The magic child inside you

Inside each of us is a child crying out: Listen! I'm sick and tired of you ignoring me day after day. You go to work, you go out with friends, you sleep, you eat, you live your life as if I didn't exist. You only ever hear me when you're sad or in bed but do you really care about me? Do you ever wonder what I want?** I've been waiting for you to recognize me, my parents started by forgetting parts of me.

I am your dreams, your feelings and fantasies I am the one who likes to play, the one who likes to be hugged and to be told I love you, I am the child inside you, I am you. I don't care that you are now an adult _why does this mean that you have to forget about me?

How do you think I feel when you talk to your important friends people you don't really like? Where am I supposed to go when I'm angry and you don't recognize me? Where do you think your problems come from?_ I know you need your important friends, I know you have to make a living and you have to take care of others but have you ever thought that if you really became my friend you wouldn't need so much of other people's stuff? Have you ever thought that if you took care of your feelings and appreciated your little wants you wouldn't need so much money to keep me quiet?

I want you to discover me, I don't expect you to change overnight, I've been waiting for you to recognize me but a part of me can't understand how you treat me that way, why is it so hard for you to be the way you want to be? If you would pay attention to me you would listen to me and you would be interested to know how I am, well I am your child, you just have learned not to see me.

It is not easy to live the way of my heart but the child within me has convinced me that it is even less easy to try to live in someone else's way. I have been taught so much to conform to the directions others take that sometimes I don't even know what is mine or what I want.

**By letting others make decisions for me for so long, I can no longer make choices myself.

My parents, teachers and Facilitators have told me so much of who I am that I am no longer sure of my identity. I try to get even by holding them responsible for the way I am, instead of holding myself accountable and starting to respond to my true concerns.

Sometimes I feel that I have been told for so long what to do, that it seems impossible to discover a path that is entirely mine, but when I begin to recognize my desires, something begins to emerge within me, I call it my child, I feel excited, confident, something is growing within me, an energy that runs through me, that is mine.

The more I pay attention to myself my child feels released into the world, I begin to see myself and live the way I am inside. The security, pleasure, confidence, is within me, I just have to acknowledge it. Instead of accepting the ways of others, I begin to accept or reject my own ways until I find the ways I want and decide to nurture the child within me.

Loving my boy / Loving my girl. #

Instead of being raised to understand the love, success and wealth I had inside, I was raised to believe that this was something that was out in the world something I had to achieve. This was what controlled me and limited me from appreciating myself.

My teachers instead of trusting and supporting me to explore, play and create hundreds of ways of being, at 5.9.16 years old, structured my days so that I would learn and behave as they expected me to at my age.

For all this upbringing the occasion to discover my own path, my own limits and boundaries is not so easy. Our lives are structured full of mandates, almost everyone is doing something to fit into a set of normally acceptable categories, they live continuously adapting or looking for another path, away from their own.

When I saw this reality I asked myself why not take a first step for myself, taking care of the inner child and giving it what it needs? Instead of starting a new project or relationship, why not have a new dialogue with myself? In my own lack of resolution my feelings seem to be begging to be taken into account.

**Instead of looking for someone else why don't I give the forgotten child what I always wanted for myself, to see my world first so I can trust and feel?

The decision not to walk away from my child means a big commitment. For that I must leave the old structures and start a new path closer to my heart, this depends on how much I value myself and the place I give myself to find myself.

Originally my childhood, my feelings, were confused and controlled by other people's needs and expectations. Now the only person responsible for my child is myself.

**In the past I believed that I had nothing to do with the control of my life, my parents and others held the authority to determine it. Making the commitment to raise my child in the world means beginning to accept that I am controlling or relinquishing control of my life. I am now the trusted parent and teacher that my child seeks as he or she grows into himself or herself.

**It is my choice to listen to my needs, my feelings and begin to act on what I long for. It is up to me to create the path of my second child and protect him until he can take care of himself.

