Voices of the Inner Child
"Unearthing Me":
"There is no degradation in the uprising of oneself." ~ Granite Girl
Granite Girl
"Our inner children are the gatekeepers to our souls- to ourselves. If they don't trust you, you can forget admittance.
I'm annoyed by the ignorance that coats the old adage 'leave your past in the past' or 'leave the past behind you'. Where exactly is that? Where is behind you? When I hear these phrases, I picture somebody brushing their hands together sloughing off the remaining bread crumbs that have accumulated in the nooks of their fingers and the crevices of their palms, after they've gobbled the last piece of some nice Italian bread. I'm curious: when we leave our past 'behind' us, where do we put it? Do we have an attached invisible vesicle where we store all our emotional untouchables? Perhaps a vesicle is too small, and we store it in our bellies, our thighs, our hips. Maybe you hypnotize yours in an alcohol induced slumber. Perhaps your packaging is more socially concealed, and you store it beneath a pedestal taut with monetary success.
~ Socrates"The unexamined life is not worth living."
There are no unicorns, and there are no vesicles. There is no behind you- there is only within you. What if the old adage spoke the truth and went something like: 'When you bury your history, you bury yourself.'? Due to improper burials, pieces of me are scattered throughout my internal graveyard. Sprouts of crucial past remnants lie heavily within the rich soil I call soul. Throughout my gnarly lush garden seeds sprout and cover, nest and burrow deep into the black loam. My inner children tirelessly struggle to manage its tangled creeping foliage. No matter how difficult the job, how calloused their hands, and sweaty their brows, the tending is done in vain. For those abandoned cast-off seeds thankfully resiliently make house wherever they've been hurled. Like the innate rooting of a newborn's mouth to a mother's breast, the seeds reflexively plunge in search of sustenance and are drawn to the earth's supple magnetic iron core.
I have spent years detangling the messy coiling briar patch above so that I may dig deeply and hunt the rooted chords to my nuggets of self. During my journey to self, to the center, I have found perfectly protected untouched time capsules containing the very elements and essence that make up who I am. One of the many embedded time capsules contains a memory, a moment in which I experienced thunderous fear that shook the very bones that held me upright. Cocooned inside that churning capsule, the memory of my father almost killing my mother, replays.
I was five. I was in another room. I heard fighting in the kitchen. Like caged animals my cornered parents scuffled, with survival instincts referring the fight. Guttural words growled from their throats slashing about the room, hitting our stenciled wood floors and aged Formica counter tops. I clung to the shadows and made my way to the kitchen to investigate. My mother was hunched over a thrown trash barrel fisting its spewed contents back into the bag. My father stood behind her with red face and bulging veins that made the letter V on his forehead. His vacant eyes were the color of obsidian and lacked glisten like charcoal. His arms arched high over his head stretching back in the shape of a rainbow. His fists clenched together making an anvil. He leaned far back on his heels collecting momentum. I understood in a nanosecond that the anvil was intended for my mother's unknowing exposed back. Instinctively, I knew her one-hundred pound frame wouldn't survive the blow.
~ Ani DiFranco"There's a crowd of people harbored in every person."
I froze like a slab of granite yet to be chiseled from some unsuspecting mountain side. Stiller than still is what I was. Like shattering crystal my vocal chords betrayed my body. I let out a horrific scream that belonged to someone else. Everything around me froze and became still, just like me. The growls hung mid air and abandoned their assault on our battered kitchen. The referees removed themselves from the room, and it was just me and my parents. Three is a crowd. My father's fists loosened and the blood that pooled in his throbbing scarlet fingers began to flow again. His eyes blinked and the charcoal burnt out from his eyes. His V receded and his rainbow arms became limp.
I don't remember much after this. Fast forward thirty years. After exhuming this time capsule's contents, I've come to recognize five year old granite girl and her existence in my everyday life. She surfaces every now and then, especially during threatening situations. The irony is she was never buried. She's been here all this time. I just never knew who she was- who I was. I am more familiar with her tethered chords and I know where they connect to now. I would never have recognized granite girl without the guided care-full discovering and unearthing Nicole and I do together. I can think of no greater gift than to have a deep intimacy and understanding of oneself. Sacred Inner child work detangles the brambles, follows the yellow brick road, and brings you home."