You are the One You Have Been Waiting For

A woman I know shared a deep and terrifying experience that happened when she was a five-year-old child, which has been frozen inside her ever since. From the patio, she watched her parents as they lay a concrete walkway and soon she began running up and down the patio stairs. Her father told her repeatedly to sit down or she could fall. She, however, couldn’t just sit still. Suddenly she lost her footing and landed smack in the middle of the wet concrete where her father and mother were working. Her father, who was an angry man and often violent, became enraged. He picked her up by an arm and hit her with such intense force that she remembers leaving her body. Suddenly she came back to her body and was amazed when she realized she was still alive. This traumatized her deeply and this part of her remained frozen for over sixty years.

Having an angry, violent father and a mother who did not protect her from the abuse created deep shame for this little girl inside of her that she has carried her whole life. If you can relate to this little girl’s story, I invite you to put your hand over your heart and nurture the one inside of you who survived by running as far away as you could. Say to him/her right now, “I know you are scared. If you need to stay tight and far away, it is okay. I am really glad you are here, and I am learning how to take care of you now.” Then, bring this deeply wounded child into your heart because this is where all lasting healing happens.

Life is a school room and your ticket into this room was taking on the craziness, and parents were often the delivery system of that insanity. When life was scary, you needed a mother or father to take you into his/her arms and give you the love, safety and protection that little children need. Your parents did the best that they could, but they probably were not conscious enough to give you all that you needed to thrive. When you were very young, you were free-flowing aliveness, but then you became contracted by the conditioning you took on as you grew up. You began to tighten your body and you escaped into your mind, becoming a human doing (rather than a human being), always trying to fix, change, get rid of, and figure out. This has kept you on the surface of life.

As you are getting to know your core vulnerabilities in this school room of life, you can learn the tools and techniques which enable you to parent yourself. You begin to realize that you won’t die if you explore your vulnerable places and be with the parts of you that were frozen when you were young. The more you do this, the more your heart opens. It feels like somebody giving you a warm blanket on a really cold day or bringing you food when you have been starving. Is this easy to do? No, but it is the safest thing you will ever do.

Know that it is a process that takes a willingness to be curious and a longing to live a life of ease and peace. It takes a while to learn how to be with what you are experiencing because your mind has been conditioned to avoid experiencing what you are experiencing. But, slowly and surely as you become more and more willing to go to those deep places, the spells of shame, despair, dread, fear, anxiety, and confusion that have been frozen inside for so many years will begin to dissolve. These frozen parts of you are set free, not by fixing them, but through your attention. It is all about being with them, saying hello, keeping them company, and befriending them. These are wonderful ways to create a relationship with your frozen parts.

As you awaken, you are learning to turn toward life rather than away from it. The only way out is through, and you will discover that life is a very safe place. You are the one that the scared child inside of you has been waiting for all these years.