When "She" Became "Me"
- Platform For Pain
- Nov 12, 2023
- 7 min read
Updated: Nov 12, 2023
I saw a prompt recently that said, "If you had 30 seconds to speak to your younger self, what would you say?"
My younger self wasn't always someone I cared for. In fact, due to my PTSD and everything my younger self went through, for a while there I couldn't and even wouldn't connect to her at all. That sad, hurt child wasn't me. It was some other person far away going through things I never went through. And I wanted nothing to do with her.
"Healing your inner child" always felt like nonsense to me. How were you supposed to heal something so far in the past? That child will never be healed, that child would only know suffering.
Looking back it's likely because I didn't identify with my younger self. I didn't have any inner child to lay claim or to heal. I had been convinced by those who hurt her that everything that had happened was her fault and that she deserved it. And I held that belief for more than a decade.
Do you love your younger self?
"Do you love your younger self? Do you think she deserves love?" My answer a the time was telling.
Of course not.
She was weak and sad and pathetic. Her classmates hated her, her teachers hated her (they told her all the time). And they were right. She had no value, there was nothing she could do.
Breathe.
I believed that for so long. Even before I was double digits, I used to say "If it was one person who hated me, that's a them problem. Two or five or even ten who all knew each other? A bunch of bullies. But people, adults I learned from and kids I played with, who had never met each other? At different schools and churches, across many years of my life, all saying the same thing? Hating and treating me the same way? No, that's a "me" problem. Something is wrong with me."
Most students and adults used words, but a lot used their hands to emphasize their thoughts. She was defective, sub-human, undeserving of friends and love. She should be grateful that she wasn't invisible, and that real people let her be around them. That was the identity I was given.
The adults hurt the worst of course.
Not just because they were way bigger and stronger than me, but because adults knew everything. If the adults agreed, it must be true.
Of course, I don't love her. She didn't deserve love.
It is a testament to my healing that I get so offended and defensive of that little girl. Some angel I knew at the time and who knew my heart recommended that I find photos of my little self and hang them around my room so that I could get used to her. Again, I thought it was silly, but God had planned 14 years ahead to make this step easy.
My mom always takes First-Day-of-School pictures of me and my siblings and keeps our picture day photos. There were plenty of pictures to go around. But even better, I had just graduated High School. And for my grad party, my mom made a banner with photos of each year of school, ages 4 - 17. So not only did I have all the photos, but they were all strung together and ready to be hung up.
And so, with all the energy and enthusiasm of "why not", that's what I did.
And I really hated it.
A lifetime of pain hung up on the wall of my room a place where I was supposed to rest. Pointing to any of these photos I could tell you what happened to that girl, that specific version of me.
When I first hung the banner up, all I could see were the flaws.
That one's hair looks funny, that girl is overweight, that one's crying.
I hated them. All of them. But I left them there, for probably over a year. And as I continued my healing journey, seeing therapists and counselors, I began to see them differently.
She was a child, that one was too small to defend herself, she smiled so bright there. She was too young, she didn't deserve that. Who would do that to a kid?
They still weren't me, but they were children. I know what they went through and I knew that no child deserved that. They didn't need to be anything but kids. They didn't need to prove themselves, to earn their worth. They didn't need to do anything. They were just kids, and kids should be loved.
This photo here was from a really bad day. I still can't believe she managed to smile. She was only seven. She deserved to, deserved to smile. It should have been easy, she shouldn't have had any reason to consider not to.
This was the year I abandoned my self.
The year I broke in pieces. I took my emotional side and I locked it away deep inside me. Over the years, anything that hurt or was hurt too much got locked away as well. Year by year, one by one, each of those girls was locked away. I became cold and rational, relying only on logic with no empathy for others. I stayed that way for another ten years.
During my senior year of high school, my logical side was broken. I had relied on it for 10 years and had finally managed to make friends. When my logical side broke, all I had left in me was the seven-year-old emotional side I had locked away so long ago.
