The Little Girl Still Waiting

 Today I could see, more clearly than ever, how the pain in my body is woven together with the pain of my childhood.

When the pain flares, it isn’t only my body that reacts. Something much older awakens. Helplessness. Fear. The feeling that something bad could happen at any moment.

As a child, I walked on eggshells. Every room carried the possibility of danger. I learned to read moods before I learned to trust my own. Home was never a place where my nervous system could truly rest.

Some days, I realize I am still walking on eggshells—only now it is around the pain in my body. I listen for every sensation. I brace for the next flare. I wait for the next wave of suffering, just as I once waited for the next emotional storm.

The body remembers what the mind wishes it could forget.

I have spent years talking to the little girl inside me. I tell her that she is loved. I tell her that I will never leave her. I promise that I will stand beside her, no matter what tomorrow brings.

And yet, if I am completely honest, the words do not always reach her.

Not because they are untrue.

But because what she needed was never simply reassurance.

She needed safety.

Even my grandparents, who loved me with all their hearts, could not give her that. Their love was real, but they could not change the world she had to return to. Love could soothe her for a little while, but it could not remove the fear that lived inside the walls of home.

The little girl discovered safety only when she was away from the house. Outside, she could breathe. Outside, her body softened. Outside, she could simply be a child.

But the little girl who felt trapped inside that house never truly left.

She is still there.

Not trapped in the past, but carried forward in the nervous system that learned to survive instead of relax.

Perhaps healing is not about convincing her she is safe with words.

Perhaps healing is patiently sitting beside the place where she is still frozen in time.

No rushing.

No fixing.

No asking her to move before she is ready.

Only staying.

Only loving.

Only becoming the steady presence she searched for all those years ago.

Maybe one day she will believe that the danger has passed.

Until then, I will remain beside her.

Bringing Up Old Trauma

This has been a painful week.

First, my beloved cat became very sick. I held my breath for days, afraid I might lose him. Thankfully, he pulled through.

Then, the very next day, my little bird Lucy became ill.

As I write this, I am waiting for the veterinarian to call. Deep inside, I already know what is coming. I know have to let her go.

It is bringing more than today’s grief.

It is stirring every goodbye my heart has ever known.

My thoughts return to my daughter, Jody. For eight years I watched addiction slowly pull her away from me. There were moments no mother ever forgets—moments of fear, helplessness, and heartbreak that still live quietly inside me.

Jody has been gone for twenty years, yet I wonder if my body is still carrying pieces of that trauma.

Perhaps that is little Lucy’s unexpected gift to me.

Not to create more pain, but to gently uncover the places that are still waiting to be held with love.

Learning to Validate Myself

 Whenever I was punished as a child, my feelings were never acknowledged.

My father would take out the belt and, in his rage, strike out at us children. No one talked about what had happened afterward. No one asked how we felt. No one offered comfort.

My mother often initiated the punishments, then disappeared. Her explanation was always the same: It was done out of love.

But there was never any acknowledgment that my father had lost control. There was never an apology. Never a soft place to land.

I realize now that something in me has been searching for that comfort ever since.

These years of living with chronic pain have brought that little girl to the surface once again. She has wanted others to understand how hard it is. She has longed for validation from doctors, friends, and anyone who might finally say, I see your suffering.

And yet, no amount of reassurance from outside ever seemed to ease what she was truly searching for.

Perhaps because what she needed was never simply validation of her pain.

She needed comfort.

She needed tenderness.

She needed someone to say, What happened to you mattered. Your feelings matter. You did not deserve to suffer alone.

Today, I am learning to give her what she never received.

I sit with her gently. I listen. I validate her feelings. I remind her that she is safe, loved, and no longer alone.

My language around pain is beginning to soften.

There have not yet been physical changes, but something inside me is changing.

And perhaps that is where healing begins.

Living in Survival

 It is becoming clearer to me just how deeply my childhood shaped my life.

For so many years, I lived from fear and survival. It was not a choice I consciously made; it was something I learned as a child. I was conditioned to live that way. Fear became as natural as breathing.

