Healing My Story: Little Girl in the Woods

There are two years of my life I don’t remember. They say your mind protects you when you are the most vulnerable, refusing to form memories. These two years occurred when another family was staying with us. The mother was abusive. I have two very strong memories from that period–one of which was being protected by my sibling from this woman when she was trying to beat me.

I once worked with a therapist to repattern some memories. We travelled through my subconcious to the places I was stuck in my personal history. I discovered myself at different ages hiding in darkness. One of those ages matched up with my memory blackout. I crouched on a hard, smooth floor with darkness all around me. I hugged my knees to my chest and looked up into the light.

I was the light–my adult self–looking down into my young face.

With my therapist guiding me, I took my inner child out of that darkness. I put her in the woods in a cabin. She was an only child with an easel and painting supplies. There was a river nearby for her to stand in. The space was calm and bright, and her two parents were steady, loving and needed for nothing. No brushes with poverty. No hard slaps. No hurt. Just the love underneath all the fear we carry.

I told her she could stay there or grow up. She is still there, but I also followed her to another age. She had a dream of traveling the world, of looking down from great heights, so I left her at the top of a mountain. She is still there. She is many places.

Just as there is no limit to the imagination, there is no limit to our ability to heal our stories.

In what ways have you used creative thought to heal past wounds?

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