When Alice Sang with Her Younger Self

In the Turkish musical Alice, there’s a moment and a song that touched me deeply; one that helped me connect with my inner child. It’s the scene where adult Alice meets her childhood self, and they sing together.

Nil Karaibrahimgil, the composer of this song explains how exciting it was when she was first asked to write a song for this moment. She began to wonder: If I met my own childhood self, how would I talk to her? How could I reach her in a playful way that she would understand? That’s when she decided to speak in *kuş dili*—"bird language," a secret, playful code that many Turkish children use to hide words by adding extra syllables. (It’s similar to Pig Latin or Ubbi Dubbi in English.)

And so the song begins: Child Alice looks up at her grown-up self and asks, “How’s life up there? At your height? It’s so-so down here. With grown-ups always on my back” Alice replies gently, explaining that life is nice for her, but she misses her childhood self. When she misses her so much, she speaks in bird language. Then she says, in *kuş dili* (bird language: “I love you.”

Words only her childhood self would understand.

That moment reminded me of the languages I used to speak as a child, not just verbal ones, but all the ways I expressed myself: through movement, drawing, sounds, and imagination and how they help me reconnect with that version of myself.

Another part of the song that truly moves me (reaching right into my heart) is when little Alice shares she is afraid of the shadows on the wall and grown-up Alice tells her that she has learned to dance with them.

The shadows don’t disappear, but we learn to dance with them. Like we can't stop the waves, but we can learn to surf, as beautifully said by Jon Kabat-Zinn, the founder of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program.

That little child inside us? She never leaves. She’s our North Star.

After hearing this song and the story behind it, I sat down and asked myself:

What would happen if I met my own childhood self? What would I tell her and what would she tell me? What questions would she ask me? For the first time, I pictured us sitting face to face, just talking.

I, having a conversation with a child, a child that I once was. Something about that filled me with warmth and helped me reconnect with that little girl. She needed to be seen, heard, connected and share - so did I.