fever of the soul: adulting in a world full of wounded children

a birthday reflection on healing, reparenting, and becoming whole

mother and child (1900). mary cassatt. pastel on paper

last week was my 48th birthday.

and what i’ve come to realize with holidays in general, and birthdays especially, is that we all have tender expectations around how we hope to be honored or celebrated. but anytime you have expectation for something, you also have the opportunity to be disappointed.

attachment equals suffering.

we know this. it’s a much talked of buddhist principle, and quite brilliant in its simplicity.

and yet, we’re humans, so the expectations build anyway.

now that i’m 48, i’m mostly just happy to do something simple for myself. read some happy birthday messages and call it a day.

but birthdays are also a threshold, like new year’s day, a moment to pause and ask:

where have i been, and where am i going?

and on this particular threshold, i found myself wondering:

where does that yearning to be seen, to be witnessed actually come from?

because i think the expectation we have around holidays is connected to the expectation we have around self-worth.

when we were little, we came out pure and innocent. we all arrive wanting to have an experience, excited to be alive, wanting to connect and explore and express.

and those early birthdays, those early holidays, that feeling of wonder, that’s part of our intrinsic nature: to feel joy, contentment, excitement. and then at some point, negative experiences, and their resulting self-limiting beliefs, began to happen to all of us.

either super intense traumatic ones, or even just subtle ones:

you don’t get to have that.

this isn’t going to be what you hoped.

and that feeling of disappointment slammed shut the expression of the little child who just wanted to share, just wanted to connect.

your parents were also trained that they couldn’t be their full expressive selves. your teachers and all the adults around you, as you were just a little being in this hurting world. over and over reinforced this idea:

you’re not allowed to have that.

you’re not good enough to be that.

and it’s not that they meant to. sometimes you even had well-meaning parents who wanted to support you. but they had their own backlog of self-denying habits and negative self-belief systems.

and underneath whatever they said out loud, there was another script running. the subconscious script that drives us all.

until we wake up.

and as young children, we are internalizing unspoken belief systems as much or more than anything anyone says to us. we have special emotional antennae that act as receivers for all the subconscious wounding of those around us, and we internalize it all.

that’s how generational trauma repeats.

so anytime our heart begins to have some desire:

oh, maybe that could be for me…

another voice sweeps in:

yeah, but who do you think you are to want that? to deserve that?

that idea of not being deserving, and not being worthy.

ultimately it always comes down to feeling like we’re not worthy of love.

so i consider adulting — really growing up — as becoming someone who can end those cycles.

become a healed person helping heal others, versus a hurt person who continues to consciously or unconsciously hurt people.

most of us can relate to how many hurt people we’ve been wounded by in our lives. as those of you who follow my writing know, i’ve had to walk away from family members and from friends.

and it wasn’t until i learned to say no more, to walk away, that i really began this healing journey, where i could start to excavate the negative self-beliefs of i’m not worthy and i must be internally flawed.

the shame cycle of the little girl who wanted to be expressive, who wanted to love and connect and receive love and give love, that got slammed down over and over.

it becomes not safe to be ourselves, so we mask and we perform. we try to be ‘normal’ whatever that means!

to heal from that cycle, you have to at some point create safety with boundaries. and then begin to cultivate what many call ‘the inner witness.’ the one who can draw from the wise mind, and respond instead of simply react.

because most adult humans are still just little kids running around in adult bodies.

they never truly adult. they just grow into one on the outside, but the wounded child is who runs the entire show.

most people have a very wounded child in the driver’s seat, swerving this way and that.

a really crazy driver wearing a bunch of masks to cover the unanswered question within:

am i worthy of love?

but a true adult human self-parents and learns to say:

i’m taking my wise brain and parenting this wounded child so that the two of us can move forward together.

a human being who begins using the frontal lobes and the prefrontal cortex to act with the wise mind, with compassion, wonder, joy.

