It’s wild how not writing for a week really threw me off. I’ve gotten so used to doing these posts again that not having a moment to last week took me off balance.

I worked a six day week, so as much as I wanted to find time to sit down and write, I know my energy would’ve been scattered. It wouldn’t have turned in to a post I wanted to share.

That’s the thing too now. I know I have a post to write each week, but I always wait for the day where I know I have plenty of time and can truly just engulf myself in it. I don’t want to rush a post out for the sake of it. No one wins there.

Well, the past couple of weeks have honestly been a lot to handle. I feel like my emotions have been all over the place and I haven’t slowed down enough to process them. I keep continuing on in my days without checking in with what’s actually going on with me.

Thing is, I’ve been in a really good phase of life lately. I don’t really have much to complain about. Everything is running as smooth as it can right now, but with those phases, I always tend to think ahead. I always wonder what’s next that’s going to change my course. Not necessarily in a bad way, but I know life is always changing around me. I know I have little control on what happens throughout my life.

I can follow my routines and schedules, but so much of life is different things being thrown at you. These could be good things, bad things, it’s all there.

2021 has been a year of a lot of change in my personal life. I’m in a job that I never expected to be in a year ago, I have new bonds I didn’t expect, and I’m really just focused on myself again. I don’t live my life based on others anymore. I do what makes me happy now and I truly can’t believe how far I’ve come in that aspect. 

I think about the fact that I started this blog when I was 20 a lot. At this rate, if I continue to write, I will have all of my twenties documented in one little home. I have journals, sure, but being able to see what words of wisdom I’d tell myself and others over the years hits different. 

My journals are full of me trying to figure out the shit in my life or venting. It’s a full-on cluster in there. I see what was bothering me the most in life over the years or what my biggest issues were. I never really come to conclusions in my journals. I just let it all out and pick the page back up again when I have something new to work through. It’s a lot of trial and error in those.

On here, I share some of the struggles, sure. I go in to a lot of issues I’ve had over the years, but never to the fullest extent. I share enough to the point where I can find the silver lining in it. Even when I don’t have a silver lining yet, I still look for ways to learn from my situations. It’s wild to see what I was writing about back in 2017 because the topics feel so distant. 

Behind the scenes, I knew what I was going through. I knew where the inspiration for those posts came from. I wrote a lot about love that year because I was just coming to terms with my attachment style and where my relationship issues stemmed from. It was all very fresh back then, so seeing myself trying to decode it on here back then when I have a lot more knowledge now kind of warms my heart. I was doing my best with what I knew at the time.

 

There’s one post I always go back to. 

 

In Fall of 2017, I wrote a post titled ‘For Those Who Don’t Know How to Love.’

I’m not sure why that one sticks out to me so much, but it does. 

I fully was laying out my troubles with relationships and self-worth. It’s definitely a vulnerable one. 

I felt so alone that year in general, but learning more about why I struggled in relationships only did me in more.

I remember I was trying to get over someone and I just couldn’t. No matter what I did, I couldn’t break the connection in my head.

In that post, I basically laid out a really bad emotional day I had. I was sad over my relationships never working out the way I planned. I was sad that I couldn’t just date the people that I knew were right for me because deep down, there was a lot of trauma surrounding creating a bond with men. 

It was one of the first times I really faced my issues head on and I laid it out on here for all to read. 

Looking back now, I’ve experienced a multitude of relationships that pushed me out of that low feeling. I trust myself a lot more than I used to. I recognize the triggers I have now, but instead of running, I recognize them.

It breaks my heart reading that post knowing all I was going through, but it also gives me a lot of hope about my future. I never would’ve expected that I could experience actual relationships with people now. I was completely convinced I was too broken for it before. I didn’t have my first real relationship until I was 22 due to those emotions. I spent so much time going after people that felt safe but weren’t at all. I was attracted to people who didn’t pay me any attention because growing up, that’s what I knew. 

We really don’t realize until we’re older how much our childhood shapes us. From our personality to how we go about our relationships with others, it all stems from what we internalized as children. 

It sounds like a sad prophecy we’re fulfilling if you know you have past trauma to work through. It gives you a feeling of ‘what’s the point?’ when you know you’re going to have negative emotion to things based on your past. 

 

Thing is though, we’re not children anymore. 

 

As a kid, we don’t have much control over our own lives. 

We don’t choose where we live, where we attend school, what we eat, and sometimes even who we spend time with. A lot of the decisions we’re faced with now were decided for us back then.

So, when some of our core childhood memories are less than great, we internalize and accept it at the time. We have no other choice. 

As we get older, we play out what those internalized memories taught us back then.

If we don’t have a close bond with our families, we may grow up to not have family as a value. 

If we were close, we may be excited to start a family and create all the little traditions on holidays you remember as a kid.

If we don’t have any close bonds with the opposite sex (or same sex depending on your sexuality) we may find it difficult to create healthy relationships in the future. We never knew how to. 

It all stems back to then.

It’s not a life sentence though.

The difference now is we’re older. We can recognize these behaviors within us. 

Whether we do a lot of self-work on our own or work through them with a therapist, all of those traumatic experiences don’t exist to weigh us down forever. 

They will always be a part of us, but when we understand that our issues today were based on being a scared child, they become easier to go in to. That’s why a lot of therapists or life coaches focus on inner child work.

If a past experience has been a detriment to your current life, going back to the source is the only way to heal it. 

Numbing it with alcohol or working our shit out on other people can only go so far.

 

All those experiences want is to be heard, not avoided.

 

When I used to meditate a lot, I dabbled with parts work.

