Inner Child

It seems fitting that my 96 year old aunt waited until the day I finished my final novel edit to pass away. She was that kind of person, always thinking of others. Some time after we got the news, I found myself reminiscing about her. While I hadn’t seen her in a long time, my memories of her were very clear and full of gratitude.

My aunt was that rare woman who could make you feel like you were the most important person in the room. The picture above is from my fourth birthday. That joy in her face was just who she was. When she spent time with me and my cousin that day, she wasn’t one of those adults who was “too adult” to play with us. If we were using the dining room table as our fort, she would climb right under it to be there with us. To say that her inner child guided her life was an understatement. She understood that innocent joy that children seem to know. She also knew what was important in life. She laughed with abandon. She cried easily. And she was honest in a way a child is. She could look at your shirt and tell you that your boobs were not the same size. I kid you not.

I am super grateful that I was loved by her and that she taught me what love looked like. She was never someone who asked, “What’s in it for me?” She gave with her whole heart. She never did anything halfway. Over the last few days, I’ve come to realize that even in death, she was still trying to teach me things.

I say that I’ve been on this journey with my inner child for the last year, but I think I’ve been trying to get back to that place of joy and innocence for a long long time. And I can’t say that I’ve been successful. The adult part of me often wants to meet a deadline, work, work, work, get it done. But she always understood the present and the beauty of it. When she talked with you, she was 100% there with you. She wasn’t thinking about what she had to do later or the myriad of errands that were still waiting for her. No, she was there, listening to you talk about whatever. She really lived the now. And because she lived the now, now has become forever.

The Girl Who Survived

It was only supposed to be catching up, shooting the breeze, chit chatting. Under no circumstances was I going to do soul retrieval AGAIN! No way, no how. It was too hard. But by the end of that phone call with my shaman, I was in soul retrieval. . .AGAIN. If I had listened real closely, I probably would have heard my inner child laughing. For the last couple months, she had fully manifested in my heart and in my life. Since January, I felt like she had been guiding the whole show. That’s right. My higher self was a three-year-old.

Before the live session began, I was setting intentions for the next month. I told my shaman that I really wanted to connect and honor this three-year-old part of me—the one who had her own mind, her own way of doing things. Instead of agreeing with me, he said, “It’s important to also honor the girl who survived. She’s the hero of your story.” I bristled a bit. Well, maybe not just a bit. It was hard to honor her. If I did, then I’d have to accept all the bad things that had happened to me as part of my herstory. I didn’t say anything, but a part of me knew that he was right.

During the live session, I saw a little girl who was about three years old. She was living with people who I knew were not her parents. I understood immediately what her situation in life was and that she was me in a past life. Her parents had clearly passed on, and her current guardians did not care about her well being. She was being beaten for sure. After the live session when my shaman and I talked about what I saw, he said, “Yes, no one cried for her.”

That day was the birth of this idea. I think the hashtag #MeToo was such a comfort for a lot of us. It was a way to feel not alone in that struggle. It was also a way to shine a light on things that no one talked about enough. But the thing is, after you’ve told your story, it doesn’t make everything better. You may still have pelvic pain. You may still be in therapy. You may still have problems in relationships. You may still ignore parts of your body. I realized that we, the survivors, needed to start honoring our own girl who survived. The four-year-old who endured abuse to survive. The teenager who couldn’t speak up for herself. The young woman who was people pleasing. All these selves survived so that you and I could heal now. Like my shaman said, they are the heroes of our collective stories.

Maybe we need new hashtags for the new ground we’re treading. I’m thinking #thegirlwhosurvived and #noonecriedforher. Only now, we’re not talking about someone else. We’re not talking about another person whom we should cry for, but instead, the parts of ourselves that need comfort, tears, kindness, acknowledgement. We’re talking about the parts of you that no one cried for. We’re talking about all the selves that survived so that you could be here now to heal. I don’t know if anyone will really understand this. All I know is, that I want us to start honoring these parts of our selves. I want us to embrace the girl who survived. I want us to cry for those parts of us that we have shut out. That’s the journey that I think we’re all on now.

Momochan Conquers the World

Sometimes, you don’t even realize what you need until you’re given it, and then, you wonder how you ever got along without it. At least, that’s how I felt. I didn’t realize how much I needed to know what I was like at the age of three—before all of life’s challenges blew me off course. For the great majority of my life, I was a bona fide people pleaser. It was my way of coping, fitting in, feeling safe. Let me tell you, you do that for too long and you begin to forget what your essence is. Yes, we are many things. We have many facets to who we are. But all of us, have an essence, that part of us our soul recognizes and says, “Ah! That’s me.”

I don’t know what made me ask my parents that day, but something in me needed to know. “Who you were at age three?” my mother asked. “Well, you definitely had a mind of your own.” “That’s for sure!” my father agreed. “You were very strong-willed,” she said. If people were going left, I wanted to go right. It wasn’t so much a matter of getting my way, but of moving to the beat of my own drum. My parents reminisced about how imaginative I was, how I told stories from a young age, how daring I was, and for me, it was like I was meeting a part of myself for the first time.

Over the next couple days, I couldn’t stop thinking about that girl, me as a three-year-old. How brave she was! How original! That simple act of being reacquainted with that part of myself really sparked something within me.

From that one conversation, I realized that I wasn’t showing up as me, the real me. Even as I scrolled through my Instagram accounts, I didn’t see any of that three-year-old reflected back at me. I had been trying too hard to be someone else, someone more acceptable, softer, and everybody’s friend. I realized that I was totally playing small in my life so that other people would like me. To be a strong woman, to have the courage to live my own creative life, felt too lonely. But that three-year-old gave me a lot of courage. And looking over some of the drawings I did in the past three years, I realized that she had been there all along.

The drawing you see here, I created in August of 2019. And it’s called Momochan Conquers the World. I feel like she’s my inner child manifested on paper. I’ve had a blog and a website in the past with that name, but I always changed it to make it more marketable or more who I thought I needed to be. But now, I feel like she’s finally arrived, and she’s not going anywhere.

Momochan Conquers the World reflects my essence. She’s a girl who is going to forge her own path, a girl who is going to create her own destiny. I feel like I’m finally settling into my own skin after years of trying to escape it. I realized that the three-year-old I was had been waiting for me all this time. And now, I finally see her.

The Girl and the Tiger

I had a dream the other night. I was a little girl again, and I was in a cage with a huge tiger. How I got there in the first place, I don’t remember. But I was crying. What else can you do when a ferocious beast is stalking its way toward you? As the tiger got closer, I huddled into a ball and covered my eyes. Eventually, I fell asleep. By the time I woke up, the tiger was sleeping right next to me. He had transformed

from a scary beast to my protector. I remember not feeling scared and I went back to sleep. I don’t know what it means but maybe it was from not eating carbs for a few days. My body was free to dream again. And my humble little picture makes me smile so much. Everyone should have a sleeping tiger. Don’t you think?