to be able to move with conscious agency toward all the things you wanted as a little being, but without being stuck there, having the same tantrums.

you begin to anchor into what is true.

you begin to anchor into the part of you that is spiritual, beyond this body.

and you begin the hard work of dealing with those wounds and those triggers.

it’s not easy. it doesn’t happen overnight. it’s a lifelong process. but you become committed to it.

since we are in a time where there is a feverish pitch to what our emotional selves must endure, we must choose to look within or be swept away in a current of unconscious despair.

i think of it as the fever of the soul.

because the assault on human consciousness is relentless.

if you don’t learn how to unplug, to step away, to excavate these internal places, you stay caught in it. you get lost in an ocean of suffering.

and it takes so much courage to cross over and sit with the painful places.

i didn’t get to this place at 48 without having survived a shit ton of trauma. everyone alive has, either in microdoses all the way along, or microdoses plus huge catastrophic moments.

we all had our autonomy taken at some point, our boundaries violated, or we’ve been told we weren’t good enough.

essentially we’re all operating with giant backpacks full of the heavy rocks of our negative self-beliefs. trying to stay afloat in a raging current while being weighted down to the point of drowning.

but the beauty of all this pain and suffering is, you get to rewrite the script.

you get to end the cycles of pain and abuse if you choose healing over avoidance.

when you choose to sit in the fire of your wounds, instead of pile distractions and numbing on top of them.

trauma changes the brain.

but so does healing.

so what does it mean to be a cycle breaker?

to me it means you came in with enough — biologically, genetically, or i like to think of it as soul wisdom — enough soul capacity to withstand the destruction that happened to you from growing up in your environment.

and instead of becoming more dissociated, more narcissistic, you became more sensitive. and with this sensitivity also comes a tendency to be more hypervigilant, more overgiving and self-erasing. and those patterns are ultimately very destructive for you. so even when those very learned behaviors of self-erasure also kept you in contact with your humanity, with your heart, with your empathy, you have a new task.

so now the real work becomes — for those of us who didn’t lose ourselves in the process — is to begin to be a witness, to create safety, and to walk away from wherever safety doesn’t exist.

it doesn’t matter if they’re your friends, your partners, or your family.

you must walk away if they are unable to choose healing over hurting, to choose love, for themselves and for you, over the cycles of pain.

it is a process that entails sitting with that wounded child inside and saying:

i’m so sorry you never had a parent to love you the way you needed. but i’m going to love you now.

and in those little moments, you begin to reparent yourself.

you begin to adult in all senses of the word.

you begin to be a healed human here to help heal others in the process.

because you can only from your own place of filling your own cup begin to be a light that shines to help others through the darkness.

and then you begin to return to your childlike wonder and innocence.

you start to let this healed child be part of the decision making.

and as you become the healed adult and the healed child working together, you start to create the life you have dreamed of having but never felt worthy of receiving.

when your passions are allowed to lead, you begin to nourish an inner flame.

it is this inner spark that was always there but got really buried. and as you feed it, it becomes a healing flame.

and you begin to lead by example:

here’s how i’m doing it. how are you doing it?

you begin to be the healed person committed to a path of authenticity.

because once you commit to sitting with yourself in your pain, in the crazy, dark, painful emotions of:

i thought i was a piece of shit because i was made to believe i was…

and you rewrite the script into:

i’m going to look at her and tell her no, she’s not. she is a radiant child of the light, full of wonder and goodness, and she is worthy of love.

and as you begin to show up for yourself, you begin to be a lighthouse in a dark, stormy sea for others trying to find their way home.

thank you for being here with me.

you are on the other side of this reciprocity i am finding as i learn to follow my passion and find my voice.

in this new relationship with those on a similar healing journey, i can be my true self.

so much love to each one of you…

---

i am a writer, speaker, and musician devoted to healing and embodiment. i share essays, poetry, and original music through venus consciousness. i’d love to walk this path with you. 💞