yearning to find me

I went looking for my inner child the way people search through old houses-slowly and afraid of what might still be living there.

She wasn't lost not really. She had simply gone quiet.

Curled herself into a corner of my body, I learned not to visit. I had mistaken silence for absence.

Survival has a way of convincing you that what hurts most must be abandoned to move forward.

I told myself I didn't have time to look back. I was busy becoming a wife, a mother, becoming dependable. Useful. Strong. I stacked responsibilities like sandbags against a flood, hoping they would hold. I learned how to give without asking, how to love without resting, how to smile while hollow. I thought that was maturity, I thought that was healing.

But something in me kept aching-not loudly, not dramatically. Just enough to be noticed in the quiet moments. Late at night, Early mornings. In the space between breaths when no one needed anything from me.

I felt like a house built beautifully on the outside, with one locked room on the inside that hummed with grief.

That's where she was.

I found her the first time I let myself sit with discomfort instead of outrunning it. No distractions. No fixing. Just stillness. She appeared the way memories do. Uninvited, fragmented, tender and tired.

Knees pulled to her chest. Eyes too old for her face. Hands clenched, as if bracing for impact.

She didn't trust me at first. why would she? I had learned to move on without her. Learned to call it strength.

"I'm here" I told her, though my voice shook.

"I didn't know how to come back sooner."

She didn't answer. Children who've been hurt don't rush toward promises.

Digging through trauma isn't heroic. It is slow and unglamorous and exhausting. It is pulling memory after from the earth and deciding what still belongs to you.

Some days I uncovered things I didn't remember asking to bury. Words spoken to sharply, silences that starched too long, moments where I learned that love could vanish without warning.

Other days I found nothing at all, just the ache of digging.

I learned that trauma doesn't live only in the memories but it lives in the body. In the way my shoulders stayed tense even when resting.

In how I apologized to often. In how I equated worth with usefulness. My inner child had to learn these lessons early. I had carried them faithfully into adulthood, mistaking them for truth.

I knelt beside her again and again, offering patience instead of pressure. Some days all I could do was sit with her. Some days she cried. Some days she stared past me, still waiting for danger to announce itself. “I won’t leave,” I told her. “Even when it’s hard.”

Becoming a wife and mother required more than love—it required presence. And presence, I learned, cannot coexist with unhealed wounds pretending not to exist. I wanted to be gentle where I had learned to be rigid. Safe where I had learned to brace.

I didn’t want my children to inherit my unspoken fears, or my marriage to shoulder the weight of wounds it didn’t create.

But I also realized something else, something equally important: I did not want my entire identity to dissolve into care for others. I wanted to know who I was when no one needed me. Who I was before the roles, beneath the titles. The girl inside me wanted that too.

So I asked her questions I had never asked myself. What makes you laugh? What makes you feel alive? What did you love before you learned to be careful? At first, the answers came hesitantly. Then, slowly, they grew clearer. She liked quiet mornings and loud music. She liked writing things no one else might read. She liked feeling the sun on her face without needing a reason. She liked dreaming.

I mourned her then—not because she was gone, but because I had survived by forgetting her. I grieved the years she waited. I grieved the softness I mistook for weakness. Healing did not erase what happened. It reframed it. I stopped asking why I wasn’t stronger and started honoring how strong I had already been. I learned that becoming whole wasn’t about fixing myself—it was about integrating every part I had learned to hide.

I spoke to her when I felt overwhelmed. When I doubted myself. When I felt the familiar pull to disappear into service. “You don’t have to earn rest,” I told her. “You don’t have to be perfect to be loved.” “You’re allowed to want joy.” And slowly—so slowly I almost missed it—she began to trust me.

Happiness didn’t arrive like fireworks. It arrived like breath returning after holding it too long. It arrived in moments of ease. In laughter that surprised me. In choosing myself without guilt. In letting love feel safe instead of precarious.

I became a better wife not by sacrificing myself more, but by showing up as a fuller person. I became a better mother not by being everything, but by being real. And I became myself not by abandoning those roles, but by refusing to let them be the only mirror I looked into.

The inner child didn’t need to be rescued. She needed to be welcomed home. Now, when I check on her, she isn’t hiding. She sits beside me. Curious. Present. Whole. She reminds me to play. To rest. To dream without apology. She reminds me that happiness is not something I owe anyone else—it is something I am allowed to cultivate.

I didn’t find her by digging faster. I found her by staying. And in healing her, I learned how to be me—soft, strong, imperfect, and finally, enough.

And for the first time, I didn't rush past that feeling. I let it settle into my bones. I let myself believe that surviving was never the end of the story. Living life to the fullest was.