Tag: inner-child

I WISH YOU STAYED

For the first post of 2026, I’m starting things off a little differently. No song today. This is most likely a one time thing, but in case you’ve been reading along and happened to notice, I just wanted to make sure I clarified.

I went to a Reiki session a few weeks ago and something really interesting happened in the middle of it. And it’s something that has been the driving force of the last few weeks of my life. I am going to do my best to try to explain it, and I hope it lands. If not, at least it’s here (shrugs).

I was on the table, warm and cozy, eyes covered, in a very serene setting. And I guess it was about 5 minutes before the healing session was over that it happened. Very clearly, a scene from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind started playing, as if it was on a projector screen in front of me. It’s one of my favorite movies. And if you haven’t seen it, this post is going to spoil it for you. My apologies.

In short, the movie is about a recently split couple, Joel and Clementine. Their relationship is slightly tumultuous and after they break, Clementine goes to a specialized clinic to have Joel erased from her memory. After a visit with friends, explaining his most recent interaction with Clementine, his friends tell him what she’s done. He goes to the clinic to see what it is and decides to do the same. The process before the actual procedure is to simulate the memories of Clementine and “map” where each memory lives in Joel’s brain. Once they map all of the memories, they can schedule the procedure to go in and zap each one while Joel is asleep. Except in the middle of his procedure, Joel realizes that he doesn’t want to erase her. He starts chasing her through the memories and hides her in places “off the map” so that they can’t erase her. The techs have to call the boss for help as they’ve never seen anyone do this before. The boss realizes what Joel is doing and ends up completing the procedure himself.

One of Joel’s last memories is the first time he met Clementine. It was at a beach party in Montauk in the middle of winter. The beachfront homes were all empty and Clementine persuades Joel to break into one and pretend it’s theirs. She’s not at all apprehensive about breaking and entering, but it makes Joel uncomfortable. She explores the house while he stays in the foyer downstairs. He says he’s leaving, and she says “so go”, and he does. Before the memory gets erased, Joel and Clementine speak about how they both wished that he stayed.

There’s a reason why I’m telling you all of this, give me a moment…

This scene is what played in the middle of my Reiki session. You can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AD8g0LB89bU

I wish you stayed.

At first, I couldn’t figure out what it was trying to tell me. I came home and I was in a daze. I listened to that scene the entire ride home. Every time it finished, I restarted it. I felt like I was on the outside watching myself. And that is seriously how I’ve felt, in one way or another, ever since.

Once I got home, I decided to dig in as much as I could. What was this scene trying to tell me? I worked with some shadow prompts to try and help crack this code, because I was deeply intrigued while also completely confused. Eventually, I got there. That scene, essentially, was me talking to me. The whole scene.

I wish you stayed. I wish I’d stayed too. I wish I had stayed too, I do. What if you stayed this time?

I’ve written a lot here about self-abandonment. It was basically my favorite thing to do. And after years of doing that like it was my job, I stopped. What if I stayed this time? It has been so goddamn uncomfortable. Choosing to stay with myself when my first instinct is to run has been incredibly difficult. I am uncomfortable about 95% of the time. The quiet moments are the hardest. I have never paid so much attention to what I’m feeling before. When I’m busy, I’m fine, but I’m also exhausted. I can’t be busy all the time. And this is necessary. I get it now. And believe it or not, I finally see a tiny bit of progress. It’s minimal, but it’s there.

This year absolutely destroyed me. Everything felt unbearable as I was breaking down. I cried more tears than I ever thought I could. It has been heartbreaking to realize how much damage I had done to myself. I thought that I got through the hard part already, but I had no idea just how buried all of this shit was. There was a lot of grief this year. And I had to make my way through it. I did not consciously sign up for this, but sometimes things happen that we can’t explain and that’s just the way it is.

The saddest part of all of it is that I really believed that I didn’t matter. That I was just here to serve everyone else without any regard for myself. Constantly beating myself up and making myself smaller to fit in places that couldn’t hold me anyway. Finding out what I’m actually feeling versus throwing it under a blanket feeling, like “anxiety” or “stress”, so I could suppress it further has been extremely eye opening. The way I speak to myself has changed. I’m breaking deeply rooted patterns of self-loathing. It’s a slow process, but I’m staying. As I’ve said before, some days I can feel the changes, and some days I’m crying on the bathroom floor. I am doing my best not to completely fall apart. I stay with it, let it move, and do my best to go about my day.

