My inner girl is one of my most personal projects, it touches me particularly not only because it was parallel to my search and healing process, but because the one who played the main role in my illustrations was my daughter Maia.
It is incredible how much inspiration our children bring us if we are open to receiving it; since I had my first child Dominique, I slowly began to let my inner child come out to play. At first the baby games seemed a little silly and boring to me, my adult self found it very difficult, but as my son grew, we created a language, some stories and a whole world around us.
When my daughter Maia was born, my inner child managed to come out even more, we were already three accomplices in mischief, it was as if my inner child had found two other friends with whom she could go out and play whenever she wanted.
It was evident how my personality changed completely at certain times of the day, I went from being a contained, measured and sometimes repressed adult, to becoming a small, spoiled and even capricious child, but unlike when I was little, this time it was me the star that shone brightest with my adventure companions.
I think that at that moment I almost completely let my inner child out and began to love her, value her and give her the priority she deserved. Since then, there are moments when she is the one in charge, where she is the queen. The interesting thing is that she steps aside if I understand that at a certain moment I need to exercise my functions as a mother and direct her cronies.
For little Ana to get there, she had to endure so many things. For many years she felt alone and abandoned, inadequate and insufficient, betrayed and unhappy; they were stages that she went through until she finally came to be seen and loved for who she was. All this has been nothing more than the beginning of a long process.
This entire path is what I have wanted to reflect in my illustrations, from those moments of fear and despair to the joy of feeling important to oneself. The imaginary world that I built around her is a world full of fantasy, I gave her butterfly wings to symbolize her potential, the gift of very long black hair that represents her thoughts and that could suffocate or nourish her, I let her behave like an agile e smart cat I gave her everything she had always wanted.
The most important thing is that healing her by telling her story, many other people could look inside themselves and rescue their own inner child.
