My First Inner Child Healing Experience 🦋

Why meeting your inner child is an important piece of self-healing. My very "woo" inner child healing session and a free gift to you later this week.

I did an inner child session with a client the other week and it reminded me of how much we take on as children. The confusion of growing up is scary enough, but add on a tough environment or other traumatic life experiences, it’s very hard to be a kid.

We almost can’t talk about self-healing without talking about the inner child.

There’s an inner child within all of us. It is part of the subconscious mind that has been picking up messages since before we even knew how to interpret them, and carried with us through every developmental stage along the way.

I had my first experience with inner child work back in 2021 when I did a clarity session around my menstrual cycle. It was very woo and it was the first time I had experienced something like this.

I actually forgot all about this session until I saw the movie “Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret” with some girlfriends the other weekend.

If you’ve never seen the movie or read the book, Margaret and her friends deal with getting their first period, among other life-changing events for pre-teen girls. As I was watching the scene where her friend gets her period for the first time and, terrified, calls on Margaret to go get her mother, all of these thoughts surrounding this menstrual cycle session came racing back to me.

In my session, after grounding myself and some brief meditation, my coach led me back to the moment I got my first period. 

I remembered being so scared. 

We were at my mom’s friend’s house, all of the adults were downstairs playing cards, and all of the kids were upstairs playing video games and coloring. I remember going to the bathroom up there and seeing the initial trail of blood in my underwear and absolutely panicking - my mom was all the way downstairs and there were boys in the room next to me. I didn’t know what to do. I was so overwhelmed and scared, so I stuffed as much toilet paper as I could in my pants and committed to acting as normal as I could so I could tell my mom on the car ride home. But as I sat watching the other kids play games, I felt enormous fear of the unknown and my eyes started welling up with tears. I raced down to my mom and stood awkwardly behind her for what felt like 30 minutes before the lump in my throat cleared and I whispered to her, “Can you come help me?”

That moment not only dictated my relationship with my menstrual cycle for decades, but it also made clear to me that I have been afraid to speak up and ask for help when I really need it for a long time. It is deep-seated in me to “do it alone” because asking for help is embarrassing. And that is so tough on a child.

I also waited to tell my friends that I got my first period until after a few of them told me they did. I pretended to get it in school one day. I lied to everyone for at least a year because I already felt like the odd girl out; I had crazy curly hair, glasses, and braces, I sucked my thumb for way too long, I was taller and wider than most girls in my class, I was an only child being raised by only one parent - I was humiliated enough, I couldn’t possibly add getting my period before everyone else to the list! The younger version of myself was riddled with embarrassment at all times and she just held onto it instead of asking for help.

I would say that my true inner child healing started happening when I began EMDR (eye movement desensitization reprocessing) therapy later in 2021.

We went back to some of my earliest memories where “little me” did not feel safe but did what she could so she could survive. This included changes in my body, fights with friends, and some very traumatic moments of physical and emotional abuse. 

It brought up memories of when I was too afraid to ask for help, told I needed to be seen instead of heard, conditioned to believe I had to please other people and jeopardize my own comfort, and made to feel guilty for doing what felt right for me. 

These were themes that followed me into adulthood and dictated how I handled life’s curveballs. They were huge factors in how I handled the death of my parents, basically ALL of my relationships, my career, and even how I valued myself and perceived the world around me.

I have since done other inner child work during meditation and journaling practices, but I’ve also had moments where my inner child has paid me a visit in my daydreams.

Below was an event that happened in February right as the new moon was switching over to Pisces season. I had been ignoring a creative piece of myself for so long and my inner child was screaming to be heard.

This work is hard but it is extremely worth it in the long run. Your inner child deserves to heal, to feel safe, to know that they were so brave for taking on what was not theirs to carry, and deserves to be thanked for getting you this far. Let them know you can take it from here.

Look for another email this week with what an inner child session looks like working with me plus a *FREE* meditation practice and journal prompts.

Sending you so much love and am here to support you! Always!