2026 has to be the year I choose myself. I have backed myself into a corner where I have no choice. And I have some really tough moments where it feels like the thoughts are eating me alive. Telling me that I’m not worthy and that I don’t deserve to move forward. I know they’re not true, and it’s taking me less time to combat them, but in the moment, I want to run. Staying is crucial. Staying is key. Staying changes what comes next.

It’s been a long journey and it feels never ending. I look at myself a year ago and I know that things have changed, despite the moments where I feel like nothing has. I look for outside sources to validate my existence, I have done it all my life. My nervous system relied heavily on it, and learning to feel safe within and trust myself has been a whole lesson that I’m finally starting to understand. But it’s years of conditioning being broken so it’s taken me some time, more than I have patience for, to even take a tiny step. I’m doing it, but it’s weird and uncomfortable, and most days I hate it.

Anyway, if you’re going through it right now, don’t let it destroy you. Stay with it. Feel it, let it move through you, and breathe. I never saw myself in this place, but I’m here, still kicking and screaming, but here.

I wish you stayed. I wish I’d stayed too. I wish I had stayed too, I do. What if you stayed this time?

Anyway, wishing you peace in 2026. I won’t say happy, because we are all doing our best. But we deserve peace. And remember, that even when it doesn’t feel like it, it’s okay for you to change the narrative so that you can write the next chapter of your story.

Thanks for reading, I’m always here…

FIX YOU

when you try your best, but you don’t succeed, when you get what you want, but not what you need, when you feel so tired, but you can’t sleep, stuck in reverse…

The last three weeks have been incredibly heavy. My last post touched on the subject, but things actually got much worse before they finally started to get a little lighter. The good news is that as I’m writing I am standing on the very rocks that once pinned me down. My feet hurt, and I still don’t know where I’m heading, but I’m no longer buried, and that is enough for today.

At this point I’m not even sure what I thought would happen at the start of all this. I’ve written post after post about healing, sounding like a broken record, while barely noticing anything changing long enough to stick. Most days I have felt like a frying pan of scrambled eggs. But I really did believe I would have pulled myself together in a couple of months, healed, functioning, ready to roll. To say I was wrong is an understatement. Two and a half years later, everything finally landed in the last three weeks. Maybe that’s a good thing? Better late than never, I guess?

I have heard, countless times, that healing is not linear. And I’ll be honest with you, I really thought that meant that it’s different for everyone. What works for you doesn’t work for me and vice versa. But I see now that while that statement is true in that aspect, it also means it’s not linear within your own journey. Sometimes healing looks like a straight line on paper, but in real life it’s more like waking up in the middle of the night with your heart racing, telling your mind “Can you just let me dream please? Let me have this one moment.”

And then there are days like today, where I do all of the things I’m supposed to do, and end up in the dark, overwhelmed by a single letter in the mail or by memories I miss. Days like today where the sound of a familiar TV show feels like sandpaper on my nerves and every goddamn thing is bothering me. Healing is strange like that. There are moments where your heart flutters for no reason, moments where a song can pull you back to a bench watching the waves, and then moments where you’re on the bathroom floor wondering how you got here.

So what changed? I finally got sick of being in the same loop. I’ve been recognizing patterns for a while now, and something finally snapped. And I won’t lie to you, it has NOT been pretty at all. And I’m not going to sit here and make it pretty for you to read. Because I really feel like this is the important part. This is the part I’ve been trying to get to this entire time. And I’m only just realizing this now. While I was searching for a big aha moment of “BOOM, you’re healed!” it turns out that a bunch of tiny little moments were working behind the scenes. And the definition of healing for me has become much more clear.