From the outside, much of my life looked beautiful. There were homes, relationships, children, creativity, and accomplishments. But beneath it all, I can see now how often the wounded child within me was running the show.

She was always searching for safety.

Sometimes she tried to find it through relationships. Sometimes through control. Sometimes through staying busy, helping others, creating, or carefully managing her surroundings. She did the best she could with what she knew.

Looking back, I can see how fear shaped many of my choices. Some of those choices brought pain—to myself and to others. I take responsibility for that. Recovery taught me the importance of honesty and accountability.

But it also taught me something equally important: grace.

Today, I no longer judge myself or the wounded child. She was not broken. She was surviving.

And survival, while necessary for a season, is not the same as living.

Perhaps that is the work before me now—not simply to survive, but to live. To move beyond fear and into trust. To let love, rather than fear, guide the rest of my story.

Facing Fear

 Because of the physical abuse I experienced as a child, the sensitive little girl inside me grew up afraid of physical pain.

I didn’t realize until a few years ago that I was still carrying that fear.

And then, almost as if my body was asking to be heard, the nerve pain arrived—first in my knees, and years later, in my bladder.

For a long time, I believed the pain was something to fix.

Today, I see something different.

I see a child who is thrashing because of fear.

I have faced fear before. I faced it when I entered recovery. I faced it when I began inner child work. I faced it when I allowed myself to grieve the losses that shaped my life.

And each time, I learned the same lesson:

The only way through fear is to face it.

I won’t pretend this is easy.

It isn’t.

This is a deep challenge. Perhaps my second deepest.

But somewhere inside, I know that the frightened little girl who has spent a lifetime bracing for pain can learn something new.

She can learn that pain is not punishment.

She can learn that fear does not have to lead.

And she can learn that she is safe.

I believe it is time.

Time to stop running.

Time to trust.

Time to walk through fear and discover what waits on the other side.

Inner Child Work

 There are days when the physical pain in my body feels overwhelming. On those days, I remind myself what it felt like when I first began doing inner child work.

I wanted to do it, but it terrified me.

At the time, I didn’t even know I had a wounded child inside me. I only knew that I had survived a difficult childhood. Meeting that little girl—and learning to listen to her—felt both sacred and frightening.

Many times, I wanted to quit.

But something deep within me knew this work was a gift God was placing in my hands, and so I kept going, one small step at a time.

Looking back, I can say without hesitation that inner child work changed my life. It softened my heart, transformed my relationships, and led me home to myself.

Today, I find myself standing at another threshold.

Once again, I feel deeply challenged.

I have come to believe that these physical struggles are directly connected to my nervous system—to a frightened child who still longs to feel safe. And so, once again, I am being asked to trust. To stop searching for answers outside myself and instead listen inward.

This path asks for surrender.

It asks for faith.

For today, I will simply breathe.

I will take one baby step at a time, trusting that, just as before, this journey is leading me somewhere beautiful.

Looking for Comfort Within

 This morning, I found myself visiting childhood feelings once again.

Yesterday, it was loneliness.

Today, I feel the little girl who lives inside me—frightened and hypervigilant, watching my bladder pain closely, always waiting for the next wave.

At this moment, I cannot quite reach her.

But I can promise her this: I will keep showing up.

With kindness.

With patience.

With reassurance.

I will give her what she never received as a child.

There was no one in my home to hold her after the punishments, no safe arms to help her make sense of fear. Except for her dog.

Her dog was her comfort, her refuge, her safe place in an unsafe world.

It is no surprise that I have turned to animals for comfort throughout my life. My pets have been faithful companions, offering the unconditional love I longed for as a child.

And yet, something has changed.

I love Winston, my cat, deeply. I am grateful for his quiet presence and the way he stays close to me. But I can no longer rely on that familiar feeling of reassurance in the same way I once did.

Somewhere along the path, I surrendered my attachments—even to the things that once brought me comfort and hope.

Today, I am learning something new.

The comfort I have searched for all my life can no longer come from outside of me.

It must come from within.

And perhaps that is the deepest healing of all: becoming the safe place my little girl has been searching for all along.