Healing Old Wounds: How Self-Love Works

One day, under the rubble of my anger and tears I found, sitting right there in the hot heart of my adult body, a small, sweet, innocent child. She was crying out in such pain, ‘Love me! Please love me! I only want to be loved’.

As this little poppet of a child revealed herself to me and as I heard her cries, I understood, clear and true as the cloudless night sky, that it was I, and only I, who could gather this angel up and give her what she longed for.

Now that I finally saw her and heard her desperate plea, I instinctively rushed forward to meet her and pulled her quickly but gently toward me, warming her cold, delicate hands by the fire of my love. I stroked her little cheek and comforted her in every way I knew how, all the while telling her that she was loved, she was loved without condition and would never again be banished from my arms.

The child was immediately trusting of the love and words I offered. I saw she had been waiting such a very long time. Exhausted from her waiting and ecstatic to have finally had her cries answered, I felt her relax and breathe heavy in my arms, finally drifting into a peaceful sleep, a small, contented smile across her face.

As the little one slept, I woke, and knew right away that a wound, made long ago and which had remained open and bloody until now, had this day healed over. The child and I would remain close now, I knew. Our friendship would grow by the day and in the tender, unconditional love I vowed to always offer her, we would set free all the other characters in our life whom we had so often asked for the love we now saw we could only offer ourselves.

And as we set those others free, so too would we free ourselves and we would inhabit our lives in a new and brighter way. We would take up our true place in the world and the love we had discovered within would flow out to other hearts. And those hearts, in turn, would discover the joy of their own love and by and by all would be healed and all would be well.