Parts work is the act of meditation where, to be honest, you’re solely speaking to two opposing sides of ourselves. We’re all made up of many internal parts and stories, but during times where you see yourself going against yourself, normally it means one part of you is going against the other.

For example, back when I wrote that old post on love.

I knew in my heart that this relationship wasn’t right for me and I wanted a true connection, but the other part of me couldn’t let it go. I was stuck on it for a long time.

So, doing parts work on a situation like this goes like so – First, I talk to the part of me that wants to let the connection go and find a love I know I deserve. I hear that side of me out and listen to all the reasons why I should get over it and move on. I let that part fully express itself.

Then, I would move on to the other side. The part of me that couldn’t let it go and didn’t even want to entertain the first part’s reasons. I let that side fully go in to all the reasons why I believe it could work out, why I shouldn’t give up, and why this is the better choice.

Once you let both parts say their piece, then you let them have a conversation. 

You go back and forth trying to explain yourself to each side.

I’m telling you. Every single time I did this exercise, I walked away with more clarity than I could’ve anticipated when I first closed my eyes.

The part of me that wanted to let the connection go felt that way because I knew I wasn’t being treated right. I knew my worth and the level of effort I deserved. I knew if I was going to be loved, it needed to be by someone who actually appreciated me and not just scraps of affection thrown to me.

However, the other side didn’t feel the same way. It wasn’t pure insecurity or not feeling good enough either. It was that side of me being fucking terrified of anything else. That side wanted to be loved, but to her, being thrown scraps and not knowing when the next burst of affection would come felt like love. All the acts of service and words of affirmation I so desperately craved as a child from men either never came or I was too blind to see it. 

I dealt with a lot of insecurity growing up. I was shy as hell and did not know how to express myself. So, I got used to just being the quiet kid that everyone thought was just mature for her age and okay. Thing is, I was still a kid. I wasn’t mature. I was a child who figured that I needed to have my own back in life, so I would shut others out. 

When you shut people out, you tend to not receive the things you want. You block them from coming altogether.

So, the side of me that wanted that connection in 2017 wasn’t trying to self-sabotage. She was a scared inner child who didn’t trust that I could get the things I wanted. It felt safer to be in a situation where I didn’t know what to expect because I didn’t fully trust others to give me what I wanted.

Any time I go through something sad or triggering in my adult life, I always think back to the scared little girl I once was. I’ve done a lot more in life that I don’t think she could’ve ever imagined. So, when triggers come up or I listen to that one part of me more, I don’t shame myself. I know I’m just trying to protect my heart even when I don’t realize it.

As my posts have gone on over the years, I find it wild watching that journey unfold. 

Relationships were something I touched on a lot back then, but not much now. I spent so much time over-analyzing those parts of me and trying to make them agree. 

Thing is, they aren’t going to agree in just a few years let alone overnight. There’s never going to be a moment where that scared child isn’t a part of me. It’s solely a matter of comforting her now. It’s making choices that I know are right for me and doing my best to get her on board.

 

We have to be gentle with ourselves throughout our lives.

 

There’s always going to be moments where it feels like everyone is against you or you’re finding yourself making the wrong choices – even those moments where it feels like everything is falling apart and it is completely out of your control.

Life pulls the rug out from under us constantly. There’s always a lesson to be learned after the fact, but the during can fucking destroy you if you let it. 

It’s when we go against ourselves as well that we end up in such dark places. 

We shame ourselves for what went wrong. We wonder if we had done one or two things different, maybe the outcome would have been different. If we had been a little less this and little more that, things wouldn’t have turned out as rough as they did. 

We can’t do this to ourselves.

You are the sole person in your life that you can’t afford to be against. 

All the actions we take and the things we say continue to be an extension of that inner child in us. That little voice that always wants the best for you and acts accordingly. 

Sometimes the things we do don’t always work out how we planned, but it doesn’t mean we were wrong for the choices we made.

Subconsciously we only ever act in ways we think will benefit us in some way. We’re always striving to either feel a certain good emotion or push a negative one away. We’re on constant alert to make ourselves feel good in this life.

So, when we ‘fail’ or find ourselves disappointed in outcomes, we feel like we let ourselves down. We turn that in to blame and since we see ourselves as the one who caused it, we blame ourselves for what we did. 

We forget we didn’t have the aftermath context. We only knew what we did at the time. We acted in a way that we thought would make us happy or take away a bad emotion. 

 

We’re always looking out for our inner child whether we know it or not. 

 

Putting the blame on ourselves when we’re not happy with our lives or the choices we’ve made only further neglects that inner child. It makes her feel less safe. It doesn’t validate the emotions or reasons for acting the way they wanted to. 

Being gentle is the only way to go.

When a shame spiral appears, instead of going in on ourselves, you have to talk to the child part of you who was just trying to help; either in your head or through a meditation.

It doesn’t have to be a huge process nor do you need to find a solution to anything.

It’s as simple as just comforting yourself when you’re sad.

If you’re upset or disappointed, just sit with yourself. You could even journal some feelings out. 

You don’t even have to tell yourself everything is going to be okay if you don’t believe that yet. 

Just sit and tell yourself it’s okay to be sad right now. That’s it. 

Let yourself feel it. Cry if you need to. Punch a pillow. Blast music that helps you cope. 

Anything you do that acknowledges the emotion exists rather than shaming yourself for having it in the first place is a step in the right direction. 

We all grow up eventually and we live out our adult lives. It’s inevitable. We’re never going to be physical children forever.

In truth though, we continue to be at our core. 

Like I said, that little girl continues to live inside me and comes out when I least expect it sometimes. 

It’s only when I remember to comfort her instead of shut her down that I ever find myself understood.