Healing My Childhood: Beauty for Ashes

This weekend I took a step toward healing my childhood and will be doing a series of blogs to document this journey.

Through some additional heart break and work with a trained profession I realized just how delayed my response was to the things I endured.

I was a child of an addict. I didn’t have stability or the normalcies of a childhood. To be fair no one in my life did so we began to normalize dysfunction. I felt since no one else needed to dive into the depths of understanding their pain, it was weak of me to need to.

I’ve said before I was very lucky in that my mom got clean in my early teens so the roller coaster of what was my childhood faded in the background of the excitement of having a present mother for the first time.

She became my best friend and the love of my life.

I told myself for years that since I was no longer a child of an addict I didn’t have to deal with being one, but the scars remained quietly in the background.

They resurfaced after my mom passed, the realization started to creep in, I would never get to talk to her about it, not really address what we had went through together. We would occasionally joke about the events that happened when I was a child. Making light of them, both wanting it to be unreal or less damaging, but it was and now I had to face it alone.

The two women who witnessed my childhood were gone. My grandma and my mother, it felt as if I was carrying around this shameful secret. That even when I would speak about it, no one understood it.

It got too heavy and began manifesting itself in my daily life. It felt as if my inner child was kicking and screaming and no one heard her….

not even me.

With work with my therapist we dug into this pain, we still are. I have grown into an adult with defense mechanism that are directly related to my childhood. I don’t speak up at times because as a child it didn’t seem to make a difference. I try to people please so that people will stay. I don’t leave abusive relationships because I just want a home and to be loved.

I realized that in order to have a happy and healthy adult life I had to hear my inner child.

I thought that I had missed my window of opportunity to grieve my childhood, as if there was a time limit on how long after trauma you were allowed to mourn, There is not!

I spent some time to remember the hurt, pain and confusion. I sat with that this is my story and my reality and also that it is just one part of it.

A lot of my pain came from ignoring the events all together or looking back and wishing it was “normal”. I spent so much time thinking about how it wasn’t fair, or how it should have been different.

This was like putting salt on an open would over and over.

I realized it had happened. That it was mine, good or bad.

I had to mourn it, so I gave it a funeral.

I wrote out with honesty what my childhood was and what it wasn’t and I vowed to make a safe place for my inner child.

My therapist had gave me this visual. She said to me that your inner child is kicking and screaming for someone to see her in a room next to you and you trying to suppress her is like shouting “be quite!” and she feels even more hurt and alone.

She then told me if a child were crying in front of you what would you do? would you tell them to shut up? put them in a room alone and keep them there? I replied no. She then said why do you do that to yourself…

One of my greatest hurts is not being heard or seen and I have too looked passed myself. I didn’t think I was worthy to be heard.

So this weekend I listened and I let go. I wrote the following note, sat in the sunset and lit it on fire. I spread the ashes in the ocean and then danced in the water, like the child I always wanted to be. I release parents, myself and my inner child.

There were no play times, no dress up or tea parties, So many birthdays with out parents. There was no stability or single place to call home. No lavish family vacation or stories before bed. No songs sung or hair brushed.. there was no childhood.

There were days where she wouldn’t come home, days where I locked myself in a room to keep me from her. School events, parties and moments missed. Lies to childhood friends about my mom on “business trips” that were drug binges of jail sentences. There were random kids, in random houses with random rooms where parents did “adult things” there was confusion and chaos but there was no childhood.

Today I say goodbye to what never was. I mourn the little girl that never got a chance to be. Today I hear her and I will spend the rest of my life nurturing her and making her a home. I will let her dance and play. I will give her a chance to be, the chance she didn’t get.

Today I create beauty for ashes and let go of what was lost to make room for what is to come.

Today we are safe heard and free.

I forgive my parents and I forgive myself,

Jena Renay Gonzales

As the sun set in the most beautiful pinks and purples I said to the sun setting where I felt both its warmth and my mom and said “ I love you and I forgive you” and I know she was there. I know we found our peace.

I feel lighter, of course this is just the beginning but it is mine and one I gave myself.

These types of things are not common in my world. Therapy, vulnerability or symbolic ceremonies. I write so that you know…

its ok to do whatever the hell you need to do to heal, even if others don’t need them, don’t understand them or support them. Your healing is yours!

I didn’t get a lot of say in my childhood but I got a say in this and as someone I love deeply said I “will get a say for the rest of my life”

I hope this inspires you to heal.

con todo amor,

Jen