Seeing the World as Soft and Kind

 For much of my life, fear won.

It controlled my choices.

It kept me small.

It convinced me that something bad was always waiting around the corner.

But today, even when fear tries to bully me, it doesn’t get the final word.

I have learned about neuroplasticity—the way the brain and nervous system can influence both emotional and physical pain.

For the first half of my life, the pain was mostly emotional.

I had to dig myself out of the trenches of self-hatred again and again, until I slowly learned to love myself.

Then came the physical pain.

That journey has not been easy either.

I still have difficult days.

But something inside me has changed.

I know now that fear doesn’t win.

Only love wins.

Everything else is the story fear has been telling me.

Perhaps much of it was created by the mind of a little girl who learned very early to be frightened.

She believed the world was dangerous.

She believed she had to protect herself.

She believed she wasn’t enough.

But She is learning that she doesn’t have to live in fear anymore.

She can choose love.

And so can I.

Again and again.

No matter what the day brings.

Love wins.

Facing the Boogeyman

 I’ve mentioned several times that I was raised in a home where fear was used to control us.

Fear was the bogeyman.

I learned to anticipate, brace, and walk carefully through life, always waiting for something bad to happen.

Now, all these years later, I find it interesting that the old fear has shown up again through my physical pain.

The details are different, but the feeling is familiar.

As a child, I feared punishment.

Today, I fear pain.

Would it come tonight?

Would it get worse?

Would I be able to sleep?

But something is changing.

As I move forward, my fear of physical pain has begun to lessen.

It isn’t gone yet, but I can feel it losing its grip.

Maybe the fear itself is older than the pain.

Maybe it is time to face the bogeyman.

Not fight him.

Not run from him.

Just turn around and look.

I can say to the little girl inside me:

I know you’re afraid.

You’ve been afraid for a very long time.

But you’re not that little girl anymore.

You’re safe with me.

I can feel pain without believing I’m in danger.

I can feel fear without obeying it.

Perhaps the bogeyman loses his power when we finally turn on the light.

And maybe it’s time to leave the light on.

The Mother Wound

 One of the deepest wounds a child can carry

is the mother wound.

A child needs safety.

Nurturing.

Gentle guidance.

Someone who notices when she is afraid.

Someone who listens when she has something to say.

Someone who makes her feel,

You are loved.

You are safe.

You matter.

My mother didn’t know how to give me those things.

For a long time, I thought the biggest wounds from my childhood were the beatings with a belt…

and the walking on eggshells.

The constant awareness of what might upset my mother,

because if she became angry,

my father would become angry too.

So I learned to be careful.

I learned to watch.

To listen.

To anticipate.

To keep myself small.

But today, I see something deeper.

Perhaps the greatest wound wasn’t only what happened to me.

Perhaps it was what I didn’t receive.

The nurturing.

The protection.

The gentle mothering.

The feeling that my needs mattered.

When a child’s needs aren’t met,

she doesn’t simply leave those unmet needs behind when she grows up.

She carries them.

They can shape how she loves.

How she attaches.

How she sees herself.

How much she gives.

How little she asks for.

How easily she believes she is responsible for everyone else’s feelings.

And sometimes,

we spend our adult lives trying to find what we couldn’t find as children.

We look for love.

For approval.

For safety.

For someone to finally tell us,

“You’re enough.”

For me, those wounds became tangled with codependency, addiction, and the ways I learned to abandon myself while taking care of everyone else.

I don’t say that to blame my mother.

I say it because I am finally willing to tell the truth about what the little girl needed.

She needed a mother who could make her feel safe.

She needed to be comforted.

She needed to have a voice.

She needed to know that having needs didn’t make her difficult.

She needed to know that love didn’t have to be earned.

The mother wound isn’t healed by pretending it never existed.

It began to heal when I finally stop abandoning the little girl who carried it.

When I turn toward her instead of away.

When I listen.

When I protect her.

When I remind her:

You matter.