The world I had built crashed down. I was no longer strong enough to hold it up.
My friends who knew me for my logical side, witnessed an almost overnight change as I could no longer maintain that rational figure I had built. I transformed from this accomplished, logical seventeen-year-old to that hurt, emotional seven-year-old above.
They didn't know what they were witnessing, why I got so sick with illnesses from locking my emotions away since I was seven, or why I was suddenly crying all the time. But I did. It was only a few months later that I graduated, and then another few months until I hung up that banner.
It took several more years before she became me again.
Before I acknowledged her and validated her as me. Until I forgave myself for abandoning her, before I truly believed it wasn't my fault. Until I stopped the words that they put in my head, that I had thought were mine. Her memories were mine again, and I was in them, not her. She was me. She is me. And I loved her.
Over the years following, I made the decided effort to rejoin my logical and emotional sides. My emotional side needed to grow, and my logical side needed to be put back together, but I was determined to do it, and determined that they would be united as one me.
I discovered logic with empathy, rational emotions, and a kindness that comes from understanding. As I love my inner child, I learned to love my adult self, her character, and her strength in who she had become, not what she had accomplished.
I still say the words I grew up with sometimes, "I hate myself, I don't deserve love. I am broken." But I have captured them, and I recapture them. Those words are not my identity, Christ is.
Recently in the present day, I saw a prompt that read, "If you had 30 seconds to speak to your younger self, what would you say?"
At first, it was obvious, I was trying to rescue her.
"Don't do this, go get help, watch out for this person, tell someone, don't go there."
No child should go through what she had to. I had to stop it. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought,
"Who would I be if I didn't go through this? If those events didn't happen?
Who I am today? I am at war, I am in a battle. I am constantly faced with hard choices, painful situations, and immense pressure. I am called to represent Christ in adversity. To trust in Him in all circumstances. I am sent to those who are overlooked and abandoned.
Satan HATES me. Anyone who knows my family and I can tell you. We end up living life like Job and Paul, hurt and misused by the world, and blessed by a good God.
I am strong. I am logical and emotional. I have compassion and empathy, tenacity and endurance that can only come from experience. Through Christ, I have learned my strength. I can handle hurt, I can handle pain, I can handle abandonment and loneliness. I know I can because I have. I know God makes a way because He made a way before.
Without it? Without these experiences? Could I handle this calling? Would it even be given to me and God intended? Would I be equipped to reach out and testify to those who are in pain like me?
No.
I have no doubt that my calling and my capacity for service would have been limited had I not experienced such adversity my entire life.
I believe Joseph, a biblical hero from Genesis, felt the same way. This is also our verse of the post:
"But Joseph said to them, “Don’t be afraid. For am I in the place of God? Yes, you yourselves planned evil against me. God planned it for good, in order to bring about what it is this day—to preserve the lives of many people."
Genesis 50:19-20
God has already used my past experiences for good. I know that He will use my present as well. So what do I tell my younger self? I know better than anyone the pain she will experience, the suffering. But I know also who she will become. It took me a while, but I truly believe in what I would say:
"You survive, and you love who you become. Do your best, Jesus handles the rest. I love you".
TL;DR:
I saw a prompt recently that said, "If you had 30 seconds to speak to your younger self, what would you say?"
I went through a lot of pain in my life. But after so much healing and growth in Christ, I realized I wouldn't change what happened to me, because I love who I've become. Without my experiences, I would not be able to fulfill the calling Christ has placed on my life. So instead of warning my younger self like most would, I decided on this:
"You survive, and you love who you become. Do your best, Jesus handles the rest. I love you".
Verse of the Post!
Genesis 50:19-20
"But Joseph said to them, “Don’t be afraid. For am I in the place of God? Yes, you yourselves planned evil against me. God planned it for good, in order to bring about what it is this day—to preserve the lives of many people."
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