Be My Summer

How a Four-Year-Old Reminded Me of Who I Am

The Yellow Square

I didn’t know I was walking toward myself. It started with a meditation I wrote—an inner child journey I created for others, that ended up guiding me.

There was a bridge in it—because a threshold like this would require one. Just before stepping onto it, I stood on a cement square. Not just any square—this one was yellow. Bright. Buzzing. Solar plexus yellow. The color of power, worth, and identity. That quiet fire that asks: Are you ready to be seen?

I didn’t rush across it. I felt it first. It was like butterflies and snowflakes in my belly—two things that shouldn’t exist in the same season, but somehow, they did. One fluttered with excitement; the other stilled with memory.

Now I realize what that square was asking: Do you trust yourself enough to move forward? Do you believe you’re allowed to meet the version of you who never left? I did. I crossed it. Onto the bridge. Into the remembering.

The First One Who Knew

When I entered the meditation, I knew I’d be meeting a younger version of myself. I just didn’t expect her to be that young. I was expecting nine, maybe eleven—an age where I could already feel myself starting to change, when things began to get heavier and more complicated.

Instead, she arrived: four-year-old Jasmine. She wore her preschool picture day outfit. Her cheeks held galaxies. Her dimples were like exclamation points. Her smile wasn’t performing—it was simply being. She had presence. Not loud or dramatic, but steady. She exuded the energy of someone who knows who she is and likes being that person.

Four-year-old Jasmine on picture day in 1994.

She wasn’t confused. She wasn’t calling for help. She was clear. That clarity shook something loose in me. I’ve spent years thinking I had to work my way back to that kind of confidence. She never left it. She was already there—grounded, glowing, whole.

She didn’t just appear in the meditation. She intervened. She reminded me that before the world tried to mold me, before I started contorting for approval, before I forgot how to love myself freely—I was already enough.

The Mirror

When I looked at her—really looked—she wasn’t fragile. She wasn’t waiting to be saved. She was steady. Like joy was her birthright. Like she didn’t have to earn being Jasmine. The wildest part? She looked at me as though I were the one in trouble. Not with shame, but with wisdom and warmth. With that unbothered, Empress-in-miniature clarity.

“We’re good,” she said. “You’re the one that seems not okay.” She was right. We often talk about healing the inner child, but no one talks about how the inner child might be the healer. The creator. The one who knew how to call joy into form. The one who made art out of sidewalk chalk and songs out of silence.

I had forgotten how to play. I had forgotten how to believe. I had forgotten that I used to like being me. She, however, stood there—barefoot and sovereign—holding it all. The blueprint. The blessing. The girl who never let the world rewrite her.

The Refusal and the Reminder

At the end of the meditation, I asked her, “Do you want to come back with me?” It felt like the right thing to ask—the adult me reuniting with the child me. A full-circle moment where I take her hand and walk her back into my present life.

She looked at me, calm and unshaken, and said, “No. I would miss my mommy. I want to stay with Mommy.”

My heart split open. That little sentence carried lifetimes. There was joy in it—real, rooted joy. She loved her mother. She felt safe, seen, held. There was grief too—mine. I’m not four anymore. The closeness I once had with my mom has shifted. Not from lack of love, but from life, distance, and time.

Her refusal wasn’t a rejection. It was a reminder. I don’t have to carry her. She’s not waiting to be rescued. She is still being held—by memory, by spirit, and by love that never left.

In that moment, I felt God whisper: “You’re not alone. You never were. Even in the distance. Even in the doubt. I’m still here.” She didn’t come back with me because she never left me. She stayed—rooted, protected, remembered. Now, so do I.

The Soundtrack from Spirit

When the meditation ended, I didn’t want the connection to fade. I shuffled a playlist—not with logic, but with listening. I asked her—four-year-old me—to pick the song.

The first track she chose was “On God.” It dropped like prophecy. “I’ma get everything I came for, everything I’m made for…” It wasn’t wishful. It was truth. That song didn’t speak to who I hope to be. It confirmed who I already am. Who I’ve always been.

The next track? “Wildest Dreams.” A softer arrival. A slower breath. Like grown-me answering back. Still hopeful. Still open. Still wanting to be remembered not just for what I survived, but for how I loved.

But the one that told the whole truth—the one that gave this piece its name? “Be My Summer.” A love song. But not to a partner. To a part of me.

Can you be my summer? Protect me from the rain...

That lyric clung to my ribs. That’s what I’d been asking her—my inner child. Not just to remind me, but to warm me. To be the version of me that melts the frost I’ve collected from trying to be palatable. To stand in my spirit when I forget how to stand in my power.

Those songs weren’t random. They were reclamation spells. Each one a rhythm she remembered. Each one a beat I’d forgotten—until now.

The bridge from the meditation—stillness, memory, and the threshold of return.

The Return

Something shifted after that. Not all at once. Not with fireworks. In that quiet, undeniable way the soul has of saying, “You’re back now.”

Not because I brought her with me, but because I finally realized: I never stopped being her. That girl who smiled like joy was currency. That girl who carried herself like her being was a blessing. That girl who didn’t ask to be chosen—she chose herself.

She didn’t disappear. She just got buried beneath what I thought the world wanted. I’m no longer in that performance. I’m no longer shape-shifting for safety. I’m no longer shrinking to stay acceptable.

Here’s the truth: I’m not here to be neutral. I’m not here to be palatable. I’m here to be felt.

That’s what she taught me.

She reminded me that I was never too much. I was too powerful for people who weren’t ready. She reminded me that my softness isn’t weakness—it’s strategy. My boldness isn’t rebellion—it’s remembrance.

When it gets hard again—because it will—when the smile fades, when the weight creeps in, when I feel like giving up, I’ll call her. I’ll call on God. I’ll call on my spirit team. I’ll call on every part of me that remembers where I come from: the bloodline, the bone memory, the ones who prayed me into being.

I’ll remember: She is still with me. They are still able. I am still rising.