In preparing to attend a workshop on "Healing Bodies, Healing Fear" in Chartres, France, this past June, I was asked to bring a photograph of myself as a child, and this happened to be one I could put my hands on (my mother has others, but they're with her in Louisiana). What I like about this photograph is my open and direct stare. It reminds me of all the times I've been chastised in my life for staring, and of how much I've always liked to try to see----not just look----into things. It isn't so much an attempt to categorize or think about what I'm seeing as much as it is to actually be, in some sense, what I'm seeing. Also, the set of my mouth, slightly open, shows that I am rather absorbed in the moment, watching expectantly. In the actual workshop, we used these photographs of ourselves as innocents in part to remind ourselves of what it is to love oneself. After all, who can look at a child (or an infant of any species), and not feel that sense of protective love. (Of course, that's why little ones are so cute since they really need this sort of protection to survive.)
For those of us who are healing from a long-time separation from our own sense of "basic goodness"----whether it's from having been raised with the religious concept of "original sin" or from other familial, societal, and cultural abuses----I recommend looking at a photograph of one's child-self and remembering that innocent "wide, wide open stare," that Joni Mitchell has sung about.
