There’s this concept of an inner child. For many hearing about the “inner child” feels a bit hokey like playing with toy dolls or pretending to fly like a kid across the room. Because in a way it is acting like a child. And once the concept of “acting like a child” comes up, along comes a critic that says something like:
“stop that! You’re embarrassing us! Stop acting like a little baby and grow up! Behave like an adult.”
That critic creates a sensation of embarrassment and shame that causes us to judge this concept of inner child as “hokey”. To those who feel like this, I’d say that’s OK if you feel that way, but the fact is the inner child within you is as real and alive as any actual physical child you can see with your eyes.
When you were first born you were one conscious being. You were a child. And then with time you started to grow up and mature, but along the way some of the experiences you encountered were too painful to bear as a child. For all those moments where the pain was too much that part hid away while the rest of you continued to move forward in time.
This is how today you’ve become no longer a single unified conscious being. You are an adult that consist of many parts still hiding in the past. These parts are your inner child at various points in time.
So you are effectively many beings within one body, and many times in conflict with each other. Some are visible and conscious and some are hiding and are “unconscious”. If you avoid reconnecting to those unconscious parts lost and forgotten in the past you will start to feel more fragmented and incomplete in life. You will feel like life is becoming more complicated with time. This becomes a crisis that is ultimately a calling for you, all of you, to return home to rejoin and become one being together in union and support of each other.
To become whole, you need to allow time in your life for healing, inner exploration and restoration. Allow yourself as the adult to reconnect to those places that child of you was feeling really sad, scared, alone, embarrassed, angry, or hurt. And also from that child within allow yourself to connect to the Mom or Dad you really needed but wasn’t quite there the way you needed. Allow that part to now look to the adult in you today to become that Mom and Dad you needed in the way you needed. Both you as the adult and you as the child take time to listen to each other and be with each other.
Rejoin and reconnect. Become whole.