Before I learned to accept the pain from my childhood, I kept acting in ways that I had no control over. But once I realized that there was an inner child whose pain I needed to accept, I stopped running in circles and started finding ways to heal from the past.
I didn’t have my biological mother in my life after I was 14 years old. Instead of accepting the pain that came from the breakdown of our relationship, I kept trying to replace my mother.
The first person I tried to replace her with was my first foster mother when I was 16 years old. I met this lady through a hospital social worker. She was the social worker’s mother. I told the social worker I needed a better solution than the group home I was placed in by the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS). The social worker felt bad for me and informed me that her mother was a foster mother.
Without taking a minute to think, I started the whole process by meeting the lady, spending time with her and even did a sleepover. I felt comfortable. I was already dealing with putting my rapist in jail and caring for my daughter who had so many developmental disabilities, so having a mother felt like what I needed, no matter who it was. A couple weeks after meeting, I requested this lady to become my foster mother. Soon, our relationship grew to the point where I felt comfortable calling her “Mom.” We would talk for hours and laugh. I never thought she would be more supportive than what I already had experienced with her.
Until one time, when I went to visit my old school, the school counselor told me they heard I was selling my body. I acted as if I wasn’t hurt. I told the counselor, “No, I am a drug dealer,” and with pride, I left the school. But when I got to my foster home, I crumbled into a corner of my room, crying non-stop. My foster mother came in and sat with me asking what was wrong once I told her she told me I know the true and even if story be told about me I should always change the narrative as I was doing with putting my rapist in jail and proving I wasn’t just a troubled child but a child who needed help after a few hours crying as a baby who got taken away a candy her words empowered me and I felt strong again. That brought me closer to her.
But in truth, I hadn’t really taken the time to get to know her. I just knew that I wanted a mother. After about six months, things took a different turn. She stopped cooking as much. When I got pregnant a second time, she didn’t even show up at the hospital. She started charging me for the light bill. I began to think that she was just in it for the money. I felt betrayed and disrespected. Even so, I continued to call her mom and to try to believe that our relationship was real because I didn’t want to lose a mother figure like I’d already lost my real mother.
Then one time, she left the country for a trip and asked me to keep it secret so I wouldn’t be moved to another home and so she could keep getting paid. I agreed because I felt it was my job to protect her. But during the time she was away, I ended up in a mental hospital for being under the influence of alcohol. Once she heard what was going on, she took the first flight back, but not to protect me. Instead, it was to claim that I was AWOL and that she hadn’t known where I was. I felt betrayed and abandoned all over again. I even felt as if I deserved everything for trying to replace my mother with this lady.
At that moment, I stopped trusting her. But that didn’t stop me from trying to find other people to replace my mother. With other foster mothers, I would try to please them and not expect almost anything in return. I would assume they had good intentions and really cared about me when their behavior should have made it clear to me that they didn’t. I kept wanting to believe that these women would be mothers to me. I kept getting hurt, without really understanding why I was going through this cycle again and again.
There were other ways, too, that the hurting inner child in me controlled how I behaved without my understanding. When I was 15 years old, I ended up homeless and selling drugs. I was really just trying to maintain myself and to get my daughter some clothes and whatever I could provide for her because she was in the hospital with so many health complications. But a lot of people thought I was just a crazy troublemaker kid, especially when my mother would spin the narrative that I just wanted to live this AWOL lifestyle.
I would get upset and either want to fight or be quick to yell to defend myself. In romantic relationships, I wanted to resolve everything with violence. From childhood, I always heard, “Don’t ever let a man put his hands on you.” But I would always take it so far and get wild with my anger. One time, I even attacked a guy I was dating with a stick and got arrested. Luckily, they let me out with an order of protection, but the guy was trying to press charges for attempted murder. That could have ended my life.
At the time, I didn’t know why I was fighting so much. Looking back, I believe that all my raging and fighting was about trying to prove that I wasn’t this vulnerable little girl who got raped and who no one stepped up to protect. Before I realized that, though, I just kept fighting.
The vulnerable side of me came out most when I was drinking. When I was around 19 years old, my drinking habits went from bad to worse. I knew drinking wasn’t going to disappear my problems, but at least I thought I could be out of reality for a couple hours. But the next day, I would hear stories of me crying and talking about the pain I was going through. When I was drinking, I would even call my mother and ask her why she’d betrayed me. If she wasn’t giving a good explanation, I would cry and tell her how broken I was. When I wasn’t drinking, I would never have called her or allowed her to see me broken. I would only post good things on social media for her to see how good life was going. But then I would go back to drinking, and all the pain that I tried to hide would come pouring out.
I first heard about the inner child through a YouTube channel. I asked myself, “Could I have an inner child who is hurting?”
Once I began to realize how much pain I was carrying around, I felt like I needed so much more than the 45 minutes once a week that therapy was offering me. I started to build a relationship with my inner child myself. I started paying attention to the child part of me that looked up to her mother, got hurt, and never got to heal. I stopped ignoring her pain and started asking her what she needed and how I could help her.
Once I started paying attention to my inner child, I realized that I couldn’t replace the emptiness that my mother had left by drinking, replacing my mother with other women, or having children to replace the family that I had lost. I stopped denying the pain my mother caused me and accepted that I couldn’t replace her. I realized my inner child missed out on her childhood, and realizing this was painful.
But I also didn’t want my inner child to feel as if everything was lost. I gave her hope that she could heal by acting like a kid myself when I was playing with my own children. I saw my children enjoying their childhoods while my inner child was also getting to experience the childhood she never had. Soon, I started praying and building my relationship with Jesus Christ. I also reconnected with some of the passions I had as a child, such as drawing, writing, joking around and making others laugh. I even started pursuing finishing school.
There was so much more I also learned by connecting to my inner child. I learned how to stop being a target, and how to stop the cycle of violent relationships. I also learned how to love other people. I even learned how to love and let go when I needed to while holding onto the good memories, rather than just being overwhelmed by feelings of abandonment.
Part of my motivation to change was realizing that ignoring my trauma was not only affecting my future but was also hurting my closest loved ones, including my children, my partner and other people who love me. Inner children may have missed out on a lot and are often lost or confused. They’re asking you to pay attention. Sometimes they’re screaming for help. Brushing off trauma or being in denial doesn’t solve the pain, even though facing the pain can be very hard. It’s possible to recognize when you’re in danger and to move to safety. Down a tunnel of darkness, there can be light.