I refused to acknowledge a lot of things that have happened in my life that brought me to this point. My level of self abandonment was off the charts. And the worst part was, when I did acknowledge it, even just a little bit, I was consumed with so much guilt and shame that I would shut the whole operation down. I have been told a few times, by a few different sources, that I had reached a point of no return, but I still brushed it off. When I didn’t, it seemed too small to even matter. There is so much actual suffering in the world that my issues felt like they didn’t even scratch the surface. Who fucking cares, right? But that question is the whole point: any chance to abandon myself, I took it. I saw the wounds, I watched them ooze and felt their constant, nagging ache – and still kept throwing bandages over everything because that was easier than facing the truth. I never considered going deeper, getting to the root. It’s just a wound, right? It’ll close eventually. It never occurred to me that it could get infected and force me to pay attention.

The last few weeks brought trigger after trigger, each one getting under my skin. And every time it happened, I didn’t hesitate, I dove in headfirst. I faced all of those things that made me feel selfish, guilty and ungrateful. I pushed past the uncomfortable feelings that would typically stop me in my tracks. I am so fucking sick of being like this, so I finally allowed myself to feel all of it. Something I learned was that two truths can exist at the same time. You can love someone and they can also be someone who fucked you up a little bit. The trouble with the things that shape you when you’re young is that they settle into your bones. They stop being someone else’s influence and become your own reflection. They become normal. Not become, they ARE your normal. When the baseline is skewed, the whole system follows. Your reactions, your fears, the way you brace for impact, all of it is shaped by something you never chose but learned to survive.

I’ve been stuck in survival mode for a really long time. And I say stupid shit sometimes like “I wish I stayed asleep because my life was so much easier when I ignored my own needs.” It did not occur to me that I was tossing out red flags like it was my job. I have said it here, probably in every single post in one way or another, that my needs have always been on the back burner. They’re not important because everyone else comes first. This week was the first time that statement ever sounded crazy to me. For the last (almost) three years I still believed that I did not matter. Despite being thrown into the dark night of the soul, despite my soul screaming day in and day out, I still didn’t fully understand any of it.

I downloaded an audio book a while ago and I started listening to it last Monday. It was on in my earbuds while I was at work, so I wasn’t concentrating on it, it was really just background noise. I noticed after I was a few chapters in, I was having some big feelings. My face was angry and my body was tight. I shut it off. Why am I so mad? Lunchtime rolled around and I took a little deep dive into where this anger was coming from. I used various prompts to get to the root. And man, that shit was buried deep. And for once, I was angry enough not to cover the wound with another piece of gauze. I sat with it and decided that maybe it was time to see what I could do to stitch it up and stop the infection.

Even talking about this now feels wrong in a way that I can’t shake. I was taught very early on that these thoughts should be kept quiet, pretend like everything was fine. And a part of me still worries that being honest, even with myself, will somehow get me in trouble. I feel icky and part of me is waiting for the sky to fall just because I’m talking about it. But it’s the truth, it’s MY truth. I have taken on way too many things in my life that should not have been my responsibility. I kept stepping into roles that were never meant for me, carrying weights that weren’t mine, because I wanted so badly to be loved. I thought I had to earn it by holding everyone together. But here’s a little something I learned recently – it’s incredibly hard to be a people pleaser because people are rarely ever pleased…

I can finally feel myself arriving at the point in healing where turning back isn’t an option anymore. This is everything that I’ve been aching for – finally cracked open enough to let some light in. Finally willing to step past the threshold I’ve always stopped at. Tomorrow might pull me apart or put me back together or something in between. I don’t know. But what I do know is that I have a little bit of traction and I have to keep moving forward. And somewhere in all of this, I’m trying to give myself a little bit of grace. To meet the guilt and shame when they come rolling in, and talk myself down with the same kindness I’ve given everyone else my entire life.

When I heard this song the other day it stirred something in me that put the wheels in motion for this post. I’ve spent years hoping someone would fix me – patch the holes, quiet the bad thoughts and make the constant ache go away. There was a longing for someone to rescue the parts that I couldn’t hold. But it finally hit me that the person I had been waiting for was me.

It was always me.

