Voices of the Inner Child
Beatrix Potter
~ Small Bunny"He was fluffy and had soft ears and a cottony tail and big eyes. She didn't even care that he lost his little blue coat-the second one in two weeks!"
"Tales of a Lovable Bunny" (cont'd):
"Why did the mommy bunny still love Peter Rabbit?" asks Nicole.
"Because he was so cute." Small Bunny's eyes light up. "He was fluffy and had soft ears and a cottony tail and big eyes. She didn't even care that he lost his little blue coat-the second one in two weeks!"
"Why do you think your mommy might love you?" Nicole asks, quietly.
"I don't know." Small Bunny's voice sounds dejected.
"I know," I say, "Because you are cute and cuddly and have big blue eyes and fly-away blond hair and a great imagination and are enchanting…You are very, very lovable."
Nicole adds, "And you are lots of fun and magical and smart and playful and curious…"
"I am?" Small Bunny looks very surprised, but a small smile creeps across her face.
"Yes, you are," I say warmly, completely truthfully, because I have come to care about this small child quite desperately.
The issue about her mommy loving her is crucial for Small Bunny. She is firmly entrenched in her position: if only she could ‘be gooder' her mother would love her more. It seems that somewhere along the way Small Bunny missed some developmental bonding stages with her mother. When and why that happened may never be known, but it has left her with a huge emotional hole that she longs for her mother to fill with love. Nicole and I have spent many sessions working with Small Bunny around the idea that ‘being gooder' will not help because she has done nothing wrong. She deserves love just because she is lovable.
"Then why does my Mommy say I'm bad?" her voice trembles with tears. "She tells me to buck up when I feel too sad and sighs a lot and gets really mad when I am too bouncy and excited like Tigger from Winnie the Pooh. And she is very upset when I am jealous of my baby brother because he gets all her attention and wish I could put him in the garbage can…"
"Well those are all normal child feelings and mommy has been taught to parent wrong," I say stoutly.
"She has?!" Small Bunny is amazed by this answer.
"Yes, nobody taught her to be a capable mother, so it's like she's missing a piece of what she needs to be a good enough mommy." I tell her.
"She does?" She is still amazed, and obviously perplexed.
Nicole jumps in, "Your mommy only has one arm, doesn't she?"
~ Small Bunny"When she was 11 years old, she fell off a horse in Taos, New Mexico"
"Yeah," this is a story Small Bunny knows well: "When she was 11 years old, she fell off a horse in Taos, New Mexico and broke her arm so bad the bone stuck out. The doctor didn't set it right, and she got gangrene, and back then people always died with that cause it was like poison. Her mommy, who is my Grandma, was really scared!"
"Wow", Nicole said, "What happened next?"
"Grandma brought a special doctor in from Albuquerque, and they flew her out of Taos and amputated her arm and pumped her full of an experimental drug called sulfa, and she didn't die! But you can't grow arms back, so she only has one arm."
"Well, I'm thinking that something happened to your mommy when she was young that broke an emotional limb-like an emotional arm-so badly that it had to be amputated, too," Nicole explains. "Part of her emotions are missing, which makes it hard for her to be a good enough mother to you."
"You mean my mommy might have an amputated emotional arm, just like her real amputated arm?" Small Bunny sounds quite surprised but adds thoughtfully: "Yeah, that kinda makes sense to me. She doesn't like me to feel mad or sad or scared, does she? Like, she doesn't like me to feel my feelings. That's why we have the Garden of Feelings outside the Castle Tree, isn't it? Because I didn't know about what I was feeling and you had to teach me, right?"
"That's right, Small Bunny," Nicole's voice is tender, "And it's nobody's fault either, not your fault or your mommy's fault that she has an amputated emotional limb, it's just something that happened to her, like falling off the horse, because of an accident." (cont'd on next page)