Awakening Your Inner Child: Artwork That Sparks Joy and Renewal

What a long strange trip it has been, sang Jerry Garcia in the iconic Grateful Dead song that many feel describes the unexpected twists and turns on the road of life. Rounding one corner you may feel you happen upon something so familiar, yet another turn takes you to some totally new terrain. Often, it is a real mixture, a grab bag, a mystery deal. The Self, a changing lens that calls for understanding and adapting. Insight can be a great medicine. It doesn’t need to arrive to us in words or be checked off in accomplishments. A flash of insight can come in a picture, a moment, a feeling. A burst of affirmation can come in a laugh, a smile, a restful nap. The presence of the inner child has many names: creativity, intuition, longing, grief, memories, dreams, hidden, playful, imagination, tenderness, heart, resilience. Reclaiming the inner child can support a synthesis of possibility. In many sacred texts, Union is not illustrated as mastery or superiority, or cleverness. Rather, it is described as a coming together of opposite forces, a wondrous, unlikely fusion. These four artists Lora Zombie, Kim Krans, Camille Rose Garcia, Tara McPherson bridge the curious ground of the inner child and the adult self.

Lora Zombie

Lora Zombie is a self-taught contemporary artist based in Toronto, from Russia born in…