She was four.  Her body shook.  Her heart felt fiery and tight, trying to hold down her rising stomach.  Her mom was screaming about the mess; toys strewn happily about the family room from day after day of play and imagination.  Wasn’t this what she was meant to do?  Her parents had given her the toys and said, “Go play!”  She held her baby dolls lovingly, nurturing them as only a mommy could, joy radiating out from her being.  Her own mommy screaming more, her ears ringing, feeling as though she was pushed into the ground.  She started to cry.  Sobs mixed with snot as she wondered why she wasn’t good enough for her mom to love on this day.

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She was told to go to her room, to stop crying.  She wanted to reach for the woman that she had depended on since birth for everything — instead, she was met with a vicious scowl and berated for this room full of toys that her parents had purchased.  Her heart seemed to leave her body and fall behind her as she climbed those stairs, it fell down each step to lay in a lonely pool by the front door.  At the top of the stairs, she was left wondering who she could turn to now when she needed help, if it wouldn’t be her mother.  She must not be good enough to be comforted by her mommy now, now that she had played with her toys and left them out again.  She would have to try harder to be worthy of her mommy’s love.

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Alone in her room, she couldn’t stop the tears, or this feeling of being lost in the wilderness with no one to help her survive.  She just wanted someone to love her, to tell her it would be okay, to hold her while she cried.  If it wouldn’t be him, her last boyfriend that only seemed to want to use her, who would it be?   She wasn’t worthy of love.  That had been pounded into her for so long.  I just need to change for someone to love me, I never do anything right, I just need to be more…

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She held the real baby in her arms.  She vowed from the moment she laid eyes on that smudgy newborn skin that he would never feel the way she had felt as a child.  She would be his rock, always there to hold him whenever he needed her.

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The toys were piling up in the playroom.   She’d had little sleep for months.  She struggled to keep up; with her job, her house, her marriage.  She felt like she was drowning under the pressure.  She looked down at the mess and felt a fiery rage boil between her ears.   How dare he leave all of this for me to clean up, again?!

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Just as she was about to demand that her son — not even taller than the white shelves emptied of his toys — pick them up, she stopped.  She was back in her childhood home.  Her heart was being ripped from her body, the woman she desperately needed was yelling at her that she wasn’t good enough.

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She looked at her son and was transported back to look at the beautiful being that was laid on her chest the day he was born.  He was already enough.  She was the one struggling to feel that way, having been torn from it so very young.  She longed to feel her heart back in her body, but she wasn’t about to pass on the same damage, the same years of jobs and relationships and circumstances that matched her feelings of being unworthy.

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She held him in her arms and reminded him that he is always perfect just the way he is.  She started to clean up the toys and invited him to help her, with a loving smile on her face.

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I help parents every day to remember this wholeness that they felt as a child;  this perfection and pure delight in play, and sunshine, and warm grass.  We journey back to this place, so our own children may stay there, feeling empowered and worthy to take on life and its challenges, through the wholeness we celebrate in them and in ourselves.

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If you are ready to return to this place and start living the life that matches it, schedule your free session now.