You don’t have to have had a perfect childhood growing up to reconnect with girlhood joys and magic. I certainly didn’t, but what I’m referring to in this article is reconnecting to the spark, wonder, and curiosity in you when you were a girl despite outside circumstances.
Time moved slower, colors were more vibrant, food tasted better, and you loved with abandon. You weren’t so consumed with what you looked like, what you said, or “being successful.”
You just existed, taking in each day as it came, finding the magic, and immersing yourself in things you loved. Imagine reconnecting with that part of yourself (which very much still exists) and how different your daily life might look.
In this article, I’ll discuss how to reconnect with girlhood magic, how it will benefit you, and how it can create a more delicious, slow, enchanting life.
The Essence of Girlhood Magic
The essence of girlhood magic is chaotic, mesmerizing, otherworldly enchantment. Despite any conditions you faced as a girl, the inner spark within you was strong, curious, and always on the lookout for fun and learning.
Your spirit was both loving and wild, naturally self-focused and resilient. The world hadn’t fully gotten to you yet, and despite any criticism you received from the adults around you, you had an innate leaning towards feeling good and seeing the best in others.
All of this, combined with your vivid and frequent use of imagination, created the essence of girlhood magic.
Lost Treasures: What We Leave Behind
The “loss of innocence” that can occur during the teen years plays a big part in moving us away from our girlhood selves. Becoming aware of the way women are viewed, expected to behave, and treated usually creates a lot of subconscious angst and shame in girls and young women.
Coupled with being conditioned to be people-pleasers, we slowly lose touch with our girlhood magic and enter a more bewildering world where we are instructed to focus outwards and take care of others—a world that doesn’t cater to our bodies' monthly rhythms, processes, or magic. A world where feminine energy, which is so closely related to our girlhood essence, isn’t encouraged.
Things like resting, daydreaming, imagining, and being out in nature without to-do lists, getting lost in creating, making things, nurturing ourselves and others, etc.
We moved away from many of these things to pursue what we felt we “should” do, whether that be degrees, marriage, or starting a family, and then doing all the things necessary to accomplish those things in the current societal structures, which weren’t designed to support you as a woman in most of these encouraged roles.
But the good news is that we know more now. We understand reality creation better, and that even if societal structures weren’t designed to support feminine energy, we can manifest it! We also understand more now about our value as divine feminine beings who bring light, joy and LIFE to everything we touch.
And who should we bring that to first and foremost? Ourselves! This is why our girlhood magic was so captivating and wonderful because we were bringing light, joy, and life to ourselves. We were Main Character energy back then, full of love, presence, wonder, and excitement.
Practical Magic: Reconnecting with Your Younger Self
Reconnecting with your younger self is a great way to recapture girlhood magic. I have found that it requires some mindset shifting from your current “roles” to focusing on yourself in a way that honors you as an individual separate from others.
When you were a girl, you weren’t anyone’s girlfriend, wife, or mother. You operated from a place of being your own entity with your own interests, passions, and things you wanted to do.
I would become wholly entranced while coloring and listening to Mr. Rogers on TV. I would fall asleep thinking about tetherball and how I was going to go outside and play it as soon as I woke up. I skated by myself at the skating rink without considering what others thought about me being alone.
It was like I just existed to do what I found fun or intriguing. Here are some journaling prompts to help reconnect you with your younger self:
- What were some of your favorite things to do in childhood?
- What do you still enjoy doing that you did in your childhood?
- What are some things you enjoy doing now or are interested in doing/learning?
- What creative activities help to revive your girlhood interests? (Arts and crafts, dance, storytelling, etc).
Recommended reading: Healing Your Inner Child Through Reparenting Yourself
Creating Spaces for Girlhood Joys
I’m a big proponent for having your own bedroom if possible, even if you’re in a relationship with someone else and living together. But even still, the whole point I want to make is that creating spaces that invoke the magic of your girlhood is so healing and soul-nourishing.
I remember putting away all of my stuffed animals at fourteen because I was embarrassed of them. Of course, as I stuffed them into the boxes, I worried that they wouldn’t be able to breathe (because they were obviously real and alive) and that I was breaking their hearts.
So, one thing I have begun doing is adding stuffed animals back to my bed. I also added this boho stuffed animal hammock in the corner, and I can’t say enough about how much this small action of collecting stuffed animals again has brought so much girlhood magic back into my experience.
