A letter to me from my younger self

Sometimes I really feel you hate me.. Sometimes I get so tired of all of the ways you tell me I am wrong.. Sadly you often make me feel it’s not okay just to be me, to have needs, to have my true feelings and even to like and forgive those who often don’t get me, can’t you see they are just being human for God’s sake, why judge? Doing this made me separate at times when I really longed to be connected, that hurt. I can forgive them more all of that coming out of their own wounds if you are kinder to me Deborah, too. Its up to you to support me and vouch for me, not anyone else.

A lot of the time you fill my head with nonsense and lies.. You often stop breathing and so restrict me that hurts my body, when you constrict and contract I cannot breathe. When you say horrible things to me and demand I be better my anxiety grows . Sometimes when you come to you are not even aware you have been gone for a long while out of your own mind into another world, one in which you deeply disconnect from ME YOUR OWN BODY!

In response to this, the sad truth is that for so long that body has felt so painful to me all I really ever wanted to do was to run away from the feelings and sensations in it. Now I want to turn that around, now I your inner child and body NEED YOU TO LISTEN TO ME, TO SOOTHE ME, AND TO STOP TELLING ME THINGS THAT SCARE ME EVEN MORE. Like often I need a lot more rest, a lot more quiet time, a lot more unwinding, and also a lot more of joy filled things to do like singing, listening to music, getting creative and dancing. I also long to be connected but so often your fear of rejection holds you back, it holds you back so much you do not even get to experience being fully alive.

That said, I know it has not always been easy for me (your inner child) to see that other adults are just innocent children too, or once were. When I did not know as much as I do now and think it may be okay to love myself then I feel I had no other alternative but to shame and judge others too. I see now it was not possible for me to have tolerance or compassion for them knowing they were hurt and hurting too, because for a long time I really could not see any further than my own pain. But what most hurt was when you would not allow me that sense of outrage and hurt in a safe space, when you acted it out that only made other people run away.. That hurt me a lot. Then, instead, too often, in too easily forgiving them you made me not able to break the dead weight of all of the negative self evaluation they loaded up into me which was the point of giving up the self judgement, learning to see less through the eyes of the wounded part of me and us and more through the eyes of a grown up person able to be both separate and connected.