Release that sad inner child – Article 2
WARNING, sensitive content
Before I start, I want to let everyone know that I am going to be painfully honest here, so to anyone directly involved with any events I discuss or that are a part of my life, here’s your “heads-up. I apologize if some of these memories be a bit tough to read but it’s MY story to tell and I’m not holding back.
Did you know that the trauma and emotional distress you feel as an adult isn’t always directly linked to events in your adult life. You can suffer from emotional issues going as far back as toddler years and not even know it. You say, “Oh, that happened when I was 3….I’m over it’! Yeah, are you really?!
This post is going to be very personal and exposing. I am sharing this with you not only to encourage you to work through any childhood traumas you have but also to emphasize the importance of clearing out the past to make room for the present and future. In turn, this also brings me to my final step to eliminate mine. So thank you for reading (much love). This is an important process in emotional healing. I will start by sharing some history with you about my childhood and then a couple of very splintery memories. Lastly, I will give you with the steps I took to move through all of these complex emotions.
Here we go……
My mother found out she was pregnant with me when she was in high school at age 15 and back then, 1973 to be exact; that was not the most popular life choice. Of course, being scared and young she thought it best to bring me into this world, but that adoption would be the better option for everyone involved. My mother was smart, had honors in high school but ultimately decided to drop out because of the shame of being pregnant and unwed. I was born in Fredericton NB just a few short hours after my mom turned 16. I am not entirely sure how the whole thing played out but, at the last minute it was decided that the family was going to keep me. So, for the first couple of years of my life I lived with my aunt and uncle. The plan was to give my mother the time she needed to “figure things out” and bring me home to live with her when she felt ready. Looking back, this may have been part of the reason I didn’t feel as strong a bond with my mother that I should have in my younger years. Those few tender, impressionable years are so important for a child to develop trust and form those pivotal bonds. Nonetheless, I loved her dearly and she meant (and means) the world to me. She gave me life and I am forever grateful to her.
My memory is sparse at best about my younger years, but I do recall my mom had met a man when I was about 2 or 3 years old. I believe they married shortly after and when I was 4, she had my middle brother. As the next couple years passed, things were NOT perfect by any means…. there were a lot of intense fights, this man was an alcoholic and was very aggressive and abusive, I think I even recall a gun appearing at some point but can’t be certain. This left my mom with no choice but to leave with nothing but some clothes and her two kids. She’s now a single mom at roughly the age of 22 trying her best.
We went to stay with my grandmother, she was our savior and rock (I owe my life to this woman). From there I recall a couple of gentlemen friends here and there and moving around a fair bit until I was roughly 8 or 9. That’s when she met my (now deceased) stepdad. He was a fair bit younger than her, and of course his family DID NOT approve but that didn’t stop them from being together and eventually getting married. This was the first time I remember the feeling of a somewhat “happy home”. I was 10’ish and along came my youngest brother, he was our Christmas miracle, the baby that was the glue to our family’s happiness. I hadn’t mentioned my biological father yet because at this point, I didn’t know better and was too young to ask, I guess I just carried the pretense that my stepdad was my dad, at least that was how I dreamt it. Nothing else made any sense in my mind. I mean, what kind of a father doesn’t want to be a part of their baby girls life….he was like the boogey man that lived under my bed as far as I was concerned. In hindsight I realised that this left me with MANY unrecognised “daddy” issues, which I will elaborate on in the next blog of this series.
One day my mom was cutting my hair in the kitchen. I’m not sure how the topic came up but that’s when I found out that my biological father did in fact exist and was living in the same city……what an out-of-body awkward feeling that was. Soon after that, we were having a family BBQ at a local park (we are living in Moncton NB at this point BTW) called Centennial Park. We had been there for about an hour or so and my mom pulled me aside and quietly whispered in my ear, “if you look over there at the people sitting on the blanket (she pointed to the right of us), that man is your “real” father. Well….it felt like I froze in time. My heart plummeted to the very bottom of my feet, I felt weak and nauseous. I was looking at the actual boogey man that lived under my bed. Watching him over there all happy with his wife and two kids, boy and a girl….so perfect right?! This was one of the first times I learned what strong resilience I was building at such a young age. I picked myself up, shook it off and went back over with my brothers to play and moved on with my day….and my life.
Now, sharing this next memory is one of the hardest and scariest things I have ever done but here it goes….
Fast forward to when I was roughly 12 years old, living out on Salisbury Rd (I mentioned this place in my previous blog). I had a friend that I spent a lot of time with. Her parents ran the local convenience store by my place at the time. Her family always seemed a bit OFF to me but I was young and she was nice to me. We spent most of our time at her place, she lived in the same building they worked in. We would be allowed to grab treats from the store after hours and go watch movies and play board games, what more could you ask for as a kid right (candy was life!). One evening we were having so much fun she thought it would be a good idea if we had a sleepover, we checked with both our parents and they agreed. So I ran home to grab some stuff and came right back. This friend had an older brother and he was fucking CREEPY! Again, I was young and didn’t really know better so it didn’t stop me from being there. We had finally fallen asleep just before midnight, she slept in her bed and I was on an air mattress on the floor. It was probably about 2 in the morning and I woke up to my friend’s brother over top of me with his hands down the back of my pajama bottoms (I won’t elaborate beyond that). I was sleeping on my stomach and he wasn’t aware of the fact that I had woken up. I was petrified, mortified and in absolute shock. I couldn’t speak but I needed to get him off of me…..I moved around to give him the warning that I “was waking up”. It worked, he got up and left the room, quietly and swiftly. As soon I heard the door shut I started crying and felt so very alone. I couldn’t get up to leave in the dark because there was no way I wanted to risk waking up that monster and facing him. I laid there until morning, wide awake until the sun came up. Before my friend even woke up, I grabbed my stuff and took off and ran home. It took a couple of very sad, isolated days, but I finally had told my mom and step-dad what happened. My step-dad immediately took off out the door……I think he found the monster and I do believe he may have completely rearranged his face. Back then, that’s how those things were handled and I was just expected to move on.
Although I did my best, this was a very pivotal moment in my life as far as developing some serious trust and shame issues. If anything like this has ever happened to you, please address it…do not let it fester. If you need professional help, please seek it.
That’s enough of all of that, now we focus on the healing and “getting better” part! There are a couple of exercises I used to help work my way through all of those repressed feelings I had:
- Meditate and allow yourself to thoroughly scour your childhood memories.
- Make a list of all the traumatic events that you recall, every single one of them that make you feel a certain way.
- Deal with each event separately, how?
- Repeat this exercise for as long as you need to until those memories no longer invoke feelings in you, that’s when you have regained full control!
- Affirmations should become a daily practice as well.
If you’re reading this blog and are someone who is lucky enough to have had only positive and happy childhood memories, I am so very happy for you! Having a solid, loving and secure upbringing is all you can ask for any child in this world. Children are precious and should only be treated with the utmost respect and must be fiercely protected! I can only hope that after you have read this and are suffering in any way that this helps bring you some solace and peace. After all, that’s the purpose of my blog. Thank you for taking the time to share these moments with me, I am blessed and until next Tuesday….
Be Happy, Be Kind and most importantly, LOVE YOURSELF <3
