Today I make a commitment to my inner child who has been waiting and getting very impatient with me. Being always a rather stubborn person, I've fought this knowing that I need to make time for her for over a couple of years. I had stumbled upon this realization after a bout with depression that left me feeling frightened and lonely. I remember those feelings so well and I was dreaming of those feelings and realized when i first felt them was when I was a small child!
There is that very famous saying that comes to mind.
"You must know where you are to know where you're going"
"You must know where you are to know where you're going"
It is time........
So today I set my first appt to begin working with Mary Hoffman.
To learn more about Mary or her work Visit her Website.
I invite you to follow along each week as I share my first hand experience with this process and working with Mary.
I have known deep down that I HAD TO DO THIS WORK!!! I guess the fear and trepidation of discovery was too intense a year ago when Mary first offered to share this work with me. But now I finally feel ready. So to come to completion with this particular journey I need to go back and connect with that beautiful little girl that needed to be loved, wanted and held and who got lost in the drama of the adults around her. I want to let her know I am here, and that she is finally safe to look around and enjoy this amazing place where we have landed! Thursday June 19th 2009 11:35am
I begin the work next week Friday June 26th 2009. just before my 47th birthday.....I can see myself as a teenager in my minds eye.............saying "about bloody time Paula !"
This blog is going to be my place to come to journal and share my journey with others. I'm very hopeful ,and happy to have finally made a real commitment to do this and to put my past in the past, and to live my present in the present and to look forward to my future. I invite you to come along with me as I meet and free my Inner Child.
Yes, it's about bloody time for us all, Paula! Thank you! ;) Thank god you have the courage to share your precious journey with us so that we may also feel a sense of hope as we ride along this path of reuniting with our own inner child. Ahhh, this work is so meaningful and transformative and I hope that anyone else following also has the courage to do this work too... and I agree, Mary Hoffman is an invaluable guide to helping unlock within what the traditional therapies do not even touch. "Free the inner child!" Yes, indeed. Thanks again, Paula, for your grace and frankness. My inner child and I are following you, that's for bloody sure. ;)
ReplyDeletePaula,
ReplyDeleteI'm back. I wanted to share with you the inner child work I have done with Mary Hoffman. I met Mary in December of 2008. My boyfriend had arranged for me to have a series of sessions with her. She happened to be in my part of the country (New Mexico). I was able to meet one on one with her for several of my sessions. Then when she returned to California, it was so easy to work with her on skype showing her my drawings and doing the work.
For those of you who have not met Mary yet, she is childlike in her appearance,a petite woman with warm brown eyes and a gentle voice. But, don't mistake her appearance as being anything but a loving and strong being who has helped many of us recover our mishappen childhoods making them whole, fun and guiding us through our 'adult' lives.
Through my sessions, I was introduced for the first time to the different aspects of my inner child... the vulnerable child, the angry child, the magical child. I learned so much about who I am now and how my childhood experiences have colored this. But, was is so wonderful and freeing about this work is that I finally get to hear all the things I couldn't or wasn't allowed as a child to say or feel.
No, I am not running around now as a wild child screaming my feelings to anyone in my vicinity. Instead, I am hearing what my needs are and how I can give those to myself and to the childhood that missed some vital things for a healthy development as an adult. It's like I am almost being able to recreate the Father I needed and the love I needed that was not availble to me then.
This stuff really works. Mary has travelled with me into my these parts of me and gently and protectively helped me to land in a place where I get to not only change this stuff for me, but also create more space for me to give this to others in my life.
I have been able to understand the dynamics of my relationship with my boyfriend and see how our interactions are sometimes the different aspect of our 'children' wanting to get what they need from each other.
Also,one of my daughter has gone through a truly tramatic event of sexual violence. I immediately had her connect with Mary and she is working every week with her. I know that traditional therapy would not have worked with her. As a mother, I feel so much of my child's pain but I cannot take it away. But, interestingly enough, because I am working with Mary on my own stuff, it is bringing space and love to my daughter in a way I could have not done on my own. My daughter is healing and so, am I. We are connected in a much more powerful and healing way through Mary's work.
So, Paula, I encourage you to continue this. I honor you for your courage and for your faithfulness in discovering who you the inner you is and for getting all the wonderful love and joy you deserve.