Every moment I learn to trust my experience is another moment closer to my child, I pursue my own path. Finding my heart's path means changing the adult life that limits my childhood. This means giving up adult habits that are a denial of my feelings such as having bad relationships, having a job I don't like, overeating, smoking, drug use, alcohol abuse.

For that I start to create safe environments in which I experience my feelings, places where I feel pleasure, my room, a park, spaces that make me feel good, I accumulate special people, I feel free, I feel myself.

My child is not going to appear instantly, he/she has been too long forgotten, controlled, let's start half an hour a day, not being always busy, many times he/she will not know what to do.

In almost every adult there is a 4 year old who is resentful, a 5 year old who likes toys, a 10 year old who misses his mother, another who likes to be with friends. **The experience of the child within us is infinite, it is buried but needs love and a safe space for its growth.

I must let my child express himself, scream, kick, express what in the past he couldn't. I don't want anyone to criticize me, I don't want anyone to criticize me, I don't want anyone to criticize me. I don't want anyone to criticize me, but to love me trusting me to find my own way.

**My child needs to cry and scream to let the knots of tension in his stomach unravel, he needs me to tell him I love him, to respect him when he is tired and sad, he needs to give himself gifts.

The responsibility is mine, my second childhood is learning that there is always an alternative, maybe I will go back to old patterns or I can stay in my old world, my first childhood, if I don't offer him alternatives. Even once I am set on the new path, echoes of my past press me to forget my child, inner voices fill me with guilt, surely when my first childhood repeats itself I must make an extra effort to love my child so that I do not return to its painful ways. But learn that I am the one in control. **My path is to reclaim the power I gave to others to control and define my life.

The closer I am to my child the more firm I am in my feelings, I discover that I have options, choices, the world cannot determine my feelings, I begin to feel my body, I feel more alive, the buried child becomes less tension and more of a conscious spirit, free to move. I trust my body. When I feel overwhelmed, hopeless, my child is screaming for attention, crying because it knows it deserves better.

My child is the one who feels this because he had no options to get his needs met and became hopeless, in my childhood I was not powerful or independent if others did not meet my needs, I was simply left frustrated, I did not know I deserved something more, I learned ways to please others hoping they would give me what I wanted, now I want to know ways to please myself, knowing I can take care of my own child's needs. When I think I can't, I know I am seeing the world with my old childhood eyes, my child is waiting for me to tell him he deserves an alternative. **The way to my heart is to tell my child that he deserves to be respected, loved and trusted.

**Knowing that I didn't have choices and that I do now reminds me that I have options for a new path. As a child I created all the excuses I was given to tell myself that I couldn't today if I can't the justifications come from myself and many times I am the last person to be my own friend.

Excuses I use to keep abandoning myself:** ** Excuses that I use to keep abandoning myself: **

I can't quit this job because I'm not going to find another one,** ** **I can't quit this job because I'm not going to find another one.

I can't leave this relationship because someone else is going to notice me, I can't do it because I don't have any money,** ** **I can't do it because I don't have any money.

Suffering I believe I don't deserve any better, I continue to hope the world will change and take care of me. My child remains surrendered and unchecked. My hopeless child I will remain helpless until I give him love, remind him that my head, my heart and he himself are inside me instead of being there others.

To give up pain as a way of life is to admit that I choose it, instead of loving and caring for my hurting child. He needs to know he deserves better. When I begin to care for him he becomes stronger, more confident, sets boundaries. Instead of the world telling me what is inside me, I am learning to express myself from within, my inner experience is cared for and defended.

Learning to love and accept the love of others begins when I learn to love my own feelings, live my own will. When I have a conflict I try to be there, I feel the pain and initiate the resolution to find my own options and follow my heart trusting my alternatives, not running away, I respond and feel freer, I become stronger with each resolved difficulty. Accumulating resolutions is like accumulating love. Love opens the way to my greater will.

From the book The Magical Child Within You, Bruce Davis