The Truth (I’m a girl, I’m smart and I know everything) has so many topics imbedded into it for mothers and daughters and anyone who has walked the path of growing up as a girl that I hardly know which to pick. But since I must pick-let me pick purity of heart.
Purity of heart is in my opinion as a woman, a positive psychologist and having been a girl, a special vision that we often have in childhood. It is not just seeing with our eyes. It is a sixth sense combined with tender feelings and acute awareness of our surroundings. For example, when Laura Ingalls describes to us the way she ran through the prairie grass and looked up into the sky to follow hawks and looked at the stars at night while her father played the fiddle, her words evoke a purity of heart sensation in even adults.
She was able as a writer to create the whole atmosphere of her life on the prairie so that we feel something new and fresh and yet eternal as we read The Little House on the Prairie. In The Truth (I’m a girl, I’m smart and I know everything) I have tried to capture the same sense of purity of heart.
When the ‘girl’ is upset when her cousin swears it isn’t because she is making a moral judgment. It is because the swear words just feel bad as they hit her across the room. And when she dances with her mother up in the bedroom to rock and roll music, the relief of connecting with her mom and the pleasure of moving, laughing and hugging together is all there is. This is the moment and it is pure.
Purity of heart is a clean feeling and when we have purity of heart moments we can feel cleansed and delighted at the same time. Or if they are upsetting moments, as when the ‘girl’s’ cousin swore at least she knew he was not right and there was some relief just in the expression of her emotions.
I wanted to incorporate purity of heart into The Truth as we at all ages need to remember the intense pure feelings of childhood, both for ourselves and for the next generation. We need to remember them for ourselves so we can go there once again and experience the sweetness and passion that goes with really being alive, not just sleepwalking as sometimes we do as grown-ups.
And for the next generation’s sake we need to remember because we need to connect with our children and grandchildren and we need to reassure them and help validate for them that their emotions are not only pure but often more in tune with what is right that we are. Aging is not necessarily becoming emotionally more astute. Aging can sometimes just be aging.
The Truth (I’m a girl, I’m smart and I know everything) has many themes and one of them is most certainly don’t sleepwalk. Stay alive as you age and let the kids you know refresh you as well as the kid you were. After all, she is still inside of you! I promise and that’s the truth!
By the way, this write-up I just did is now appearing on The Book Stacks blog. Go and take a look-it is a wonderful blog. Dr. Barbara Becker Holstein, www.enchantedself.com
