Children are soft and fragile, and what holds them together until they solidify into fully conscious adults is love and acceptance. Without our father’s acceptance and our mother’s love, we do not develop as whole people. We do not become the whole, healthy, beautiful adults we were meant to be without these vital nutrients. The absence of love and acceptance in your childhood leaves what feels like a big hole in your heart. That hole is the absence of your harmonized inner childhood. When you pick up the pieces of your broken inner child and put them back together, the hole in your heart is filled. You are then free to self-actualize and discover your ultimate creative potential in life. As long as the child inside of you is fragmented, you will never self-actualize and reach your full potential. 

Words cannot describe the pain, grief and loneliness involved in picking up each of the pieces of a broken self. The intensity of emotion is hysterical considering that we are grieving for things that happened or didn’t happen decades ago. Each piece of my little girl I pick up is like being caught in the undercurrent of a strong emotional tide. I have to go in anchored to the shore so I know I won’t drown. It gets easier with each new piece I find to stay connected to the present. Eventually the pieces get smaller and the wave feels manageable. 

With this process comes a deep understanding of other people. I know that they are avoiding the very pain I feel, and maybe their pain is even more intense than mine. I know why they avoid being alone for too long, why they eat too much unhealthy food, why they take pills and drink alcohol. I know why they run from themselves, why they hurt and abandon themselves. I know because I did it too, for the same reason. I know what they’re avoiding, how much it hurts. Sometimes we are more afraid of feeling the pain than not living up to our potential. The former is terrifying. The latter is scary but more comfortable. Avoidance of pain is why many people on their deathbed look back at life with regrets. It felt safer to miss out on life by avoiding pain, but when you’re about to die, you realize all the pain did was hold you back. And that’s all it can ever do, for as long as you allow it: control you. 

Running from your pain is psychological loss aversion. It doesn’t make you feel better, but it holds off the feelings that will temporarily be much worse. If you made it through those bad feelings, you would realize the victory and emotional freedom on the other side. Most people carrying great pain inside never get there. Instead they get really good at avoidance, often with vices. “Comfort” food, drinking, drugs, promiscuity, gambling and violence are emotional anesthesia. Risky behavior feels really good when you’re trying to avoid something that feels much riskier (your pain).

Middle aged crises happen as an opportunity for adults to finally confront the pain they’ve been running from for decades. Many people make major life changes in this stage, some positive and some negative. Today, armed with more self-awareness and knowledge of their parents’ mistakes, young people are experiencing quarter-life crises in their 20s and finally beginning to grasp the depth of unnecessary pain and suffering we go through as children at the hands of broken parents. 

Picking up the pieces of a broken childhood is possibly the most painful journey a person could embark on. But it is the journey that will pay off the most with what it produces: you, as you were meant to be, in authentic joy and wholeness.

It is only in mourning and love, love we receive from others and love give to ourself, that the child within us is healed and made whole again.

How could anyone express
what took place between us? We made up for everything there was never time for. I matured strangely in every impulse of unperformed youth, and you, love, had wildest childhood over my heart.

Rainer Marie Rilke