Start over, even in the smallest way
Right now, wherever you are, whatever you are in, you carry within you all the different versions of yourself you've ever been. Your physical body follows a linear path of time and growth and maturing but inside you? In your soul? At the core of your being? Time isn't so linear, and everything you've experienced, at all the ages you experienced them, live within you. That's why when you remember something specific, you can feel as if you are still right there in the moment - smells, sights, sounds, and sensations of all kinds can take you back in time instantly. There's you at three years old, falling over and being held by a parent. There's you at five years old, starting school and trying to make friends. There's you at twelve, fighting with your sibling and feeling left out. There's you at fifteen, discovering that the world is much more complicated than you thought when you were five and trying to make friends at school.
The years of childhood, from way before you were born until you bloomed into adulthood, particularly before you turned eight years old, are also the years were your belief systems and structures within you about the world, God, yourself, how things work and your place in it all, were most deeply formed and built. It seems ironic that the years you have the least control over are the ones that dig down the deepest. But there is hope, always.
It's not so much that you grow up and leave behind everything that happened to you and everything that you've done. We like to think that time always marches forward and what is in the past is no longer part of us now. But you and I, we know that's not true.
Pema Chödrön said:
"Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know."
This is true of both joy and pain alike. Inner child work is equally about learning to be more open and receptive to the joys, nourishment, and delight of just being; of cultivating that child-like wonder and awe, faith and love, as it is about healing child wounds, trauma and damaging narratives, fixed mindsets and nurtured biases.
Jesus said:
"I tell you that unless you change and become like little children, you won't even enter the Kingdom of Heaven! The greatest in the Kingdom is whoever makes himself as humble as this child. Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me…" *
And then he said:
"Let the children come to me, for heaven's kingdom realm is composed of beloved ones like these! Listen to this truth: No one will enter the kingdom realm of heaven unless they become like one of these!" *
And if heaven is a here-and-now reality that we can live ourselves into, then my friend, let your inner child come to you, too.
When you engage your inner-child-like faith, when you allow it to open your heart and teach you what you need to know, unlike pain and heartache and trauma, it will never go away - there is always more for you to learn and grow, there is always room for you to bloom and be new.
Tell your dear younger self that they are welcome, they are safe, and you are ready, finally and at long last, to let them speak, to let them be, to let them play, to let them heal.
Mindful Prompt: Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know… until we learn how we are pulling back instead of opening up, closing down instead of allowing ourselves to experience fully whatever we encounter." Pema Chödrön.
From this week’s series titled "Inner Child Like Faith", with a subscription, in the App.
Written by Liz Milani
Instagram: @thepracticeco
