Exploring Childhood Stories Part 2 Inner Child Healing

Every lifetime has a theme. It is usually an emotion that seems to infiltrate every relationship and experience. It is like a lens that shades your world and everything in it. Mine is abandonment.

When I was a child I had experiences where I wasn't  listened to and my parents seemed to escape every chance they got. Even breaking my foot at the age of ten I now see was a cry for attention. A  painful one.


 As an adult I can understand the stresses my parents were dealing with and why they  ignored me. After being a parent myself, I can certainly appreciate the need to escape.


 But through the eyes of a child, I felt unwanted and unloved…truly abandoned. 

This theme carried into adulthood as I chose partners who were unavailable to me emotionally and eventually left. After I spent the time and healed my inner child(we'll explore those techniques in upcoming blogs),  I no longer needed to repeat that pattern and invited emotionally vested people into my life.

My blog "When Your Inner Child Calls…Answer" introduced the possibility that we choose our parents and create the story of our life, much like being a director. An important part of my inner child healing was to understand the relationships and the stories that made up the play. I spent time looking through old photographs, trying to better understand what formed my parents. 


As I relived our early life through the photos, I saw how terribly young they were. When you're a child your parents seem so old and wise, but when you do the math as an adult you realize they were barely of legal age. Remembering yourself at their age and putting yourself in their role of parent, provider, etc  provides you better insight into what their frame of mind was.

I even looked at photos of my parent's childhood to determine how they grew up, which helped me further understand what formed their behaviors and beliefs. When I understood their lives growing up, it made more sense as to why they were unable to be engaged and present in my life. My father had practically raised himself as his father was a busy veterinarian consumed with showing cattle, civic events and talking politics. His mother escaped through bridge and other social clubs, leaving little time or attention for my father and his brother who ran the streets and hung out in pool halls.

My mother's parents were salt- of- the- earth people who loved her very much. However her older sister was ill from polio and required many out of town hospital stays which took both her mother and father away. Although she was well cared for by relatives, this separation scarred my mother deeply and left her with feelings of abandonment and jealousy.

After learning  the respective background stories of both my parents I understood why my father buried himself in work and avoided emotional connections and why my mother sought so desperately the attention she didn't get as a child. They were so caught up in their own needs and pain, there was little time or attention leftover to nurture children. That is why I chose them as parents, they were the perfect actors to star in my theme of abandonment for this lifetime.

Awareness is one of the first steps to healing. Understanding family relationships and the underlying issues that shaped them is an important part of the journey. By taking a 10,000 foot  overview of the painful background  of these parent/child relationships as an adult, prepares you for the next step; finding and reconnecting with your child. 


Becky Arrington guides individuals and businesses to discover their purpose and live authentically. Whether you’re a company looking for innovative ways to lead and engage employees or an individual trying to prioritize, reduce stress or decide what you want to be when you grow up, learning to accept and thrive in change is key.