And now, for the first time in my life I’m not turning away from that. I never let myself believe that I was capable, but I’m learning that I’m actually the best person for the job.

lights will guide you home, and ignite your bones, and I will try to fix you…

Song name: FIX YOU/ Artist: COLDPLAY/ Year: 2005

THROUGH MY PRAYERS

hard to believe I won’t see you again, we were just fighting when winter began, the coldness of our words competing with the wind from the north, still they make me shiver but in a very different way, the pages of the calendar kept turning away, I have some better words now, but it’s too late to say them to you… my dream of all dreams and my hope of all hopes is only to tell you and make sure you know how much I love you and how much I always did… and yes I know you loved me I could see it in your eyes, and it was in your struggle and it was in your mind, and it was in the smile you gave me when I was a kid… feels like no one understands, and now my only chance to talk to you is through my prayers, I only wanted to tell ya I care…

This is the last you’ll see from me regarding my dad. His passing was unexpected and I’m not really sure how I feel about it.

I feel like I keep getting the wind knocked out of me. This time it’s taking me a little longer to catch my breath. The past 7 days felt like 3 months. The days are extremely long. There’s something really unnerving about knowing there are no more chances for us to make things right. As broken as we were, and as many times as I said that I was done, the little girl inside me wished that he would reach out. That things would be different. That we could have healed a little and made it work. But that’s done now. I’m sad and I’m angry. Most of all, my heart is broken for him.

This song shuffled the day after he died. I was walking to my office when it made its way into my earbuds and I was stopped in my tracks. I found myself involuntarily sobbing in the middle of 7th Avenue. The lyrics are perfect and say everything that I am not able to.

Thanks for reading…

every night after and every day since, I find myself crying when the memory hits, sometimes it knocks me down, sometimes I can just put it away… down in my mind where I don’t care to go, the pain of a lesson is letting me know if you have love in your heart let it show while you can… yes now I understand, but now my only chance to talk to you is through my prayers, I only wanted to tell ya I care…

Song name: THROUGH MY PRAYERS/ Artist: The Avett Brothers/ Year: 2012

BLACK LINES TO BATTLEFIELDS

like screaming in the air, the sound for all who care, the siren rings in vain, when lightning hits the ground, to all who stand around, the shock of ignorance…

I haven’t cried hysterically in 2 whole days. I felt like I should tell you that. And I have been trying really hard to keep it that way. The last few days have been busy, but when I have free moments, or time to listen while I’m doing whatever I’m doing, I am working hard at trying to actually heal. I listened to something today that struck a chord with me, and I wanted to write about it. It made perfect sense to me and maybe someone else needs to hear it too.

The abandonment wound is the driving force behind my composition. I have searched high and low for some other explanation, and all roads always lead me right back to it. And so since I’m actually giving this healing shit a shot, I have been diving a little deeper into how to fix it. I’ve said it here before, my self worth is less than zero. I don’t see any value in me being here. Yea, I can do a million things for everyone, but at the end of the day, I always see myself as replaceable. When I think of feeling anything else about myself, I feel weird. Because it’s not something that is familiar in my body. I always thought less than less about myself, and it’s going to take me a minute to shift that perspective.

When you’re on a healing/spiritual journey, you get a LOT of videos, articles, books on Carl Jung. Please Google him; he’s done far too much for me to write it all out here. His work is revolutionary and I won’t even begin to scratch the surface by trying to give you an abridged version. Anyway, when everything kind of fell apart inside of me, I was introduced, almost immediately, to his work on the “inner child”. It refers to the subconscious part of you, your younger self, who is still holding on to memories and behaviors from childhood. If you were wounded by some form of trauma or neglect and your younger self is still holding on to those things, it will affect your conscious life as an adult. And man, I fucking felt that. And so I listen to and read a lot of things in relation to this because I believe, 100%, that this is where a lot of my healing needs to happen.

What I listened to today was about the inner child and how it creates and shapes the relationships you make in your life. And how subconsciously you are attracting specific types of people into your life based on how that wounded inner child still feels. The video talked about different types of wounds and I actually stopped what I was doing to write down what was said about the abandonment wound: “Our psyche tends to seek the familiar, even when the familiar is painful. There’s a perverse comfort zone in repeating known patterns, even when they cause suffering because at least we know how to navigate this pain. The wounded inner child prefers known suffering to unknown happiness because suffering is predictable and controllable, while true happiness requires vulnerability and the possibility of loss.”

