Healing the Inner Child
‘I reach into my own heart and there she is, little me, oh she is finally safe, oh, she can finally breathe.’
|| Tania Hart
Hi everyone! If this is your first time hearing from me, my name is Bree. I have never been fond of identifying myself with job titles, but for the sake of credentials; I am a school counselor, yoga teacher, and holistic life coach. My non-traditional childhood and early adulthood ignited my passion for holistic wellness and guiding others to heal from the inside out.
As I write this, I am still in the process of healing. I believe just like growing, healing is something we will never fully master. However, by focusing heavily on our inner work, we can move further and further away from our childhood wounds and comfort that little boy or girl who so desperately wanted to feel safe. I am not going to give you a step-by-step process on how to heal your childhood wounds because everyone is different. Rather, I will tell you a few lessons I learned that helped to shift my perspective, release old habits, and connect with the little version of myself.
When I was a child, I often heard the adults around me blame others for their circumstances. I brought this habit with me into my early adulthood. I would tell myself stories like– I didn’t pursue my passion for writing after college because I had to live on my own and needed to bartend full time to make more money. I treated men poorly because of my ‘daddy issues.’ I smoked cigarettes because I grew up in a household where everyone smoked cigarettes. – These stories were just excuses for the bad habits I was building. I didn’t pursue my passion for writing because I was too busy partying. I treated men poorly because I refused to face the issues with my father. I smoked cigarettes because I was too lazy to quit. Lesson #1: Once you are an adult, you and only you are responsible for the condition of your life.
Has a friend ever told you something bad that happened to them and you found yourself following up with a situation that you believed was more traumatic? You may have even started with something like, “Oh you think that is bad? Wait until you hear about this.” Yup– that was me. I felt like everything I had been through was far worse than the next person. It wasn’t until I was in college and I connected with other girls who had similar experiences as me that I realized every single one of us endures some form of childhood trauma; even your childhood friends with seemingly perfect lives. An experience that may be very horrible for one person may not be as bad for another and vice versa. Lesson #2: Your traumas are no worse than anyone else's.
If you are a millennial you may or may not have been obsessed with the Gilmore Girls. Well, I was and I loved the relationship between Lorelai and Rory. This show definitely hit home to me more because Lorelai and Rory were a single-mother, daughter duo just like my mom and I were a single-mother, daughter duo. The only difference was– my mom was not Lorelai Gilmore. We have this image in our minds of what we believe our parents should be, yet in reality our parents are who they are. They may match up to this image or they may not. If they didn’t, you may have grown resentful toward them and then carried this resentment into adulthood. It is a hard pill to swallow, but this resentment is only hurting you and no matter how desperately you want your parents to be TV perfect parents, they are who they are. Lesson #3: Learn to accept your parents for who they are and not who you want them to be.
When I was four years old, my older cousin was babysitting me and the neighbor's daughter. My cousin wanted to paint our nails and asked us what colors we wanted. At the time I was crazy about the color lime green, however when I picked the lime green nail polish the other little girl responded, ‘Ew, that color is for boys.’ I was so ashamed, that I quickly changed my mind and chose a bottle of hot pink nail polish. That little girl made such an impact on me that pink became my favorite color for years to come. It’s silly little situations like that which alter the people we are today. However, that girl knew no better than I did and hopefully is a much kinder adult today ;) Lesson #4: Acknowledge the pain and suffering that others have caused you and then learn to let it go.
Truthfully, there could be a million more lessons to healing your inner childhood wounds, but for the sake of keeping this a blog post and not a book, I will keep it at four. Continue to do the inner work, i.e. meditation, shadow work, therapy, reiki. Healing never ends. Even when you feel like you are whole again life will throw you through a shit storm and all of those old wounds will reemerge. That is why it is important to stay consistent, to learn to love the man or woman that you have become, and to repeatedly remind your inner child that you are safe.
