A child is born  
with wild eyes and open hands
no name but wonder,  
no path but presence.  
The world is a canvas  
until the brush is taken away.

Soon come the voices:  
“Sit still.”
“Be good.”
“Don’t cry.”
They mean love,  
but they teach shame.  
And the child learns  
to trade truth for approval,  
tears for silence,  
dreams for permission.

In schoolyards and dinner tables,  
the shaping continues
bend here, break there.  
Become what makes others  
comfortable.  
Make yourself small enough  
to fit inside their fears.

The voice of the world  
becomes familiar.  
And over time,  
it sounds like your own:  
“You’ll fail.”
“You’re not enough.”
“This is just the way things are.”

You grow older,  
but feel no closer to yourself.  
A stranger in your own body,  
dressed in expectations,  
numb from years of applause  
for roles you never auditioned for.

Until one day  
the silence becomes unbearable.  
The mask cracks.  
Something inside stirs
a grief you can’t name,  
a fire you never lit  
but always carried.

And in that ruin,  
you hear it:  
the voice that was buried  
beneath all the noise.  
It doesn’t shout.  
It whispers:  
“This isn’t who you are.”

That’s when the real growing begins
not the growing up,  
but the growing back.  
Back to the wonder,  
back to the wild,  
back to the self  
you were always meant to be.