Meeting My Inner Child For the First Time, Again

How my most severe childhood wounds helped me discover the importance of trusting myself.

TW: This piece contains violent imagery, and references to domestic violence that may be triggering.

There’s a little girl inside me that has been quietly begging me to tell this story. I’ve learned not to ignore the cries of my inner parts, and to honor their needs. I know that suppressing various aspects of self can lead to emotional and mental dis-ease, to physiological disease. Nonetheless, when I received the energetic nudge to write about this, I became nervous because, well, I haven’t wanted to hurt anyone in my life. I recently shared my conundrum with a dear friend as we lay on the floor in late-night, candle lit conversation. “Can you write about it without being specific?” He asked me. “Perhaps,” I said … So without specificity, yet with some very real clarity, this piece is about how years after doing deep work reparenting my inner child, I found the crux of my childhood trauma …

I spent a lot of time in my life telling myself I was “strong.” Not just saying it, but really feeling it, being it. There were even moments during my much younger years when I often thought that because I didn’t feel pain the way others felt pain, it meant I had a superhuman strength they didn’t. Turns out, my heart was so fiercely protected I couldn’t feel pain at all, because I couldn’t let it in. I have done a lot of work on my heart, my psyche, my spirit, and on my being, to take those walls down and allow myself to experience the full spectrum of emotions. Anyone who knows me today knows how open and sensitive I am – it feels so good to feel (see many of my other pieces that refer to the depth of emotion and sensation I luxuriate in on the daily nowadays). 

It would have been weird to anyone on the outside, even those closer to the inside, to think that I needed protective mechanisms to shield me from my own pain. To be honest, it was weird to me when I discovered it. For all intents and purposes, my life was really great. My childhood was really happy. I grew up with loving parents who were very engaged in my life. They were supportive of my creativity, my education, my experiences. I’m so grateful that my parents are still alive, and for the present-day relationships I have with each of them. They are two of my greatest teachers, and as each of them are psychologists, teachers, podcasters, writers (my mother has penned 70 published books, and certainly many, many more that are yet to be published), they’re also two influential mentors along my vocational path. That said, in everything I’ve learned from them, I’d be remiss not to mention that they’ve also been some of the strongest examples of what not to do or be. While I can appreciate this polarity nowadays, and know that more than one thing can be true at the same time, it was pretty confusing for me as a kid. In fact, in retrospect, a lot was confusing for me as a kid, I just didn’t know how to express my confusion, or with whom I could share it  …

On the one hand, our household was bright, vibrant. We sang, we danced, we played instruments, made music. We read books, we discussed philosophical topics. We painted, we made furniture. We went to the beach, made sandcastles in the sand. We had puppies and kittens. We had lots of friends around.

And also …

When the friends weren’t around, and we were behind closed doors, they fought, they screamed, they cried, they yelled. They slammed doors. They broke things. They locked each other out of the house in the freezing cold, pouring rain. They said horrible things to each other. And worse …

And as they did, inevitably, one of them would yell, “Not in front of the kid!” while I stood two feet away. “I’m not the kid, I’m a human woman, a human being,” I’d think to myself, silently. Even at a young age, I knew how to use my breath to regulate my nervous system. Amidst the chaos, the broken plates, the screams, I’d breathe deeply, take myself into a meditative state, I’d be “ok.” Perhaps it was here I learned to “suck it up,” to “be strong.” Perhaps it was here I learned that boundaries weren’t important – I never stuck up for myself, never told them how I was feeling. Perhaps it was here I learned to put other people before me, at all costs – I always wanted to help them, perhaps even to fix them. 

I was what was referred to at the time as a “gifted child” (I don’t know if they use that terminology anymore; truly, don’t all children have innate gifts?). But they said it because I excelled in academics and in arts, and because of how I seamlessly functioned in the world. By the age of 3, I could hold a comfortable conversation with an adult. At age 7, I was a guest lecturer and taught a graduate level class on metacognition at UC Berkeley – yes, really. At age 10, I was asked to write a biography on one of my idols, and in a single afternoon I wrote a 75 page paper on Shirley Temple when the other students’ papers were around 5 pages each. To boot, I was often the lead in almost every school and community theater play. And while I loved being that kid, the weight of the world, of being the distraction from my parents’ behind-the-scenes dysfunction, was heavy as hell … I just didn’t let myself feel its weight. Though these words were never said to me, the energy I was subconsciously interpreting said, “Dance monkey, dance! Show the world that if you’re perfect, then of course we are perfect too – nothing could ever be happening in this household that isn’t perfect. Nobody has to know.” 

