Inner child healing
đŹ Itâs no surprise why a lot of my posts, blogs, and newsletters were about feeling safe and supported as a child and or now as an adult. Did I explain what it means to feel safe? In case I havenât it simply means being able to express your wants and needs without feeling judged or shamed in doing so. Expressing your needs and boundaries to people close to you such as family and friends is of the utmost importance in intimate relationships. I do hope you have secure relationships where youâre able to voice your needs without the shame involved. Soapbox moment: For so long we have as a society been conditioned to believe that our feelings are shameful, that itâs weak to have feelings or to voice them to another. Feelings are neutral actually we make them mean what we want. And some feelings such as 𤣠joy are experienced in a positive way and fear or anger are experienced in a negative way. Why is this? Well, mostly through conditioning and colonialism. We are fed to believe that it is bad to feel anger or sadness when these feelings are meant to be felt and released. The difference is when you are not allowed to feel them, hence family shaming will cause repression or suppression. This tidbit will help you understand how inner child healing is an intense journey into the underworld of the shadow and wounded parts of ourselves that we avoid subconsciously. Coined by Carl Jung
đđ˝ââď¸ So Guess whoâs going through inner child work? You guessed it, yours truly.
Iâve been feeling the feelings, itâs been 2 years since I started unearthing this work. Unbeknownst to me it happened without my permission, without my knowledge really. Ironically I had an energy-clearing session two years ago and the woman told me to burn frankincense and myrrh for my inner child. I was a little perplexed as to why she stated this but went to the store and bought them before Pandoraâs Box was fully open and now Iâm like how did she know??? I made no mention of it to her whatsoever.
⊠Fast forward to the present day and I have discovered so much about myself, my experiences, and really why I am the way I am. This process is similar to the grieving process. It doesnât make sense, itâs difficult to explain or put into words and who tries to understand emotions anyway right? Emotions are meant to be felt not understood. Thereâs anger, sadness, pain, and a sense of responsibility for what transpired. What you allowed and how you showed up for yourself.
There is a reconciliation of sorts, of the emotions, the experiences, you have to deal with alone now as an adult. Ironically I used to assist my sister when she would lash out at my mom, reminding her of our motherâs childhood or lack thereof and not understanding why I had to repeat this to her. I now understand the family patterns and roles each person takes. And it almost feels like a sitcom that is on repeat. The stories change in detail but they remain the same. Similar situations and unconscious reactions by asleep family members going through their notions of reaction and their own wounds. You wouldnât see how many projections are being thrown at you until you sit back and observe. There comes a day when you see the triggers but also see the reinforcing behaviors that come alongside, you see the pull in your energy to quickly step into your norm role in the dynamic. Itâs not until you do your work to see that there are unmet wounds from adults who are trying to get them met by you. You, the âchildâ, not the parent, you the sister, not the parent, you the niece, not the parent. đĽ You read and learn that there is emotional immaturity and for so long your needs couldnât be meant by people who were never prepared in such a way. You realize you had to not only take care of your emotions by way of pretending they werenât there but ultimately you had to make sure you could take care of the adultâs emotions. You knew as a child that if they werenât ok, you werenât either. So you did it based on survival and fear of not being safe.
The awareness broadens, itâs more than normalizing and bypassing the lack of emotional support you received in your upbringing by excusing the adultâs lack of a healthy childhood but itâs now your turn to honor the emotions that can no longer be repressed. They are ready to be seen and processed.
The moment occurs when you choose to change the cycle and begin the process of reparenting and fully take ownership of the emotions that are coming up rather than run away from them and distract by continuing to take care of another family member or anyone at that. I noticed that once I stopped being the âhealerâ in my family I started feeling my own stuff. And it was scary AF cause I had no distractions.
The reconciliation has to happen from you because you canât expect people to ask for forgiveness or to apologize when it was never customary. It takes awareness to take accountability and responsibility for what youâve caused and some people arenât capable of doing so. Nope, you do that for yourself because this healing is your responsibility. Yup, when I heard that I was like how dare you put that on me, sir? I was wronged! LOL, but really, your childhood was your teacher, this is what you chose before you came into this world to master.
Often times inner child healing comes unannounced. Situations and traumas resurface, and things that didnât make sense at the time become crystal clear. All these are up for the adult to handle and repair. If you were like me you might have known why some family members treated you a certain way or spoke down to you the way they did. You were able to excuse their actions and it became normalized, but something clicks and your adult can no longer play that role.
The adult now has to protect the inner child and stop the cycle no matter how normalized it was.
I think back to intuitively knowing I was ready for this healing when placing three different pictures of myself on my altar. Each Tania was during a time of great pain and struggle and those were versions of me that I am healing now.
đ Ok story time: From an early age Little Tania picked up on the instability around her. She was also told to ignore her feelings when they would surface. She knew she had to instead take care of the adults in her life. She was a good obedient little girl who did everything to please her adults. She learned her needs were too much and held them back when scary things happened. Her worth was dependent on how others perceived her. Never fully acknowledging this as an adult these patterns continue in the subconscious. The excusing of others for their faults or even triggers from childhood begins to show up at an unconscious level.
Until you can step back and see your own unhealthy patterns and those youâve allowed around you the work does not begin. Simultaneously your emotions go on a trip down memory lane and itâs not full of rainbows and butterflies as we filtered them to be in the past.
There is an intergenerational component here as well. As an indigenous woman, I feel deeper wounds from my ancestors. As a first generation, I feel the cycles of abuse, sexual, emotional, physical, spiritual, and colonial. As a child from a single-family home, a colored woman, and as a woman period. I will stop there because I can keep going. The healing runs deep.
This is not a woe-is-me piece, although I do see the victim role Iâve played. I write this to share my healing and to open up the dialogue for other first-generation people also going through similar situations. Also feel like the black sheep of the family for assimilating into the American culture where we honor boundaries, privacy, and healthy communication over authoritarianism. Iâm writing this for recognition and reconciliation. Resilience through processing these heavy emotions, there is freedom to be found. Reclaiming these disembodied parts of you to find and accept them as you. Youâre inner child craves this acknowledgment and the healed version of you thanks you for the rebirth.
đ Here are some good reads:
Why is everyone working on their inner child?
8 Ways to Start Healing Your Inner Child
