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.

Feeling Caged

 If you had met my parents or seen our home when I was a child, you might have thought we were the perfect family.

My mother stayed home and kept the house immaculate. My father was a successful contractor who built a beautiful two-story house that others admired. From the outside, everything looked picture-perfect.

But appearances can be deceiving.

Our home was filled with unspoken rules.

No noise.

No mess.

No disturbing Mom.

No upsetting Dad.

There was little freedom to simply be children.

Fear lived quietly in our house. The threat of punishment was always close by. Looking back, I cannot remember anything I did as a child that would have warranted the fear we lived under. It was never really about us. It was about my mother’s perfectionism and the shame that hid beneath it, and my father’s temper, which, once unleashed, could not be contained.

We learned early that our feelings, needs, and authentic selves were safer hidden away.

When I finally left home, I believed freedom would surely follow. I thought my life would begin the moment I escaped that house.

But the cage came with me.

It had been built long before I knew it existed.

Over the past thirty years, I have done a great deal of healing. Much of that old cage has fallen away. Yet I can still feel the little girl inside me who fears punishment.

Those roots run deep.

But roots can be loosened.

And I trust that, in time, even these will release.

Holding on to the Past

 Punishment was familiar in childhood.

The belt was not used often, but the threat of it was always present. Fear became a way of life. My parents were the punishers then, but somewhere along the way, I took over the job myself.

I grew up believing I was somehow bad—unworthy of love or goodness. That belief followed me into adulthood. I became my own harshest critic, judging myself relentlessly, carrying shame that was never mine to carry.

Recovery began to soften me. Slowly, I learned the language of self-compassion. Little by little, I discovered what self-love looked like.

Yet tonight, I asked myself a difficult question:

Does the little girl who believed she deserved punishment still live in me?

To my surprise, the answer was yes.

The frightened little girl who believed she was bad and deserved to suffer. Even as I learned to love myself, she remained hidden, quietly carrying the old story.

I feel her. 

Though I’ve forgiven my parents for the mistakes they made and forgiven myself for my own mistakes, my little girl still hides behind pain. My job is to comfort her. I’m certain that she will let go of the pain when she’s ready. In the meantime, I’ll continue to let her know she is safe and loved.

You Can Leave Home But Home Leaves With You

 I will be honest when I say that, as a child, I felt something close to hatred toward both of my parents. 

Even writing those words stirs guilt in me. But feelings do not disappear simply because we wish them away.

I lived for the day I could leave.

I dreamed of freedom.

Freedom from the rules.

Freedom from the punishment.

Freedom from the fear.

As soon as I graduated from high school, I wanted out. College held little interest for me then. All I wanted was a place of my own. I believed that once I walked out that door, my life would finally begin.

And in many ways, it did.

But what I did not understand was this:

I took my childhood with me.

The fear.

The shame.

The beliefs I had formed about myself and the world.

I left the house, but the house had not yet left me.

Life brought both beauty and heartbreak. There were many good years. I had the white picket fence, two children, three dogs, and a successful husband. From the outside, it looked like the life I had always wanted.

Yet beneath it all, old wounds were quietly shaping my choices. I sabotaged myself in ways I did not understand. The pain of childhood echoed through my relationships, especially my marriage.

It wasn’t until recovery and therapy that I began to see the truth.

My past was not behind me.

It was living through me.

And once I understood that, healing could finally begin.