I feel that I’m super strong but I’m extremely emotionally tender.

Often, I have found myself being the only one in a setting that was upset over something. I never could understand how or why it didn’t upset the others too. For years it would happen again and again. Same thing, only it got much worse the older I got because it needed tending to and I was too busy trying to fit in with everyone else and ignoring my entire being crying out for help.

I began to notice the expressions on people’s faces when it would happen, and it was the look of Crazy…Strange.

I had been labeled as overly sensitive for as long as I can remember but it started sabotaging my efforts and destroying any credibility or chance for happiness and fulfillment in my community and with my peers. So, I started doing my inner child healing work diligently and faithfully. Over time and with many practices, exercises, and readings from top psychologists, psychiatrists, and MDs.

I revisit and trace my triggers back to the source, confront them, and finally feel them into healing ways.

I’ve met my inner children and I have many. All shut down in different times and ways and ages. Not even getting a chance to be a baby before experiencing the harshness of this world, and too many times to mention after that, along my growth timeline. Shut down, Silenced, Robbed and Raped into silence and shame – carrying it all into my adulthood because I was told to be quiet, discredited, or shamed into submission and the lonely disparaging darkness.

I visit and tend to all my inner children. I was focusing on my angry inner teen when my 9-year-old self peered into my eyes and begged me with eyes full of tears to please set her free from that place she’s frozen in.

We cried together and I felt the healing energy between us mingling and preparing to set her free from the pain of being raped repeatedly by her stepbrother and molested by her German landlord. This happened when living in Germany in a village above an old nazi soldier’s paint store who also happened to be our family’s renting landlord.

So don’t you ever mention this again! You trying to get us kicked out of our house here? Keep your mouth shut! That’s what my parents said when I went to them about it.

That was what shaped the pattern and paved the way for many more sexual assaults throughout the years. And when I did try to get help, I was shut down, ridiculed, called a liar or accused of it myself when it was not the truth.

I no longer have a victim mentality because of the work I am doing. I’m a spiritual warrior who is grateful to be in the greatest school in the universe and the opportunity for the lessons I need to evolve and grow and prosper, so I can pay it forward to others in my community and the world.

Lastly, I would like to express my gratitude and appreciation for CoDA and even more grateful that they have encompassed the inner child healing into their program! Since I ran away at age fourteen, I have searched for ways to finish raising myself by looking for books or anything I could find on healing my traumatic experiences in childhood, so thank you Co-Dependents Anonymous! I no longer have fear and doubt about what awaits me in life, but I do have Hope and Belief about what awaits me in life and in my future.

Thank you for reading my story.

Pam W. 04/24/2024