Loving Your Inner Child

A few weeks ago, my father sent me some things in the mail.  One of which was a picture of myself when I was thirteen years old.  I took one look at my eighth grade class photo and nearly died from embarrassment.  I have loathed that picture for the
last thirty-four years.   My first reaction was to rip it into shreds, but something inside me kept me from doing so.  Instead, I placed it next to my laptop with the intention of shredding it later.

For the following two days, I picked up the image of my former self over and over as I was drawn to stare it, only to put it down again with the intention of tearing it up into teensy weensy pieces at some point in the future.  After repeating this same pattern for what seemed like 897 times, I decided to look within and figure out what this was all about.

I sat upright in yogic position, propping the pillows behind me so that my back would be comfortable.  I closed my eyes and asked the Universe what I was here to learn from all this dilly-dallying I was doing.  I mean really—how many times was I going to be picking up this picture?  It was during the journey space where I was guided to place the image center stage on my altar, adjacent to my heart painting that I already had there.  I saw an image in my mind’s eye of my photo sitting on top of something square, making it appear to be its own mini-altar and I was next told to put my pink heart-shaped rose quartz crystal in front of the image.  Lastly, the Universe conveyed rather matter-of-factly to send that child who once was me, Love so that I could in turn feel it now in the present.

What fascinated me most was that this all seemed like heart-felt information, but I felt absolutely nothing.  Quite often during the journey space, I have an emotional response, but for this session I had no emotional attachment one way or the other.  However, I know full well that it is a whole lot better to do what Source is guiding me to do, so I did just that.

I gathered all my materials, including a rectangular yellow calcite that I had just purchased and placed the kid me on top of it, with the rose quartz anchoring the front of the image.  I then took the liberty of being creative and added an amethyst below the pink stone and in front of that I added a beautiful pink and silver metallic butterfly that I have.  I figured the butterfly was a metaphor for my own transformation and the amethyst represented the Divine Self within. 

As many of you may realize, rose quartz has the highest vibration of Love energy.  As I gazed at my creation and realized that this heart-shaped crystal sat directly in front of my former self’s heart chakra everything started to change.  What happened, you might ask?

…I began to sob uncontrollably. 

During this cry fest, it occurred to me that this picture wasn’t so bad after all.  Yes, I had a stupid hairstyle, but hey everyone had a stupid hairstyle when they were a kid—and this was the 70’s, so you can only imagine.  I decided I could get past my coiffure from days gone by and really see the “me” that I once was.  Once I did that, the “me” that I am now genuinely started to feel the loving energy being sent from myself in this time loop.  By the time all my tears were shed, a little over an hour had passed.

I was stunned that I had such a strong reaction.  It’s not as though something horrendously awful happened to me when I was a kid.  However, as I beheld the image of my former self, I recognized the shy insecure girl that I once was.  I was terrified to show the real me to the world for fear of being labeled different.  So, I did what any good little drone would do, I shut down and suppressed everything that makes me unique and wonderful.  Even though I have long since left that robot-like version of me by the roadside, never once had I shed a tear for my former behavior.   Now it needed to all come out—and boy did it!

After two weeks of allowing my child self to be in Sacred Space, I can now look at the image of that girl and give her a big thumbs up and the good news is that I have journeyed to her again and I know she is giving me a big thumbs up in return.  Needless to say, I have gone from despising this depiction of myself, to learning to appreciate “her”.  Furthermore, even when I decide to take “her” down from my altar, there will be no shredding taking place of any sort.  I will simply tuck the photo away as I reminder to always send myself Love.

We may think that we have moved past whatever issues we have worked through in our lives, but it’s worth taking the time to intentionally send our inner child a big dose of Love.  Whether we do that through meditation or if we pay heed to a photo of our younger selves on an alter; by acknowledging who we were and telling that person who was once us that they are Beautiful, Loved and filled with the Divine, we are enabling ourselves to experience a powerful healing deep within.  Let’s face it, both the current you and the former you deserve it—because all of YOU is simply perfect!

Thank you for reading and Namaste! (The Light in me recognizes the Light in you!)

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