“Bless the poets, the workers for
justice, the dancers of ceremony, the singers of heartache, the visionaries,
all makers and carriers of fresh meaning—We will all make it through, despite
politics and wars, despite failures and misunderstandings. There is only love.”
― Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings: Poems
As I have said before, you cannot love anyone or anything else if you do not love yourself first. We all have that spark of creation in us. How incredible is that? How much do we honor that?
We have that pure, innocent, soulful little soul within us; our “Inner Child”, some call it. She can be a bit raggedy, and wounded, but she is soul that heals from moment to moment from being down here on earth. Sometimes she needs nurturing and she craves for us to love her, to listen to her, that a wounded abandoned child would. She is our Divine Feminine.
When she is nurtured, she nurtures us back. She carries within her, all our feminine ancestors and their knowledge and purpose and love. She is raw and instinctual. She was birthed with us, a strong filament of connectedness to the All, into this hard world, to keep our soul safe. No matter how hard the world is on us, she carries the spark of purpose for us. She knows what we cannot. No matter how wounded, she transforms, into the Old Wise One, when we need and need her. When she flourishes, we flourish. She is born with us and will pass with us, but she will be our core, life after life after lifetime. She is a rare and precious jewel.
When this precious soul jewel is wounded, she stays wounded until you acknowledge and give care and compassion to it. You could be lugging a dying child within you. This is a horrible image, but a real one. No matter how we distract ourselves, she whimpers within.
Not only does she whimper, she has childish tantrums, lacks trust, is wayyyy needy, is a people-pleaser , is a master-manipulator (that is what new babies are or they would never get fed, changed and attention.) A wounded inner child is fear-based ( hello, Carol!), emotion-shamed, and huge abandonment issues. (Remember, I was a throw-away baby and was given to a wonderful family who tried their best to help me survive. February 10th is my adoption anniversary-birthday. I carry HUGE Primal Wound issues I learned how to work on mid-life. This means physically, intellectually, emotionally and spiritually, that I have had many many issues and continue to work on them today…every day.)I had to examine the ways I was BE-ing. Here are some ways I learned to help heal my poor bedraggled little Inner Child.
I had to, first, find the ways I was affected and how hurt and how many kinds of hurt that my Inner child had. I have to tell you, that I did not get to the key trigger/reactions to having a wounded Inner Child. I began the hard work when I left my 19-year marriage, drug myself and my seven children through hell and high water in university. (My baby was 2 years old and I had had a brain bleed when he was 6 months old and had to recover from that... and, by gosh and goddess, I did. I took many psychology classes, women’s issues classes, and did the work on me that was required and as I discovered them. It was not until I retired, in 2005, that I retired, moved to Maine with my sweetheart, and spent two years, day and night, writing the story of my life. It was the most incredible gift I have ever given myself. The book started out, seriously, sketchy and I had no idea how to start it all, but I decided to make parts of my life into significant events; the ‘story’ of my being abandoned, being given to an older couple (thank you god, goddess, and the Universe) but, as I found out later, not adopted, merely a name change. Then my children, then University, then career, then one of the greatest gifts I could ever/never even imagine. (More on that in Feb when I hit my adoption-anniversary.)
When the two years was up and I was going through on about the 9th edit, I started to realize that I had the Primal Wound and how it had affected me. That last edit was going through and finding the places I had written textbook Primal Wound issues. As I did so, a mountain was taken off my shoulders. “I love you. I forgive you. I love me. I forgive me.”
If you ever want to really get in touch with your Inner child, at trigger, wounding, depth, write the story of your life. I will ever be so grateful to those who encouraged me to do so. The going through, sifting, knowing myself at this level connected me directly to my Inner child. Do it, try it, it is amazing work. I still work on that today. Once in a while, I will pull up my story and go through it again… so many ah ha moments.
Then, rather than remember all the negative things, I went through again and again and found my joy. Then, as well, after publishing, I moved into art, seriously, for me. I had taught art and used art therapy in my programs I wrote and used to retrieve troubled youth in troubled communities, and worked with pre-school children up through teaching collage classes, and running women’s circles. The secret to it all was that every wound I had helped me be better at what I did for a career. Most times, child, youth, adults did not even need to say the words that were so difficult to say. I knew them by heart and sight. As I ‘arted’, I gained better understanding of my inner workings and have, ever since, been connected to that Inner child at very deep and intimate ways. I understood why I have patterns and challenges I did. I learned self-compassion. I regained a sense of childhood wonder and expression of a healing Inner Child. I regained a sense of authentic Self.
Can you express your Inner child? Here is mine:
the background showed through well so I thought I might use that as I went along. I added more portrait pink,
suddenly she came alive, this Inner Child of mine. Once I get the eyes in, my Muse tends to take over, at times. This time, for sure.
I struggled with the nose. Baby's noses are puffy ( made for breast feeding ease) I was not happy with the nose even at the end.
She does look sad to me.... maybe she looks judgemental... maybe she is pssively waiting for me. I caught it enough for her message to me so I stopped before I tried to change her.
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