Inner Child Work

Let the Child speak

Let her voice be heard

She’s no longer weak.

But she hasn’t said a word.

(Let the Child Speak, from Fearless Moral Inventory, by Juliet A. Wright, copyright 2010, all rights reserved.)

Who is the inner child? Cathryn L. Taylor, author of The Inner Child Workbook, describes the inner child or inner children as “the voices inside you that carry the feelings you were unable to express as a child.”[1]

My inner child is the real me, the one that was squashed into the corner when I was little. The one that was scared and screamed at by my dad to be perfect all the time. She is who I really am.  And she is wise.  She is a part of God.  But she gets ignored a lot.  After a while, this really ticks her off.  My inner child gets to the point where she will not be ignored anymore. 

I have done quite a bit of inner child work, and it has been some of the most difficult, yet rewarding.  I’m learning who I am and how I feel by doing this work.  It’s my true self revealed.  I wrote my song Let the Child Speak about this very subject.

I first started doing inner child work with my therapist.  It was then that I discovered this sometimes scared, angry, frustrated, sad, lonely little girl.  This little girl thinks she has to be perfect to be okay. This little girl thinks she has to earn her right to be.  If she makes mistakes, she is less than.  She has no self-esteem.  She thinks everything she does is wrong.

It is through this inner child work that I uncovered my memories about Grandpa Roman that I spoke of earlier in this book.

Yes, she feels all the feelings on Juliet’s Feelings List on a regular basis. 

[1] Cathryn L. Taylor, The Inner Child Notebook: What to do with your past when it won’t go away. (New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam, 1991), p. 1.