Played Out
- Keren Levi-Faran
- Aug 21, 2024
- 2 min read
Where what’s been rehearsed too long finds a softer way out.
The Game That Stayed
A block tower.
A cardboard sword.
A voice pretending to be someone else.
We call it childish.
But what if it’s sacred?
Because play isn’t just escape.
It’s memory.
It’s a metaphor.
It’s motion as meaning.
The body is trying to express what words it has forgotten.
Unwritten Instructions
In play therapy, children often don’t express their grief directly.
They crash toy cars.
Hide dolls.
Draw monsters with too many teeth.
And in doing so, they speak.
They release.
They process, without knowing the word.
The movement holds the message.
The object holds the emotion.
The play holds the part that didn’t know it had something to say.
And here’s the truth: this never stopped being true.
We were no longer allowed to do it.
When Feelings Stop Performing
As adults, we’re trained to talk.
To label.
To explain it all away.
But not every wound wants language.
Some parts of you don’t want to be solved.
They want to be seen.
Moved.
Played.
Real healing doesn’t always speak fluently.
Sometimes it colors.
Sometimes, it tears paper.
Sometimes, it builds something meaningless just to knock it down in the end.
Letting the Play End
Where in my life have I been too verbal and not enough physical?
What emotion has never had a shape, a color, a sound?
What if feeling didn’t need explanation, only space?
“Art is not meant to be created in stolen moments only. It is meant to be a part of our breathing.”
Clarissa Pinkola Estés
Final Scene
Not every part of you needs to speak.
Some just want to move.
To press the color into silence.
To repeat a shape until something lets go.
Let the hand say what the mouth cannot.
Let the body remember what the mind still tries to forget.
You don’t need the right words.
Only a place for the feeling to land.
You’re invited to meet this with care.
Download the Replaying to Release practice and let something shift through what your hands create.
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