THE ANSWERS TO ALL YOUR QUESTIONS BEGIN HERE
Most of us weren’t taught how to care for ourselves. Self-care sometimes feels cliché and oversaturated, but all we really want is to find a safe place to belong.
Many of us (myself included) grow up thinking that safety will be found in another person. We can spend our whole lives jumping from partner to partner in search for a place to belong and truly be seen.
What if I told you there was a different answer for the question of security? The truth is, no relationship is iron-clad secure. That’s not actually what they’re meant to be. They’re meant to be the paths that guide you to your deepest level of connection–with yourself and another person.
So, if we’re not going to find our security in another person or our partner or relationship, where will we find it?
We’ll find it tucked (sometimes locked behind miles of walls we’ve built) inside our innermost self. I like to refer to this as my “Inner” or inner child. It’s the purest, most vulnerable part of us that we carry everywhere. It’s the truest, most honest version of our potential and our deepest authentic self.
Our Inner will guide us to our core beliefs, true desires, and greatest fears. Our inner self is not concerned with maintaining status, building ego, or winning the conquest. It will ignite us, fuel us, and heal us when we need it to.
But only if we’re paying attention to it and making space to listen.
When we ignore our inner child, we abandon ourselves; rejecting our true self and replacing it with a lesser version of who we are. This is completely socially acceptable and undeniably detrimental to our well-being. But we do it anyways.
We pretend we’re still in love when we would know we’re not if we only took the time to listen and had the courage to hear.
We make concessions for behaviors that hurt us, demanding of ourselves that we be tougher, smarter and better players at the game of love, business, and life.
We numb to silence the crying inner child with substances, sex, and chasing the next adrenaline rush just so we don’t have to acknowledge what will only prove that we are human and vulnerable.
We take pills to cover the bleeding walls inside our hearts. Our Inner will never stop trying to reach us. Crying. Desperate. Anxious. Scratching. Raging. Provoking.
Trying to find the way to make us listen.
If you have a question about yourself–Why do I do that? Who am I? What’s my place in the world? Am I worthy? Do I belong? Am I lovable? Why am I afraid, anxious, desperate?–then it’s time to pay attention to what’s inside.
It takes courage. You’re going to have to turn and face that fear that has been chasing you (fear of regret, failure, not being enough). It’s going to feel like it will suffocate you or end you, but it won’t.
If you run from it, it will rob you of your greatest life potential (joy, love, fulfillment). If you face it, you will realize all its power was in the shadow it cast when you had your back turned.
Take it from me, I’ve faced divorce, mental illness, suicide, grief, sole parenting, agonizing heartbreak, domestic abuse, rediscovering myself and all the fear that comes with THAT cocktail of pain.
Even still, every time I feel abandoned by life and people, it’s the same story in the end:
I still get to choose me.
XO,
MK
PS. Here’s an incredible article from @RisingWoman (not just for women) on how to begin to listen to your inner child and heal your abandonment wound.
