There was a time when magic was never something we questioned. It wasn’t something we searched for or tried to understand. It simply existed, all around us, woven quietly into the world. It lived in the rustling of the trees, in the way the wind seemed to follow us as we ran, in the unshakable feeling that there was more to life than what we could see.
As children, we didn’t need proof of magic. We didn’t need anyone to explain it. We felt it. We trusted it. Our imaginations carried us into places that felt just as real as the ground beneath our feet. The world was alive with wonder, and we were part of it in a way that felt effortless and true.
But somewhere along the way, something changed.
We were told, gently at first and then more firmly, to grow up. To be realistic. To be sensible. To stop believing in things that couldn’t be explained. And so, without even realising it, we began to let go. Not all at once, but in quiet, almost unnoticeable ways. We stopped looking with the same sense of wonder. We stopped listening as closely. We began to question what we once accepted so freely.
Over time, we told ourselves a story – that the magic had disappeared.
But what if that was never the truth?
What if the magic never left at all? What if it is still here, exactly as it always was, waiting patiently? Not gone, not lost… just unseen.
Because that child we once were has never truly gone anywhere.
They are still within us, quietly waiting – the part that ran freely without fear, which felt the wind and believed it meant something, that saw possibility instead of limitation. That part hasn’t disappeared. It has simply been covered over by the noise and pace of growing older.
I remember a time in my own life when I felt completely disconnected from myself. It was back in 2019, when I felt at my lowest and unhappiest. I searched for something to bring me back, something to help me feel like myself again. And without expecting it, what came to me was not an answer, but a memory.
I remembered what it felt like to be a child.
I could almost feel the wind again, hear the sounds of nature around me, and sense the freedom I once carried so naturally. A time when my imagination had no limits, when the world felt full of quiet magic, and when simply being outside felt like stepping into something extraordinary.
And in that remembering, something shifted within me.
I began to realise that the door I thought I had closed had never actually been shut. It had always been there, just waiting for me to notice it again.
It is this feeling that has quietly found its way into my writing. Through the Erica’s Light series, I have come to understand that these stories were never just for children. They are for adults too – for those who feel that gentle pull of something they can’t quite name.
They are for adults remembering their childhoods.
For anyone who has ever felt that something once so alive within them has grown distant. For anyone who longs to reconnect with that sense of wonder, imagination, and magic that once felt so natural.
Nature has a way of reminding us of this, if we allow it. There is a quiet magic in the way flowers bloom when they are ready, without force or urgency. In the way trees move with the seasons, letting go and beginning again without resistance. Nothing rushes. Nothing questions. Everything simply is.
And when we slow down enough to notice, we begin to feel it too.
It might come as a gentle breeze brushing against your face, or the soft whisper of leaves above you. A feeling you can’t quite explain, only recognise – a quiet nudge, as if something is calling you back.
Perhaps magic was never something meant only for children.
Perhaps it has always been there, patiently waiting for us to return.
Waiting for us to listen again.
To feel again.
To believe again.
Because the truth is, we were never meant to leave that part of ourselves behind.
And maybe, just maybe, all it takes is a moment… a place… or a memory… to step back through a door that has always remained open.
A gentle whisper from the woods, carried on the wind, still calling us home.
And maybe the greatest magic of all… is remembering who you were before the world told you who to be.
