√ The Hidden Power of a Childhood Photo
:: A favorite past psychotherapy client reached out to me because she had rediscovered something important within herself and wanted to tell me about it.
Marlene recently contacted me, and reminded me that she first made an appointment because she separated from her husband and “divorced the son of a bitch” a few years later, after her kids were grown.
“We stayed together because I got pregnant. We fought like hell. I was young, just past 21 when the test came back positive. I grew to love him. But I was fragile. He could drop me like a rock with a raised eyebrow, unkind word, and I wasn’t able to come back from those comments very well. Instead of hurt, I chose anger.”
At first, she didn’t know who she was.
“Most people, I guess, have their emotional feel planted enough that they realize the other person’s perspective and let stuff like that roll off their backs. Trouble was, I didn’t know who I was. When I was criticized, it hurt. I had no “self” to stand up for. I just did what he wanted and then, after about three days, I’d explode.”
She tried hard to be a good Mom.
Marlene felt that she had no identity. She was a Mom, and tried hard to love her kids. She worked hard, sometimes two jobs, and left the kids with her husband to take care of while she was working. He did jobs here and there, but ended up staying home.
“We saved on daycare that way. He was a brilliant man, but as I became more angry, he became withdrawn.”
Fast forward to today.
She got remarried, made amends with her ex as best as she felt she could, and her kids together speak to her on a semi-regular basis.
Not perfection, but definitely progress.
When she moved in with her new husband, she found something she thought she had lost that spoke to her in volumes.
A childhood photo transported her to a place (and a time) of great happiness.
“It was my first grade picture. I was smiling this wide, beautiful smile. I thought about seminars I attended from a man named John Bradshaw. Brilliant guy. Used to talk about the “inner child.” I think he used it as a reference for the kind of person we could be. He said that, “Children are natural Zen masters; their world is brand new in each and every moment.”
She loved that!
“When I saw that picture, I found out who I was again. That place is there, it’s in me, I know it. That little kid’s spirit is alive inside. And every time I look at that picture, I see my face. I see that little kid that is waiting to see the world through new eyes again.”
Marlene began to cry.
Quietly, she raised her head and said, “That picture, that little girl, brought me back to myself, to believe and have faith again.”
She felt so good, she just had to let me know.
A Note From My Heart
++ This is an incredible story of how a simple childhood photo renewed the faith, love and goodness hidden within a woman and released the spirit of the “little child” within her.
Marlene had been looking for that place of faith, and inner peace all of her life.
Her childhood photo renewed her Faith in the good within her. She can feel it now, and access her inner child anytime.
This child, this faith within, is embodied in the spirt of that picture, that part of her that still lives within.
Now, every day, she can wake up telling myself that “something amazing is going to happen” because that is exactly what that kid in the picture would feel.
She can now see things from the perspective of her first grade self, remembering that she would shoot out of the door the second her eyes would open on a Saturday morning, and wouldn’t come home until she could squeeze the last few moments of sunlight from the dusk.
The hidden power of her childhood photo is that she can look at it anytime she wishes to renew her spirit!