Healing My Inner Child

I’ve been waiting for the light to shine on me. For the man to complete me. To make me feel complete because of his presence. I’ve been waiting for everything to come from the outside, in order to fix my inside.

With every relationship, every experience, every pain, I’ve grown.

I’ve learned.

I’ve healed.

I wish I could heal without the catalyst of pain, but it seems that pain sets things on fire. And with that fire has come clarity for me: Not only do I need to stop looking outside for things to fix my inside, but more importantly, I hold everything I need to complete myself, within myself. I have it all. All the tools I need. All the comfort I need. All the fixing I need can come from me.

The light shines from inside me to the outside. 

We each have everything we need to be whole, healthy, complete, inside ourselves. And once we find the path to deep healing, deep down to our inner child, our shadows, our bottom-most pain, we are able to hold those wounds with love and warmth and grace. This allows ourselves to stop searching outside ourselves for comfort, soothing, distraction, healing.

I’ve been given the gift of growth-through-pain quite often the past few years. Instead of shutting down and going to bed and not getting up, like I felt like doing, I have dug deep. Then deeper. Excavating the deepest part of my soul. Trying to figure out why I am the way I am, what makes me, me. How to be better. How to feel better inside my skin. 

I thought I’d healed my darkest wounds. The holes of abandonment. The soft places that always sought comfort in a relationship. In outside validation.

But the gift of dating after divorce has allowed me to explore myself: what I want in a partner, who I am in a relationship.

I realized I am always on alert for when my partner will leave me. I analyze every word, looking for deeper meaning. Looking for the timeline he’s on- when he thinks the relationship will be over. I exhaust myself, working to sense danger, working to stabilize the connection, working to keep myself from being blindsided, working to manage someone else’s emotional landscape.

That isn’t love. 

That’s self- protection.

I have heard people talk about “healing your inner child.” I was like, well that sounds like bullshit. What’s an inner child?

But now I get it. I really get it. 

Here’s what I did. I imagined myself at the age when I was catapulted into the abandonment wound. I imagined 7 year old me, the little girl who used to be me. I imagined the circumstances around this trauma. I thought about what I wished would have happened when I was seven- I wished someone would stay with me, hold me. That’s what I’ve been searching for in every relationship my whole adult life. Someone to stay. Someone to hold me. I imagined Adult Me doing those things for Child Me, holding her to my heart, never letting her go. It sounds weird and woo woo, I get it. But something changed. Something worked. I went through this whole exercise of being there for my younger self, and somehow it helped me feel so wildly different now, as an adult version of myself. 

I had so much clarity and calm. I realized something so profound- that all my healing needs to come from within me. I can’t rely on anyone else to heal me. I can’t keep going into relationships depending on my partner to stay in order for me to be regulated and whole. I have to be that within myself FIRST, and then go into a relationship. And no matter what happens in the relationship, I will have everything within myself to stay regulated and calm. Whether he stays or leaves. 

And I realized, now I have the capacity to enjoy the relationship. I have the ability to exhale. I have the chance to show up without the constant work of potential freak out, waiting for him to leave. 

I can’t even express the relief. I have never had such a sense of deep calm. 

And I know now, this is what healing looks like for me. Not fixing. Not striving. Not waiting to be chosen or stayed for. 

Just this: being here.

Holding myself steady enough to love without bracing. Soft enough to receive without fear. Whole enough to stay, no matter who comes or goes.

The light I was waiting for didn’t arrive. 

It turned on.