One morning this week, I woke up with a realization connected to a project I am working on. As a result, I sought out a recording I have of my child self that I discovered in 2020 when my father found a cassette tape in a box and passed it to me. This cassette tape was filled with many treasures all in the form of voice: my child voice, my sibling’s, each of my parents’, two of my grandparents. The cassette tape — which I turned into multiple short digital recordings I keep on my phone — is the gift of healing that keeps on giving.
In bed that morning, just after writing down a dream, I remembered a song I loved as a child: a joyful Jewish song of praise. I remembered hearing my younger self singing it on that tape passed to me in 2020 and I wanted to hear my child self sing it again, but when I listened to the recording, the song I remembered wasn’t there. Maybe it’s on one of the other recordings.
That said, I did spend six minutes and 38 seconds receiving the voice of 7-year-old Jen, who went by Jenny then, who introduced herself to her non-visible audience using her full name, her address including zip code, and then went on to narrate the people and the setting of the scene in great detail: Her brother playing nearby (too loudly) with his Slinky. She herself sitting at the kitchen table in her grandparents’ house, holding the microphone from “Daddy’s old tape recorder.” She even noticed and described the flowers that were on the table.
She is so self-possessed this 7-year-old Jenny, so infused with purpose, so honest about who and what she likes and who she doesn’t, and so intent on recording for posterity both the live action around her and who she was exactly at age 7, so her grandparents:
“…will keep this tape because it’s somethin’ that I want to hear again when I’m a grownup like when I get married and have my own children. I am only seven right now and when I get about 20 and when I am married or if I’m not married maybe about 24 I want to hear this tape again so I know what it sounds like, so I can hear what my voice was when I was younger.”
Oh what a delight she was, that chatterbox child whose 2nd grade teacher would call her Motor Mouth in front of the whole class that school year. And oh how I delighted in listening to that 7-year-old child one morning in August days after my 52nd birthday — taking in her energy, her aliveness, and the love she expresses over and over again for her family (“even if we fight”). I wanted to scoop her up and squeeze her as if she was my own beloved child.
Later that morning, I invited my 17-year-old daughter to delight in her, too. She did. We both did. And later that day, my mother listened and delighted in her, too. I got to witness my mother take in the light of my child self, and that was a kind of healing all its own.
* * *
Right now, days later as I write all this out for you, I still have so much love for that child in my heart. My heart could burst with endearment, with affection, with enjoyment, with nachat for that seven-year-old girl.
And, oh her voice. Oh how right she was, how thoughtful, how future-minded: to record her voice so I could hear how she sounded then. Not just the timbre, not just the pitch, not just the pacing, but the felt presence inside her voice, the Presence of Her, her Aliveness, and her love.
And she is Me. That child is me.
We are One.
* * *
It’s something I immensely struggle to do in my life now; to delight in myself, to become aware of and feel the light in and of myself. To believe it’s still there. It took me many many years of intentional work to be in a place in which I can even feel that about my sweet, innocent child self.
I say this so you know it was hard-won delight.
I continue to seek connection with that light, but it is still mostly hidden from me. It mostly arises as a thought or a concept more than a felt experience.
My dreams have helped me make contact with it, and yet it’s still elusive.
But through her, 7-year-old Jen who I have learned over these years was adorable despite what people or the world may have taught her, I can remember my own light, the light that was once so natural, so native to me, I didn’t need an external world to confirm it or affirm it.
What a strange experience it is to listen to one’s own child voice. It’s possibly the closest to embodied physical time travel I will ever get. My ear taking in the vibrations of her sounds.
Of course, those of you much younger than I am (including my own adult children) grew up experiencing this kind of time travel. And your experience has been, and is, more multisensory than mine: With video you get to hear and see your child self in action. You get to be face to face with her, separated only by time and a screen. You get to watch her interact with her environment. You are included as a third person in your own first-person experience.
Take that in.
It can be so poignant and so tender, this kind of time travel. I have gotten to time travel together with my own children, allowing them to witness my own delight of their younger selves…again.
But it’s not so easy to fall in love with our younger selves.
It’s taken me a long time and a lot of personal work to be able to delight in 7-year-old Jen.
But I do now.
I wonder sometimes if we really understand how powerfully healing this technology can be when we use it for healing.
I fear we mostly squander it.
I wonder if we have transformed something that was once a vehicle for sacred interface into an instrument for the profane.
I wonder if that is reversible.
What do you use your video recorder for these days? What recordings do you spend your time watching or listening to?
I am asking myself the same questions this morning.
As with most novel technologies that eventually become commonplace, have we lost the ability to feel the awe of what it is we are capable of through it?
May we regain our awe, our astonishment?
* * *
My child self, a little bit in awe of the technology she was using, spoke a wish into a tape recorder in 1981 — “so I know what it sounds like, so I can hear what my voice was when I was younger” — and it was so.
Across time, I heard her voice, and through it, I was able to delight in the child who didn’t necessarily receive the delight she needed and wanted back then.
Across many years, I was able to find myself in embodied felt relationship with her across time and space, which is to say her speaking then moves me now.
What could happen if we re-discover the power of the medium we have lost our awe for? What if instead of spending time and energy recording and spreading content that can harm, hurt or deaden the senses, we used it for healing ourselves across time?
What if we remembered how the medium was once magical? What if we rediscover our awe and through it meet technology with a kind of sacred humility and reverence for its capacity?
And as a result, we took great care when using it.
This is the growth edge humanity stands at with all technology, including AI.
What recording would you leave today for your future self? What wish would you make for posterity?
* * *
There is much more to say about all this, about how I arrived at a place and time in my life in which I was able to have a lived, felt intimate encounter with my 7-year-old self.
I could say so much more about the how, but what I’ve realized for myself is that someone can tell you their experience, their truth, and until it actually lands for you in your body, in your heart, it’s only story, not experience. Story can be powerful, too, of course, which is why I feel called to tell it to you.
Ultimately, direct experience is what makes it feel real. It requires all five senses, and some other mystery bonus component that enables us to believe in it. I was able to get there — to that felt sense of real live encounter with my 7-year-old self — as a result of a lot of depth work across time. Maybe across my whole life, but concentrated especially in the last 10 years or so, since I turned 42. The process has involved dreams, memory, time, love, sex, hurt, healing, faith, doubt, community, leaving, staying, learning how to tolerate the in-between. It’s been spent in isolation and in too much togetherness. It’s been internally felt and externally expressed, and the reverse, too.
For now, I just want to share with you this one moment, this one intersection of two Mes across time, and tell you with a full heart that it was real.
