After the busy activities of a hot summer day, my sister and I decided to visit the playground at our elementary school where we had spent so many days playing under the Ohio sun (and rain). I was absolutely overjoyed and filled with curiosity to see what our detour to the playground would bring. We stepped out of the car and sprinted to the playground like our younger selves would do escaping the confines of school. It was almost like I could see the elementary school kids run past us. There I was, right back with my old friends. We were invincible. Nothing could come between us and what we cherished most in the world: recess. By the time we neared the playground, the blacktop stained the bottoms of our shoes. So many sights and sounds immediately flooded my memory, but one was of particular interest to me: the infamous monkey bars. Without hesitation, I ran to them. These were no ordinary monkey bars, no sirree. They zig zag up and down, adding an extra challenge to what was already a feat to my eight year old self. Conquering these was the crowning achievement of my elementary school career to this day. I spent months building up the strength to swing from bar to bar, the courage to jump from the platform, and proudly displaying the callouses I had collected from working so hard to achieve my goal. If I fell, that was okay. I was okay. I was, after all, a wonderfully resilient child. A scraped knee or bruised arm couldn’t stop me for the world. I very vividly remember what it felt like when I finally made it all the way to the end. I felt like superwoman. I was on top of the world.

  I looked up at those monkey bars that were now stood only a few inches taller than me and I realized how small the same monkey bars that I once struggled to conquer really were. In fact, everything was less daunting, less exhilarating, and just…different than how I remembered. My legs grazed the ground while I swung on the swings, I was too big for the pull up bar that I used to measure my strength with, and the slide was less slide-y, if that even makes sense. At first, this filled me with a sense of melancholy. I had really outgrown the magic of the playground. But as I roamed around the place that I used to know so well, I realized that the magic was never really in this playground, it was within myself. I quickly learned that it’s okay to grow apart from your childhood self. I am not the person I was then, after all.

Sure, I outgrew my old dreams of never being “it”, swinging the highest I could on the swings, or making it all the way to the end of the monkey bars, but this just serves a reminder of the growth I have made over the years. I have grown and so have my goals, my dreams, and my aspirations in life. Soon, I will have new “playgrounds” to conquer. I will face new challenges and obstacles each and every day. Some time in the distant future, I will look back at the things I am going through now and the goals I currently hold close to me and laugh at how I have comically outgrown them. I look inside of me today to see that the same little girl still lives in me and guides me. I am still learning from her every day, in fact. I learned from her that I will have new callouses on my hands and on my heart. I will inevitably fall down a few times, but I will dust myself off. I can hear her voice telling me to never, ever let anything get me down. At the end of it all, I don’t want to look let a few scrapes and bruises stop me from chasing my dreams. I will still be the wonderfully resilient and beautifully strong me that I always have been. So, thank you eight year old Grace. Thank you monkey bars. Thank you playground. You have made me stronger than you know.