Facing the Wound That Shaped Me

I’ve been doing inner child work for years now, and only recently have I started to understand why it’s been so hard for me.
It’s not just about healing feelings of rejection.
It’s about facing the reality that I was actually rejected. Not imagined. Not dramatized.
Genuinely rejected as a child.

The part of me that still reaches for food, porn, overstimulation—that part is doing what it always has: trying to feel something that resembles love.
A moment of warmth. A moment of “enoughness.”
But underneath that coping, I’m starting to hear the actual wound:

“I wasn’t wanted. I was resented. And no one ever admitted it.”

My mother used me to meet emotional needs she had no capacity to face.
My father was buried in the shame of knowing he’d failed me—so instead of owning it, he withdrew or punished.
Neither of them said “I love you.” Not once.
And somehow, I grew up thinking I wasn’t allowed to name that pain because it would sound like blame.

But it’s not blame.
It’s disappointment so deep it lives in my nervous system.

They shouldn’t have had a child.
Not because they were evil, but because they weren’t ready to give love they didn’t receive themselves.
They didn’t ask the basic questions:
“Am I prepared to nurture another human being?”
“Have I healed enough to not pass on my unmet needs?”
And I’m the one living with the consequences of that oversight.

For years, I kept my mum in my life just enough to hold onto the fairytale:
That maybe she was a good mother. Maybe she loved me.
But I knew the truth. I saw it in her actions. I felt it in her tone, her energy, her absence.

And now, with that truth finally out in the open, I can begin to do something different.
I can finally feel the compassion I didn’t let myself feel.
Not just “I overate again,” but:

“Of course you reached for something soothing. You were starving for love and never got it.”

I used to think the “inner child” sounded immature.
But now I see that part as incredibly intelligent.
He created systems to survive in a world that never saw him.
He kept me alive. He helped me function.

Now, as the adult I’m slowly becoming, I’m beginning to meet him with more understanding:

“Yes, I see why you want this. And I want something more for us.
Not shame. Not restriction. Just a gentler way.”

Because I’ve made a lot of life decisions from wounded parts of me.
They weren’t all wrong. Some of them even looked impressive from the outside.
I was productive. I made money. I had a child. I was engaged.
But so much of it came from a place of trying to prove I was enough.

I don’t want to live like that anymore.

I want to build a life that comes from wholeness, not compensation.

And maybe—just maybe—I’m finally starting to.

This isn’t blame.
This is grief.
And maybe, for the first time, I’m ready to let myself feel it fully.
So I can live from something deeper than survival.

So I can love—not to fill a void, but because there’s actually space inside me now.

And I know I’m not there yet.
But I’m closer.

And that’s enough for today.

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