Freedom For My Inner Child

I did something tonight that I have needed to do for a very long time. I gave myself permission to say what I have not wanted to say and possibly never wanted to admit. I gained freedom! I confronted my past, I said my peace, admitted my resentment, and have now let it go. I have let her go. I have put my fears out there and broken ties I don't think I can ever fix, and actually if it means it would be painful to fix them, I don't want them at all.

I always feared that saying something to her would hurt her, but I never stopped to think of what it was doing to me inside all that time. I don't think I really realized the tremendous amount of hurt that was there, the pain I have been holding on to that kept me a prisoner in my own past.

Tonight, I let my inner child have her peace. My inner child finally said the things she needed to say to her mother, even if it did have to come out of the mouth of a 41 year old woman. And even if it did hurt her mother. I was not looking for nor did not need an apology because that can never fix the things that happened in my childhood. I just needed to be heard for once.

A child can not understand the mind of an adult, no matter how much they try. A parent is there to protect and love a child, not abandon it and allow it to be abused by others. My inner child will never understand why her mother left her to go into a mental institution and was not there to protect her from the evils that happened while she was gone. That same inner child will never understand why her mother never talked to her, but rather cried all day instead. My 11 year old inner child cannot understand why her mother would allow a predator into their home and never warn her of the dangers of him.

As an adult woman, I can understand that my mother had a mental breakdown, needed to be institutionalized for a while and battled depression the best she could. She was so busy trying to keep her sanity that her 5 year old daughter was just one more obligation in her life she could not deal with. Put on top of that an unplanned/unwanted pregnancy during her depression, an unhappy and dare I say emotionally abusive marriage and someone is bound to get hurt there.

As an adult, I can forgive her, but as a child full of feelings of abandonment and feeling unloved, the pain was still there and was not going away.

There are somethings I will never understand about my mother and the decisions she made in her life. And some people would say I don't have the right to judge her decisions anyway. Some people would be right, but I guess what I came to realize tonight is that I do have the right to be heard when those decisions impacted my life. Keeping secrets only makes you sicker, and as I confronted my mother tonight, her secrets made my life difficult and 'sick'.

I know that God has a plan for me and I am keenly aware that He uses my trials in life to help others. These trials have given me compassion for others in similar situations, and in turn have given me the strength to help those around me while healing my own wounds.