The reason why this seemed to really hit me hard today is because I wasn’t sad today and I didn’t know what to do with myself. It’s become such a norm for me to be crying about something, that when I wasn’t, it was weird. Bear with me here, I know this sounds fucking bananas. I’ve been saying for a while that it is me standing in my own way. I thought that it was just fear. But it’s so much more than that. I have subconsciously blocked myself, time and time again, mostly because I felt I wasn’t worth it. That my dreams and ideas would never amount to anything because there was no one pushing that little kid to amount to anything more than I currently am. So the same cycles keep repeating over and over again. And this supposed “comfort zone” is no longer comfortable. I have subconsciously refused to even give myself a chance until now.

As I’m writing this out, there is a lot flowing out of me. It’s far too much and far too personal to write about here, but I just figured something out. I was just trying to remember the first time I ever felt anxiety, and I fucking remembered. I was maybe 5 years old. I can’t remember what I ate for breakfast yesterday, but I remember this moment like it just happened. I know what I was wearing, I remember what I did, I remember all of it, very vividly. And that is absolutely fucking crazy. I have never had a revelation like this before, so please excuse me if I sound a little out of my mind. But I remember that feeling from that day, and it’s the feeling I have felt my whole life any time anxiety was involved. And I see little me and I remember her and how she felt in that moment. And I want to hug her for as long as she will let me and tell her that she made a mistake, and that mistakes happen, and everything will be alright. That she is loved even though she took a little misstep.

I have done stints in therapy during different periods of my life, and I don’t remember ever talking about this moment. And I guess anything I did or allowed in therapy was always surface level. It seemed that every time I opened up to something more, the hour was up and I was left like the walking wounded having to go back to regular life with this giant, gaping hole in my chest. Subconsciously I guess I blocked myself from healing as well. I guess everything has been leading up to this moment in my life where I am finally saying “enough is enough”. I can’t keep carrying this shit around with me, it’s fucking heavy. And I’m fucking tired.

The craziest part of all of this is that I’m writing it out and I’m not crying. There’s a little lump in my throat but I’m mad. I am feeling anger. Not in a non-productive way though. I’m not going to beat myself up about this. I’m just mad that I’ve allowed this. That I am a fully grown adult and still feel like a child, constantly looking for the acceptance and approval of the adults around me. Over sharing and hoping that people will like and accept me. Approve of the decisions I make in my life. Not be mad at me. And then leave me if they don’t approve. That’s the thing. The abandonment wound is such an underlying thing, that I’m afraid if I’m not sorry for being me then people will leave. What the fuck?! Like, I feel like I always knew this, but now I can’t not know this…

My whole existence has always had this internal battle. I get preemptive anxiety over telling people things, afraid of what the reaction will be. This has been a lifelong battle and it needs to stop right here. I need to stop apologizing for being me. Most importantly, I need to be okay with being me. I said earlier that I felt weird feeling anything other than bad about myself. That changes today. It is going to take me a minute, but I’m done fighting and trying to prove that I am not a garbage human being. I’m not saying it in a conceited way. I just need to stop dragging myself into these dark places because I don’t know how to exist in any other place. Just saying that gives me the ick, but I need to start breaking that programming. It will get easier.

I am really pleased that we got to experience this breakthrough in real time. I have stopped myself so many times from seeing the bigger picture. From digging deeper to see the root of the problem. To quote Chandler Bing “can open… worms everywhere”… but they are my worms, and they’ve been jammed up in that can for far too long. I can’t keep not choosing happiness because it might be scary. I have never even allowed myself to be happy for too long because someone was always ready to rip it away from me. And that’s not fair, and it’s not okay. And I’m aware of it now, and it’s strange but it’s clear.

I can’t promise that tomorrow won’t be a battle, but this was a little push into the land of actual progress that I needed, very badly. I appreciate you sticking with me, I honestly didn’t know where this was going to go when I started writing. But going forward, not everything is going to be an all out battle. All of the tools that I’ve been walking around with will prove themselves useful once I start shifting this weird fucking narrative I’ve been playing in my head. Thanks, as always for reading. I’m always here if you need me…

black lines can turn to battlefields when they are drawn in pen, the stop signs like human apathy, can cause a fatal crash… like screaming in the air, the sound for all who care, the siren rings in vain, when lightning hits the ground, to all who stand around, the shock of ignorance… the feeling hard to tell, a word can break the spell…

Song name: BLACK LINES TO BATTLEFIELDS/ Artist: Acceptance/ Year: 2003