Say Hello To My Little Friend

(Why is Inner Child work so important AND so embarrassing?)

A few months ago, I found a photo of myself as a child, one I had never seen before. I would guess I am around two years old in it, my curly hair cut short to my scalp, my chubby fingers clutching at a toy. For some reason, I couldn’t stop looking at this picture. Perhaps it was the way in which the child-me is looking straight down the camera without smiling, her eyes round and her mouth slightly open. It’s hard to gauge how she is feeling, there is no hint of surprise on her face, none of joy or sadness either. She’s not performing any emotion. She simply is.

 I have no memory of the photo being taken, no knowledge of who the person behind the camera was. Still, I took it from its paper envelope, and blu-tacked it onto the wall in my writing room. As I sit here, at my laptop, it hangs next to me, always in my periphery vision. I’ve written about this before — I apologise for repeating myself! — but I am someone who tends to be very hard on myself. I can be self-critical and exacting, I have set impossibly high standards for myself. I have, in the past, been a relentless task master. But whenever I look at this photo, I am reminded that every time I am cruel to myself, this is who I am talking to – this small little girl in pink and white pyjamas, sitting in her Wendy house. Looking out at the world around her and the people in it, picking up on their cues, spoken and unspoken. Learning who she is and what she needs to do in order to be loved.