This past Saturday, we took our kids to see the new Gabby’s Dollhouse movie.

It wasn’t exactly high cinema, but it was genuinely sweet and wholesome, which is rare these days. We shuffled in with our popcorn, the kids sneaking sips of our giant Dr. Pepper we only ever allow ourselves at the theater. The calories don’t count at the movies; everyone knows this. We fussed over who would sit where, my oldest pretending she was “too big” for the whole 'sing along' thing, though her eyes gave her away when the lights dimmed and the movie started. I expected silly songs, cat puns, Kristen Wiig in all her usual hilarity. What I didn’t expect was to feel my throat catch and my eyes sting with tears in the middle of a children’s movie about a Netflix cartoon.

Now, a good story of any kind can cue the tears, especially if the timing hits just right, if you catch my drift. But this one landed differently than the summer we saw Kung Fu Panda 17. It's just too many pandas for me at that point. But the Gabby movie presented a new message and a good one, something we’ve been working through in our home this past year as we are working to heal old wounds and shape young minds who are too excited to grow up, and it felt like a blessing to see it spelled out on the big screen.

The story wasn’t really about dolls or glitter or colorful characters. It was about adults forgetting how to play. About how somewhere along the way, between bills, funerals, responsibilities, and impossible expectations, we pack wonder into the attic with the rest of the toys we’re too “mature” to keep out. And the forgetting doesn’t just hurt us. It hurts the kids who watch us slog through life as if joy is irresponsible, as if curiosity is wasteful, as if delight is dangerous.

I sat there in that darkened theater thinking about how much has been lost to the slow erosion of wonder. Because once you stop noticing beauty, you stop noticing pain too. You build a kind of callus around your heart, telling yourself it is “resilience” when it is really just survival.

So much of what I do (and hope to do in the future) is centered around helping women reconnect with their bodies, and a lot of that looks like play. The work of remembering how to play. Because when we stop playing, our bodies become tools instead of homes. Instruments for productivity, not presence. Machines we drive hard and criticize daily, but never actually live inside.

Play interrupts that cycle. Play says: what if your body doesn’t exist to be efficient, or attractive, or even pain-free? What if your body is a place to experience wonder?

When you chase your kids through the backyard, breathless and laughing. When you swing too high at the park and feel your stomach drop the way it did when you were eight. When you throw paint on a canvas without caring if it belongs on Etsy. That is your body as a home. That is your body teaching you that you are allowed to be alive in your skin.

But sadly, most of us don’t know how to get back there. We want wonder, but we have forgotten how to practice it. We want softness, but we are afraid of looking foolish. We want play, but only if it can be monetized, scheduled, justified, or performed for Instagram. Somewhere along the way, even fun became another thing to check off the list.

Which is why the movie got to me. Because it wasn’t just a reminder for kids to hold on to their imagination. It was a warning for us. If we don’t reclaim play, if we don’t make space for delight, we will lose the thread that leads us back to faith. Wonder isn’t optional. It is sacred.

So how do we play again? How do we recover it without trying too hard, without forcing it into Pinterest-perfect projects or productivity hacks? I think the answer is to start embarrassingly small. To let ourselves do the little things, the silly things, the ones that feel too insignificant to matter, because they matter most of all. Follow your children around and copy them. Get curious about “what would happen if…” and then go find out.

Here are some ideas to get started:

Instead of walking down the stairs, slide (in pants, not shorts, ask me how I know).

Light a candle and play music while cooking or folding laundry.

Chase your kids. They love it more than you think.

Narrate mundane things in song (be Marshall from How I Met Your Mother).

Go see kids’ movies and actually watch them.

Watch Bluey and try all the games with your kids.

Make a blanket fort—for yourself.

Paint just for fun, not to sell.

Dance in your kitchen.

Draw badly. Draw anyway.

Play a board game without keeping score.

Skip a rock, blow bubbles, buy a jump rope.

Wear the silly hat.

Swing on the swings instead of sitting on the bench.

Sing loudly in the car, windows down.

Collect something pointless and let yourself love it.

Make shapes out of clouds.

Try on outfits that don’t “make sense” and wear them anyway.

Play pretend with your kids instead of just watching.

Celebrate made-up holidays (National Ice Cream Day counts).

Do it for the plot.

Because play isn’t wasted time.

It’s a way home to our bodies, home to delight, home to the faith of a softened heart.

And maybe if we let ourselves play again, we’ll find out it was never childish. It was sacred all along. And if the sacred happens to look like a grown woman making cloud animals on the trampoline or humming her way through the dishes, well… maybe that’s the point.

Want to make some space for play and rest? Jump in with us in November!