Backlist: How we stay young at heart

republishing some thoughts on reading and writing children's literature

This was originally written and published on my blog in May, 2018. It’s been slightly edited, but it’s quite foundational for me (hence the name of this substack newsletter!). I hope you like it.

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I've been thinking about how no matter how old I get I still somehow feel like all my younger selves are still a part of me. Like horcruxes, hidden away inside of me, I keep all those parts of me, even as I grow and change and become more of who I was created to be. 

“I am all the ages I’ve ever been. ”

— Anne Lamott

I'm still the curious seven-year old girl who wants to be like Harriet the Spy

I'm still the twelve-year old who pours her heart and soul into trying to be as good as those who are simply a natural

I'm still the thirteen-year old with a haircut gone wrong and gotten fixed, who wears her mom's clothes from the seventies and starts stories that never get finished

I'm still the fourteen-year old girl who's starting to try to figure out where and with whom she belongs

I'm still the fifteen-year old girl with a million crushes and a crew of best girl friends

I'm still the sixteen-year old girl who loves going to her friend's youth group and feeling at home there 

I'm still the seventeen-year old girl who {finally} gets her first kiss 

I'm still the eighteen-year old girl who learns how to ask for help from friends and to love road trips

I'm still the nineteen-year old girl who gets her heart broken by unrequited love

I'm still the barely-twenty-year old girl who meets her true love

I'm still the twenty-two-year old girl who gets married much earlier than her parents expected

I'm still the twenty-three-year old girl who goes to grad school because she loves academics and hasn't found her way yet

I'm still the twenty-four-year old girl who wants a baby but has to wait 

I'm still the twenty-five-year old girl who is deep in love with language

I'm still the twenty-six-year old who loses a best friend and holds her baby girl for the first time 

I'm still the twenty-nine-year old girl who gets a gift of a baby boy placed in her arms by a selfless loving young mother

I'm still the thirty-year old girl who holds her newborn girl while her mom almost dies and then by pure grace, doesn't

I'm still the thirty-something-year old girl who finally has a rooted identity, feels solid in her own skin, her own style, her own home

I’m still the forty-something-year old girl who’s starting a new career and still chasing old dreams

I'm still the girl who's always learning, growing, and encompassing all the parts she ever was and leaning in to who her creator wants her to be

“I am still every age that I have been. Because I was once a child, I am always a child. Because I was once a searching adolescent, given to moods and ecstasies, these are still part of me, and always will be...”

— Madeleine L'Engle

I first found the quote at the top of the post by Anne Lamott; later I came across the similar one by Madeleine L'Engle, and I just could not get that concept out of my head. I’m not really sure who said it first. It just resonated with me so much. This is why I think I love children's, and especially young adult, literature so much. I love getting to go back and reimagine, re-experience, and reinvent those times whether by reading or by writing character's stories.

Our own lives are so relatively narrow in comparison to this great world we've been given. Stories give us the opportunity to both reexamine our own experiences and get insight into experiences we've never have, to see what life is like for both someone we relate to and some wholly unlike us.

Add to that the incredible ability of a story to impact us differently at different stages. The same book read in a different phase of life can magically provoke a totally different response. Stories really are a gift that help us understand the world and ourselves more, and I love books because they are another place in the world where I can find connection, have feelings stirred up, mind blown, and appreciate the creativity of another human mind. 

And story and memory and imagination -- they connect me to the parts of me that already were and still are, and help me stay young at heart. 

Thanks for reading!

xo,

Nicole