A Lifetime of Distractions

 The little girl I am sitting with today is not new.

She has been with me my entire life.

Although I began doing inner child work more than thirty years ago, I never reached this hidden place inside of me. I found many wounded parts. I uncovered layers of grief and loss. I learned compassion for the child I had been.

But this part remained tucked away, patiently waiting.

Looking back, I can see something about myself with remarkable clarity.

I became a master of distraction.

Relationships.

Raising my children.

Building a career.

Helping others heal.

Always another responsibility.

Always another purpose.

Always another reason to keep moving.

I wasn’t consciously running from my pain.

I didn’t even know what I was avoiding.

The distractions were not intentional. They were simply how I survived.

It wasn’t until about eight years ago that I began to witness the deeper trauma that had quietly shaped my life. Little by little, the walls that had protected me began to soften.

Since then, life has invited me into a different kind of surrender.

One by one, I have let go of the distractions.

The attachments.

The identities.

The beliefs.

Everything that stood between me and the truth.

What once felt like loss, I now understand as an invitation.

Today there are very few places left to hide.

There are no distractions loud enough to drown out her voice.

There is only the two of us.

She carries the fear.

I bring the willingness to stay.

It is not comfortable.

Some days it feels unbearable.

Every instinct still whispers to look away, to become busy, to find something—anything—that will carry me somewhere else.

But I know now that healing does not live in distraction.

It lives in presence.

The only way I can free this little girl is not by running from her pain, but by sitting beside her until she knows she is no longer alone.

I cannot heal by going around the wound.

I can only heal by walking gently through it.

The Truth Still Lives

 Today the pain is loud.

It reaches beyond my body and touches places that have been waiting a lifetime to be seen. Physical pain has a way of opening doors I didn’t even know were still locked. Behind them lives a little girl who learned far too early that her body was not entirely her own.

As I sit with the pain, memories do not always arrive as photographs. Sometimes they arrive as sensations, as fear, as a story written in my nervous system rather than in my mind.

My rights as a child were violated.

I was not allowed to have a voice. I was not allowed to have needs. Feelings were dangerous. Even tears could invite punishment. Fear became my first language, and silence became the safest place I knew.

I believe something happened to me when I was very young. I cannot point to a memory or prove it with certainty. What I know is what my body has carried for decades—the fear, the shame, the feeling of being disconnected from my own body. Those sensations have spoken long before words ever could.

For years I wondered why I felt ashamed of something I could not name.

Now I understand that children often carry emotions that never belonged to them.

I also spent much of my life believing I had failed my sister.

I carried guilt that was never mine to carry. Yet when I look back with gentler eyes, I can see that my trust was broken. She lied to get me into trouble. She took things that belonged to me. She often positioned herself as the victim, and somehow I accepted the role of the one who had failed.

That burden followed me into adulthood.

It is only now that I am beginning to lay it down.

My brother never left me with that same confusion. I never knew him to intentionally cause harm to me or to anyone else. His presence reminds me that not every relationship was built on fear.

I also remember believing I was selfish because that was the message I absorbed from my mother.

But how can a child be selfish when she never asks for anything?

The contradictions have taken years to untangle.

Slowly, patiently, the scattered pieces of my life are finding one another. The picture is becoming clearer, even when it hurts to see.

The deepest truth is not that I was broken.

The deepest truth is that I adapted in order to survive.

I grew to love my sister.

I grew to love my parents.

In time, I forgave them all.

But love does not rewrite history.

Forgiveness does not ask me to deny what happened.

The truth still lives.

And finally…

So do I.

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.