Healing the Child to Heal the Adult?

 If you had a chance to go back one time in your life to give yourself as a child one piece of advice you know would be heeded, what would it be? At what age would you go back to? Is there a point in your life you consider a turning point?

If you’ve been following this blog you will remember I’ve been working with my friend, Eva, in her journaling workshops.  She holds them every weekend for survivors of abuse. Recently in the workshops we have been dealing with my inner child. I’ve found that I seemed to have had self-esteem issues already at a very young age. So, I think I need to go back and talk to me when I was in grade school.  7 or 8 might be a good age to talk to.  Maybe at that age I would be old enough to listen and understand, but still young enough for the changes to have an effect.

What would I tell her that could change my life?

I think I might tell her that it’s OK to be different from everyone else.  She needed to be told not to feel less than everyone, but instead to feel equal. My whole life I have felt different from everyone. Even as young as 5 and 6 I felt like an outcast among other people. I just didn’t fit in.

I would want her to feel free to speak her mind. She felt silenced and without a voice. I want her to know it’s OK to stand up and say what she feels, and what she wants and what she needs.

If I had the courage to say those things when I was 8 years old, I would have told my mother I don’t like Western movies and I wasn’t going to pretend to like them in order to please her.

Courage to speak would have made me stand up to my 4^th grade teacher. She picked on me because I wasn’t a sports crazed girl. I was a reader and a writer but not a physically active person.

I would have stood up to the mean girls in 6^th grade who were snobs if I had the courage to speak my mind. They needed to hear that I didn’t need their friendship if it meant being told how little I was worth because my parents were poor.

Maybe if I had enough courage in those instances in my younger years I would have been able to speak up in so many other similar instances later on in life. I might not have felt like a doormat around certain people. Maybe I wouldn’t have stayed in shadows or taken a backseat.

I might have had the courage and the confidence to let my true self shine through and show off my gifts instead of hiding them and being ashamed of them. Maybe I might have pursued the dream of having some of my writing and poems published when I graduated.  I didn’t have the courage or the confidence. 

If I had the courage to speak up I might have told my parents I was molested.  He was a cherished and loved leader in the religious group we belonged to. I was afraid to tell anyone because I felt I had encouraged it simply by being alone. Fear of punishment for myself kept my voice silenced. The community trusted him. I was a child. Who would they believe?

How many other times could I have changed my life for the better if I had only been unafraid to speak up?  Or confidence to know I would be believed?

My little person needed a voice and a shot of confidence through the years. With those gifts she might have flourished in a healthy manner.

What would you give YOUR little child to help your adult person?

(And for those wondering… yes the picture is me.  It is my senior picture from 1988.)