Reparenting My Inner Child Showed Me How To Love

When I first became a mama, I found the responsibility of keeping someone else alive really tough.

Not just because they were frail and weak (that too), but mainly because I was terrified I would get it wrong.

I had absolutely no self-belief so intuitive parenting was never an option for me. Instead I chose the safety of following the instructions and routines prescribed to me by a book.

And I defaulted my thoughts and feelings to the expertise of someone else.

The good thing is, it meant that all three of my kids slept through the night at around 10 weeks (which was great because there is almost nothing I hate more than feeling tired).

But what I couldn’t find in any manual was how to open up to my kids.

• How to be vulnerable in front of them.

• How to let them into my heart.

• How to be able to receive affection when they wanted to give it rather than feeling irritated or anxious about my personal space.

All of this came later.

As a result of an exploration into what had caused me to become so closed, self-reliant, independent and not trusting.

And it turned out that the answers all lay in my childhood: one in which I hadn’t felt loved, validated or seen, in the way that I needed it.

So it made sense that I wasn’t very trusting. Of myself, my abilities or of others.

Reparenting my inner child changed all of that. It allowed me to fill the gaps in my emotional nurture from the inside.

And to reassure little me that she was loved and safe.

That she could relax now and no longer feel responsible for fixing everything by always getting it right.

And that she could start to trust that there was no longer any punishment or rejection that could affect her, now that she had big me by her side.

• I now trust in life and its curveballs

• I no longer worry about getting it wrong

• I am no longer so emotionally volatile

• I can receive affection freely with joy

All because little me has processed past challenges and integrated them with the support and love of big me.

This is the transformative power of inner parenting.