging to her mother’s hand. The playground was quiet as all the other children had already gone in, so as not to be upset by the scene, and perhaps, even, join in. Her chest was rising and falling quickly, I could hear her heart hammering. She was keeping the tears and the screams at bay on the outside, but inside she was screaming, ‘No, No, NO!’

Before her tense and fraught mother could hand her over to the tense and falsely smiling teacher I went and stood in front of the little girl. I crouched down and stared into her big blue eyes and said,

‘Now this stops!’

Her eyes widened. The two adults froze. A look of hope crossed the little girls face. I ignored the adults.

‘What do YOU want to do right now?’

She stared at me, and I could see her confusion, feel her confusion. No one had ever given her a choice. I felt her nearly burst out angrily with, ‘I want to go HOME!’

That was what I was expecting. But she didn’t say that. This little girl was bright, she loved life. She stood in this grey playground, with grey buildings, and saw the sun shining down on the daisies on the school field. She smelt the grass, heard the birds and her heart lifted.

SHE COULD CHOOSE.

After much thought she said, ‘I want Mummy to come with me.’

The two adults gasped, and she quickly added, ‘And when I have had enough, I want to just go home.’

I stood up. Both adults agreed instantly to this choice. They all went into school, the little girl still clutching her mother’s hand. I watched her, all through the morning. Her mother sat quietly, engaging with her when needed. The little girl did some art, she played, she wrote her name really neatly, and she had fun. When it was dinner time, she wanted to go home. Without trying to persuade her otherwise, the teacher smiled at her, and said, ‘See you tomorrow.’

The little girl paused. Her chest hammered. ‘I want to do the same thing tomorrow,’ she said, a little fiercer than she meant to, ‘And all the days after that. Or I’m not coming.’

She went red in the face. She shouldn’t have said that. But she did.

The teacher smiled, not a forced smile, and said, ‘That is fine. It is your choice.’

I left the little girl skipping home in the sunshine, gabbling to her mother about all the fun things she had done at school. Her mother was stunned, amazed, and had tears of joy at the corners of her eyes.

And every time I think of her now, the memory of that school playground is vague and distant. The story has ended. The little girl is skipping merrily, enjoying school. She loves to learn. In time she won’t want her Mum to come with her. In time she will be happy because she knows she always has the power to make a choice that is right for her, even if it isn’t right for anyone else. She trusts she knows. She trusts she matters. She trusts she is heard.

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