One of the processes that I have found quite confronting and challenging is connecting to the inner child deep within me. As someone who has really always been very maternal and have loved spending time amongst children and little ones I had not anticipated finding this difficult. But when starting this process and exploring the concept of the inner child it just felt so foreign and unnatural to me. I found I had no connection to my past or the little girl inside me and I started to come to understand that some of this need to care for others came from the void inside me as well as from my maternal instincts.
When I first started exploring the idea of the inner child and trying to connect to the little girl that exists within me I felt lost and like it was something that would just not be possible at all for me. As an adult I was feeling lost in my life, lost in myself and very disconnected from self and those/the world around me. I could sit and look through photos of me as a child, photos of me even as a baby and feel nothing at all for her. There was even a photo of me only two or three months old, I found myself studying the photo unable to connect to her, seeing her as a stranger or even someone who was not real. The total disconnect from her lead to me also almost on instinct looking for her flaws, trying to find what was so wrong about her, because deep down inside I believed that I was already bad or wrong. The most I could connect to was to feel upset for the things that I knew were coming for that little child, a wish to protect her but knowing I couldn't. Even with this, still deep inside me it felt as though she deserved everything that was to come just as I believed I deserved everything that had happened to me. Because I am innately wrong or bad or deserving of punishment in some way.
I could look at childhood or baby photos of friends or family and connect to how innocent, precious and beautiful they all are. I could spend time with the young children in my family, take care of them and see how deserving they truly were of love and care, how innocent and in need of nurturing and protection they were. But when faced with photos of myself as a little child I could not feel or see any of this. I just felt like she was already tainted by the darkness that is to come in her future, that there already must have been something black and rotting at her core. I think part of the difficulty for me is that as a child I was in such a sympathetic nervous system response (fight/flight/freeze) that now as an adult I do not remember very much of my experiences as a young child or throughout school. Its therefore hard for me to think or connect to the inner child within me or look at photos of her because she doesn’t seem real and I have very little or even no recollection of being her.
In an effort to try and connect to her, this little girl that I was, that still exists somewhere deep inside me, I went back through photos and found a whole selection from new born all the way through childhood and I decorated my home with them. I put them up in my bedroom, the bathroom and kitchen. I displayed her throughout spaces I would spend time every day, spaces I would look upon her multiple times a day, places I wouldn’t be able to avoid catching glimpses of her. For a long time, in fact even for months and months, she decorated the walls and cupboards of my home but I felt nothing at all for her. Like she was just some random little child that had no connection to me. Almost as though she was an actress just posing for a photo to fill a frame or playing a character not a real person, not me. As time went on I even began to look upon her and feel a sense of hatred for her. All the faults I see in myself I could see in her, even at just a few months old. I knew there must have been something really wrong about me even back then as a little baby. It was the explanation I needed to justify how I felt now about myself, to explain what I have gone through and to make sense of life and how I have gotten quite as lost along the way as I have been.
Then over time things started to shift little by little. As I got more familiar with seeing her every day, to looking into her eyes and asking her to meet with me. Apologising to her for the things we had been through since I was her, asking for her forgiveness for the way I treat us both now. Through really trying to accept and bring her into my home and into my consciousness I started to be able to see the beauty in her little face. I started to see the cheeky look in her eyes. I could see the joy in her face as she posed at the beach. I could begin see the innocence in that little baby. I started little by little to be able to accept that there was nothing wrong or dark or rotten about that little child, she was in fact a source of light, innocence and beauty as each and every one of us are when we enter this world. I started to be able to believe and truly understand that there is nothing wrong with that sweet innocent little baby but that instead there has been layers upon layers of darkness, dirt and weight that have been placed upon her dulling and hiding that light that lies deep inside her. Even with having been able to gain and hold this understanding about this little girl and being able to see the positives and light in her, beginning to truly deeply understand that everyone is born as a source of light, I have not emotionally been able to connect with this or her yet. I have stopped seeing her with judgement and negativity, I have stopped searching her for faults or for what was so wrong but I haven’t yet been able to connect with her being me. This hasn’t been an easy process and at times I still find it hard to see these positive things in her, but deep down I know they are true.
As time has gone on, through focusing and giving space to make these moves towards connecting with her I have been able to hold awareness for how much I still feel like a little child myself. I think that connecting to this feeling of still being a child myself is what is truly the key to connecting to her, to the little child inside, to the little girl in my photos. I might not be able to see the child in the photos as me, but I can feel her inside me. I might not be able to remember being her and living through her life but I do know I still feel as though I am her now, I might be older and have aged physically but I’m still her in more ways than I had realised. And I very much still have the unmet needs for unconditional love, care and acceptance that she had. I can connect to feeling lost as an adult. In actuality it really feels like I am still a young little child trying to do adult things and exist in an adult world, just feeling so afraid and overwhelmed. I feel like a little 4 or 5 year old trying to navigate having a job, cooking, cleaning, money and like these are just too big and too complicated for me as such a small child. I feel like a child who is terrified of the monsters under the bed, but the monsters have grown and are all around in this big wide world but there are no longer any adults here to turn the lights on and protect me. I’m expected by those around me and society to be able to do that for myself by now but I have no idea how. This has been a really important awareness and acceptance for me to come to, because you would not treat this terrified little child with aggression, frustration and punishment so why should you treat yourself in these very harsh ways. That little girl needed love, care and nourishment to grow into an adult and face all the things in the world around her, and so I need these same things to be able to raise the little girl inside me to be able to face the world as the adult I am.
Once I connected to this sense of still being such a little child myself trapped inside this adult frame/vessel, I started to feel drawn to her in ways I never had before which have in turn helped me to connect further to these feelings. I don’t feel truly and deeply connected to her yet, the negatives and trauma still at times cloud my mind but I can feel that it is something which with work and time I am capable of in the future. I have felt moments of wanting to embrace creativity to connect with her, which I find tricky to navigate through a perfectionist and never good enough nature that I have for years embodied. But in feeling called and drawn to representations of this little girl within, I have turned to pick up a pencil and sketch, to connect to her through pouring my thoughts into writing or even using cross-stitch to connect to the pain and sense of loss of childhood we both share. I at times have found myself sketching mother and child, feeling drawn to the care and love that I feel in creating these, that I can feel that little child deserves and that I know I want to work to be able to show to this little girl and with time myself.
Through this process of really trying to connect to her and becoming in touch with the feelings in me for feeling so lost, little and overwhelmed I have really connected to the lost little girl that I was and still very much am. It is still a learning and growing process for me to nurture and raise this little girl within and to learn to care for myself and her as we are one. I do still find it truly difficult to hold onto this when moments of difficulty strike, and have to work hard to remember that she and I both deserve, love, care, acceptance, to be nurtured and nourished. But this does now hold more power for me than it ever has previously. Through connecting to this little girl and to these feelings I have started to feel the flicker of hope in self, as though a tiny little shoot of life and love has broken through all of the dirt and darkness, as though the light that is within me has started to come to life. I know there is still work for me to do ahead. I don’t underestimate the challenges there will be in holding on to this and working to stay true to this little girl and everything I am learning about myself. But I do now know with every fibre of my being that there is nothing more important to me than protecting that little girl. Than nurturing this little shoot into a beautiful strong tree and in protecting this flicker of a light so that it can become a burning flame that can never again be buried or extinguished. I know that nothing feels more true to me than in raising and connecting to this beautiful little child inside.
