Healing The Inner Child, Heals The Adult
Growing up as the youngest of three, I was seen as the child who would start a family first and who had a pretty good future laid out in front of them. No one knew that behind the smile I bore most days, my unaffected grades and my need to constantly be on the go; was a child who would later attempt suicide at fourteen and be diagnosed with a mental and psychiatric illness at twenty-one. I lived a near perfect life to many but the reality was, I was a young carer who was abused and neglected.
At the age of fourteen, I lost my Dad to suicide less than a month and two weeks after I was removed from his care. After losing my Dad, my emotional and psychological development halted and I was no longer able to function or live in the present. The mixture of untreated trauma and grief was too much for my fragile mind to handle .
But then the memories of my childhood where I told my Dad my dreams for the future came back to haunt me. Reminding me of what else I had lost besides my Dad, reminding me that I had also lost myself. Following my memories of my childhood dreams that never vanished nor changed, came my Dad’s last words to me, telling me to do every single thing I grew up telling him I wanted to do and was working towards. Then came a voice I hadn’t heard for a long time, my voice.
I was begging my trauma to let me free, to let me do everything that made me who I am and that I longed for. It was painful losing my Dad but it was even more painful losing myself and struggling to get back the only version of me that I felt like was me and that felt like home.
When I thought back on my memories as a child, I wasn’t viewing them from the perspective of the younger me. I was viewing them as an outsider who knew the pain that was hidden beneath the bright smile and the cries that the laughter had boomed over. I was an outsider who knew the younger P’s future and who wanted desperately to protect her, to hold her and tell her how sorry I am that I couldn’t protect her innocence, her mind or her future. I thought for so long that the only person I failed was my Dad but the truth is, I failed myself as well. And the only thing I could say when my inner child hurled abuse at me was “I’m sorry”.
I couldn’t move on for myself as I was in my late teens and early twenties, I felt as though the person I was during that time didn’t deserve anything good. But the younger me, the me who had plan after plan set out for her future with the main objectives being to be a good wife and mother, to allow her future children to have the life and development that she wasn’t given and to help those who like herself and our Dad, weren’t getting the help they needed for whatever reason. I wanted to make it up to the little girl who has always wanted to adopt so that children who don’t know what a mothers love feels like can feel it and they can have a better start in life. I wanted to make it up to the little girl who saw the errors in her life and wanted to make sure no one else had them in theirs.
As I began to focus on giving my inner child the things that were taken out of her reach; my mental health fought back harder but I decided to see it as a test. A test to see if what I was working towards meant enough to me that I wouldn’t give up this time around and I didn’t. I fought through the mental and emotional breakdowns. I fought through being unable to keep food down and fought against the thoughts in my head that told me I would never succeed. That I was better off joining my Dad and other family members who I had to say goodbye to.
I had to prove to my younger self that she was worth pushing through the obstacles and getting back up for when I was wiped off my feet and my face was once again in the mud. I had to listen to what broke her, console her and comfort her. But most importantly, I had to understand what happened to her. I had to understand what my past did to my brain that prevented me from making my dreams come true and stole who I was as a person. So, I purchased a book called “The body keeps the score” by Bessel Van Der Kolk and began my psychological journey to healing. Not only that but I had entered psychology and learnt the negative belief systems that I had formed that were affecting my life.
Once my younger self began to see that her adult version could do it, that she was finally being listened to and being put first; the wounds began to heal themselves. What would leave me trapped in a severe depression, crying into my pillow and wishing for my life to be over, began to no longer have the same effect. It felt as though she was thanking me and most importantly, giving me her trust.
If I had the chance to speak to my younger self, I would tell her not to feel as though her dreams had been snatched from her little arms. That they weren’t unreachable but were in fact waiting for her to take the steps towards them. I would tell her that she did more than a good job, is worthy of her dreams and always has been. I would tell her to spread her wings and fly.