And so nobody knew. 

But I was haunted by this internal pressure: How could such a gifted kid not do the one thing she needed to do? How could she not save her home from violence? It obviously was not my job, but at that age, I had no idea. 

Like I said, I have spent a lot of time, years, reparenting my inner child. Helping her remove the proverbial boulders from her back, unburden the weight of the world from her, find safety in feeling, in letting emotions in and out. And of course, as I did that for her, my adult self found safety too. It has been, and continues to be, a beautiful journey, and to be honest, while I’m often engaging in ongoing parts work within myself, I’d thought the depth of it was behind me. Oh how funny these assumptions can be – it was only with the weight of the world removed from my inner child’s shoulders that I was able to see her. And I was in for quite a shock. 

The shock came by way of a beautiful, plant-filled Ayahuasca ceremony. Amidst the beauty, I was suddenly confronted with a grotesque image: It was me, at 7 or 8 years old, hung up on the wall by a rope around my neck. My limp, barely-breathing body had been beaten to a pulp. Little Evacheska was cut, bruised, bleeding. Her eyes were swollen shut, broken bones protruded from her skin. In this image of my younger self, I was almost unrecognizable. (Note: To be very clear, this type of physical abuse never actually happened to me, this was imagery inside a psychedelic container.) My years of work with this medicine, combined with my (thankfully) regulated nervous system, and all my clinical and shamanic training and tools have taught me how to navigate challenging imagery in ceremony, but nonetheless, I was shocked when I could calmly see such horrific imagery, and instead of being afraid, I was able to stay heart-centered, and be curious. And so I asked, “Why am I being shown this horrible image?” As I asked the question, I also imagined myself pulling this little girl down from the wall, and holding her in my arms. 

“Whatever you need, baby girl, you can do. If you need to scream, scream. If you need to cry, cry. I’ve got you, I’m here.” As I held her, rocked her, allowed space for her to express and emote, I began to realize why she was in that badly beaten condition: The system, my system, comprised of the subconscious self and the nervous system, doesn’t know the difference between directly-inflicted physical and emotional abuse, and witnessing abuse. When a child witnesses abuse, the witnessing is the abuse, and therefore the child herself endures the abuse. The gruesome image of the little girl I saw was illustrating how my system had stored the trauma of witnessing the atrocities that occurred in my childhood household. So much pain endured, that the only way for my subconscious to show me the pain I’d experienced as a young child, was through that image. 

I have never identified as a “survivor of domestic abuse.” I always thought what happened in my household while I was growing up wasn’t ok – for them. My narratives were: “It wasn’t ok what he did to her. It wasn’t ok how she behaved. That relationship wasn’t ok.” But until recently, I never said to myself, “It wasn’t ok for me. It wasn’t ok that they did that in front of me. It wasn’t ok that I witnessed it. I didn’t feel safe.” 

Learning I hadn’t felt safe in my childhood opened up a whole new world within me. Pieces of my life’s puzzle began to come together in ways I could never have imagined. The foundation of safety began with these words as I envisioned my present-day self holding my younger self: “You are safe here, with me. I will always keep you safe, I promise. And you can trust me … because I trust me to care for you as no one ever has before.” A sonic boom of light burst from my chest. The words hit every cell of my body. If I’d ever questioned the years of inner work I’d been doing on my path, there was no longer a question in me. I could not have built that trust without all the other bricks laid on this path. And the trust, that embodied trust, meant we – both she and I – are wholeheartedly safe with each other, forever. 

There’s a lot more to be said here – a lot more to be said about the forced strength I carried throughout so much of my young life; a lot more to be said around the ways I had to break down my own walls; a lot more to be said about the trust in myself that continues to be a point of exploration and growth, but I’ll save that for another piece. The net-net of this experience, however, is that in finally feeling safe enough to show me the depths of her wounding, my inner child helped me recognize the power of all the work I’ve done on myself over the past few years. That I am now capable of holding her, and myself, in all her vulnerability. 

MORE TO COME AT SOME POINT IN THE FUTURE …