To the little girl looking at me in the mirror

The wars within our minds and souls

The light side and the dark

The angel on the shoulder and the devil on the other

The wins and losses of life

The intuition

The battles that began when we were children that haunt us as adults

The shudders of memories we forget about in our adolescent years resurface in our adult life

My inner childhood fears began to rise

Intimacy + Anxious attachment = fear of abandonment

The little girl inside me has been constantly looking at me in the mirror, waiting to be faced, yet I ignored her each time.

“Grief is patient, and it will always be there waiting for you”

Not just grieving an important human in my life

I am grieving pieces of my childhood that I am finally ready to face

To the little girl inside

I am sorry you went through what you did. No little girl should have experienced what you did.

You had to do big things to feel loved and recognized.

You clung to any love and affection you could because you didn’t know when it would come next.

Your emotional dialogue was consistently ignored.

At age 6, you felt like you had to hide your feelings to protect others’ emotional stability.

You continued to please others and hide details to maintain relationships with others, even though fear and worry filled your mind

You were a perfectionist and never wanted to mess up the lives of others

Mistakes were followed by yelling, resulting in downpours of tears

You had to grow up early, which made you an expert at anticipating everyone else’s needs while completely abandoning your own.

Here I stand as the woman I am today. Not ashamed of what I have been through; it has made me the strong human I am today.

The woman whose psychiatrist said ‘I am surprised you made it through a graduate level degree with everything you’ve been through’.

I am not defined by my inner fears and the little girl inside of me

I am a woman with a large heart. I am an empath, I feel and feel. I love others from the deepest parts of me. I find the beauty in the broken. I am patient and understanding. I love all the people I encounter. I am not surface-level- I want to know you for you. I am someone who fights for what I believe in and expresses my unconditional love for others.

This is the start of a journey of healing my adulthood, grieving, and facing the little girl looking at me in the mirror.