I’ve also been purchasing pajamas I would’ve loved as a girl. They’re pink with unicorns or teddy bears, and I’m IN LOVE. At some point in my teen years I felt like I had to become mature and serious and sexy. BOR-RING.
Girlhood Jessica loves playful, magical things, no matter how old she gets. What did you love in your girlhood? Did you have CareBear sheets? What was hanging on your walls? How did you decorate your space?
If you couldn’t do much with your space as a girl, what would your inner girl child do with a space now? What could you give her that she always wanted?
Magical spaces inspire a magical, playful heart.
The Role of Relationships in Recapturing Magic
One of the beautiful things about childhood friendships is that we were all little weirdos accepting and loving each other’s weirdness without giving it a second thought.
This is how our relationships can be: surrounding ourselves with people who love and honor who we really are, who reflect back to us the beauty and love of our inner child.
In order to do this, we need to first love and honor who we really are, faults and all. We need to reflect back to ourselves the beauty and love of our inner child. No one can do that for you if you can’t do it for yourself.
This is why the relationship with ourselves will always be the most important one we ever have, because from it everything else flows. Everyone else is just an aspect of ourselves pushed out to reflect back to us how we feel about ourselves.
So if there’s anyone in your life who is seemingly not loving or honoring you, take time to gently reflect on that and see where you aren’t loving yourself. If this person doesn’t honor your time, where do you not honor your own time? If they don’t honor your boundaries, where do you not honor your own boundaries?
The more you love and honor yourself, the more you will be surrounded by beautiful relationships that reflect this back to you.
Embracing Feminine Energy
Embracing and learning more about feminine energy will help you to reconnect with your girlhood magic because so much about it was influenced by feminine energy.
Feminine energy in a nutshell is related to traits such as:
- authenticity
- creation
- magnetism
- emotional intensity
- the unknown
- sensuality (presence)
- chaos
- intuition
- passion
- empathy
- receptiveness
- self-loving/self-focused
You can look at pretty much all of these and find where they fit in your girlhood experience. When we tap into these feminine traits, we naturally connect to the magic of our girlhood.
The feminine is present in her body, delighting in sensual pleasures such as soft, silky fabrics, delicious food, the smell of wet dirt after a rain, etc. These things would captivate us when we were girls. Too often, as women, we think about everything we need to get done, but slowing down and tapping into being present, still, and in our bodies can bring a whole world of delight in just a few minutes.
None of this needs to be a whole life-change overhaul. It’s all about the small, simple pleasures by coming into the present moment more often. It’s simply re-directing yourself back to the present moment, back into your body, back into yourself.
Manifesting Your Magical Life
We all need to return to believing in magic because magic is actually real, and we indeed create our own realities, something I think we all knew on some level as children.
We are not just the Main Characters; we are the Directors, baby!!! You get to choose which direction your Main Character goes in.
Now we understand that magic is the law of attraction, that we attract to us what we emit out. We can go about this in many ways; I’ve written about many of them. A few are:
- setting intentions to bring more joy and magic into your life (I want to feel…I want to experience…I want to be…)
- connecting with your inner being
- radiating from your feminine energy
- creating morning and evening self-care routines that create magic
Conclusion
You. Are. MAGIC.
You knew this on some level as a girl, and you’re remembering and realizing the truth of it now. You are the definition of beauty, love, and light. You are joy in motion. You are messy, chaotic, and stormy, as well as lovable, eternally worthy, and divine.
Girlhood is magical for exactly all of this and is always there for you to tap back into. The more we align with our authenticity, focus on our joy and happiness, and recognize the value of all that we are, the more we reawaken that wild girl inside of us who loves herself and loves life.
EXPLORE FURTHER
Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed this article and found something to take away with you.
To receive my weekly, self-care focused email that inspires you to go deeper inside the magic that is you, sign up for the Dwell in Magic weekly newsletter.
If you’d like weekly digital resources, guidance, and community with me and others, join the Dwell in Magic Patreon. We also have a book club!
For self-paced inner work, visit the shop for transformational bundles and guides.
With love,
Jessica
- Recapturing the Magic of Girlhood - April 27, 2024
- Effortless Manifesting: A Simple 4-Step Practice - April 14, 2024
- How to Start Living for Yourself - March 30, 2024
Cat
I relate SO MUCH to wanting the unicorn pajamas. Whenever I see cute, sparkly, dreamy pjs for girls I wonder why those aren’t made for women! I always find myself admiring the clothes of the girls I babysit and wondering if they come in my size. I am going to shamelessly find those pink fluffy outer space pjs from now on.