I’m hanging with my shrink and he brings up some inner child stuff. My general response: “Really? Come on. You’re gonna pull the Inner Child card on me? That is SO 1994.”
And then we laugh, hard, like we do, and he gives his best exaggerated Jew-Bu shrug, “Well, that’s when the wound happens, so it’s like, hard to get around.”
Eye roll. I’d like to think that my years of earnest (and not-so-earnest) contemplation, and metaphysical expeditions, and sacred dancing, and dirty dancing (same thing), and fire-walking, and colonics, and green juice, and kundalini breakthroughs, and hang outs with ethereal beings, has you know, gotten me over the Inner Child Thing. Like, I’m a growwwwn wuhman. I can do what EVAH I want.
I did a Divine Your Life Session with Deb Kern, and it came up again. “Groan. You want me to meditate for twenty-one days on my Inner Child? Okaaaay.” And I did. And there was a whole world of pain and POWER in there.
The same week…the founder of Bamboletta sent me a doll. Not just any doll. A sacred, hand-crafted, eco-everything BAMBOLETTA Doll. With a note: “She’s a reminder of the power of your inner child.” And Christina made a request of me: “My only request is that you don’t put a picture of the doll on social media.” And then I crumbled/cried. For two reasons: Secondly, because someone was really truly gifting me something. There was no implied request for a tweet or a Facebook mention. And firstly, my Inner Child. There she was again. Pain and power — just what I was looking for, actually.
THE WHOLE INNER CHILD THING. AND WHY IT MATTERS.
Being whole means integrating your various selves. @DanielleLaPorte (Click to Tweet!)
Your masculine and your feminine. Your light and it’s shadowy edges. Your Inner Child and your fully present adult self.
Your actual childhood is only part of your Inner Child story. No one gets out of childhood unscathed because we are so vulnerable as children — even those of us who had pretty good childhoods, (“pretty good childhood” being a very relative term.) We are small and tender. We are stunningly impressionable. And vastly, we’re at the mercy of the grownups around us. Kids are easy to hurt.
Your Inner Child is an energy within you — and it’s always there, no matter how old or sophisticated you become.
Your Inner Child is a metaphor for the the vulnerable, innocent, truly sweet part of your being. That being the case, your Inner Child wants to play, to be listened to, to be CONSIDERED. And mostly, your Inner Child (read: your Deep Sensitivity) wants to be PROTECTED — to know that YOU as an adult are taking care of things. To know that you won’t let her/him be talked down to, you won’t let emotional neglect or abuse happen, you won’t let a narcissist suck on his/her life force. You will stand up for your Deep Sensitivity every single time.
Tender. True. Protected by YOU.
Takes a grown up to love that fiercely.
Danielle LaPorte is the creator of The Desire Map: A Guide To Creating Goals With Soul — the book that turned into a day planner system, a top iTunes app, and an international workshop program. A Desire Map workshop happens every weekend somewhere in the world. Author of The Fire Starter Sessions and the wildly popular #Truthbomb series, Danielle is also the co-creator of Your Big Beautiful Book Plan and co-host of the Beautiful Writer’s Group podcast.
Entrepreneur Magazine calls her “equal parts poet and entrepreneurial badass…edgy, contrarian…loving and inspired.” A speaker, poet, former business strategist and Washington-DC think tank exec, she writes weekly at DanielleLaPorte.com, where over four million visitors have gone for her straight-up advice — a site that’s been deemed “the best place online for kick-ass spirituality,” and was named one of the “Top 100 Websites for Women” by Forbes. The Huffington Post named her Twitter feed as one of the “12 of Wisest Twitter Accounts Worth Following.” You can find her @daniellelaporte just about everywhere.
