WHAT ARE WE MISSING?

Haven’t you always known that, as a child, you deserved love, tenderness, attention and encouragement? We were beautiful, loving, trusting, innocent children that wanted nothing more than to be loved, cherished and significant to the most important people in our lives—our parents.

       Regrettably, some parents were struggling with the effects of their upbringing and were numb to their feelings, driven to distraction in order to suppress their own traumatized child parts. Others of us had parents with addictions or mental disorders. Those raised by narcissists or sociopaths lived in a steady state of confusion. To all of their drama, we played peripheral roles, walk-on parts.

Take Two

As we walk the ‘recovery from childhood trauma’ path, our traumatized child parts safely integrate into our adult self. We think before we speak. We listen to understand. We love and accept ourselves unconditionally. We forgive ourselves because now we know better, we do better. We stand as a witness rather than a reactor. We have exchanged our hair-triggers for reason. 

     We know who we are. We know what we will and will not allow in our lives. The more we love, provide for and protect our self, the more we respect our self. This increased self-love and self-respect acts like a magnet to draw even more love and respect into our life. The photo for this piece, torn from a magazine, has been in my wallet for about six years. It reminds me to be a loving parent to myself. The woman in the picture represents exactly the kind of mother I want to be to myself-as-beloved-child.

      It’s never too late to have a happy childhood! Post-recovery we have some highly effective self-soothing and self-care tools and techniques and we have made enormous progress. But recovery, coupled with the whole being human thing, is a lifetime endeavor. It’s not a destination. It is a practice.

     In order to sustain our recovery, we must lovingly parent our self every . . . single . . . day. Not the way our parents parented us—but the way we wish they’d parented us.

     Here’s the good news—we’re adults now and we can have the best parents in the world the moment we decide to be our own loving parents to our Self. That sounds so easy, right? But it’s  bewildering as hell if you were raised in a highly dysfunctional home.

     So, as you formulate your self-parenting plan think in terms of preventive care, such as good nutrition, exercise, meditation, personal boundaries and emergency savings. Imagine how a loving parent comforts and encourages a child when they are discouraged. A loving parent teaches their child how to honor herself or himself in every relationship, encourages them to eat healthy food and takes them on fun outings. What else do they do? Where to start?

     There is an entire chapter devoted to this endeavor in my book WORTHY A Personal Guide for Healing Your Childhood Trauma (@ Amazon), Chapter 15 Beloved Child. You can refer to this chapter for numerous suggestions on how to be your own best parent. Then use those suggestions in Chapter 9 of the Workbook (of the same title) to formulate your Self-as-Parent Plan.

                        So, is today the day you gift yourself the best parents in the world?

WORTHY A Personal Guide for Healing Your Childhood Trauma available at Amazon along with its companion Workbook of the same name.