The Space Between

When I’m working with adults, much of the work is about gently breaking down the walls they’ve built over a lifetime — finding our way back to the tender place where the original wound lives: the inner child. It’s tough, and it’s beautiful.

When I’m working with children, they’re already there — open, raw, and real. There’s no excavation needed. With them, I meet curiosity with curiosity, and playfulness with playfulness. Often it’s through art or a game — The Game — that we explore what has been hard: friendships, school, family dynamics.

And with one dear friend, there’s a moment I’d love to share (and she was thrilled I wanted to share her story).

She told me it was hard to know how to come back after “blowing up” at her friends.

I asked, “What does that feel like in your body?”

She hunched over silently.

“Okay, how about this — what color pencil would you choose to draw that?”

Her head lifted. Her hand moved confidently toward dark red.

“And what about the opposite feeling — maybe happy or calm? What color for that?”

She reached easily for pink.

“And that strange in-between time,” I asked, “when we start to come back from that intense anger toward calm again — what color is that?”

She paused, then reached slowly into her pencil box, pulling out the palest yellow.

Then she began to draw — Planet Rage’r, Planet Smile’r, and the space between.

This was after we’d spent ten minutes flipping through her endless drawings — each page its own little universe. (She’s very into drawing planets right now)

As our session wrapped up, we decided on some homework.

I asked her to write me a story — a story about a character who suddenly finds themselves on Planet Rage’r, unsure how they got there or how to get back.

This character’s mission would be to find their way back to Planet Smile’r, where their friends and family were waiting.

Her eyes lit up with excitement. She couldn’t wait to start writing — weaving her drawing into a story that gave shape and language to her emotions.

And I can’t help but imagine that somewhere in her subconscious, this creative process is quietly doing its work — building new neural pathways, reshaping old beliefs. Perhaps one day, when she finds herself back on Planet Rage’r, she’ll remember the story. She’ll remember there’s a path home — a way back to the playground.