Finding the Traumatized Child Within

I didn’t know she was still there—this little girl I had buried beneath years of coping, managing, surviving. She had learned to stay quiet, to keep the peace, to make herself small when love felt like something earned rather than given.

For a long time, I thought I had simply grown up. Matured. Moved on. But the truth was, I had outgrown joy. I had outgrown ease. I had outgrown myself.

One day, in the stillness after yet another emotional unraveling, I felt her.

She didn’t speak in words. She showed up in the trembling of my hands, in the flinch I couldn’t explain, in the sadness that wrapped itself around my chest like a heavy coat. She was hiding in the moments I couldn't ask for help, in the way I always apologized for simply needing anything at all.

This was the child who was once told her feelings were too much. That her needs were inconvenient. That love was something to be chased after and earned through silence, obedience, and over-functioning.

I met her when I sat down and asked myself why I felt afraid when nothing was wrong. Why I still braced for punishment after speaking my truth. Why joy felt foreign. Why I could help everyone else—but could barely look in the mirror with kindness.

And so began our reunion.

I began to listen. Not to the noise of the world, or the guilt inherited from survival—but to her. She liked quiet mornings, color, bare feet on the earth. She liked safety. Consistency. Truth. And she wept when I told her I was sorry. That she deserved so much better. That I wouldn’t leave her behind again.

Healing isn’t always loud. Sometimes, it’s in the way we put lotion on our hands. In the way we stop apologizing. In the way we say, “No, that’s not okay.” In the way we laugh again—unfiltered, and freely.

Finding the traumatized child within wasn’t about dwelling in pain. It was about making space for my own becoming. For allowing the truth of what was to meet the power of what can be.

And I am becoming.
For her. For me. For all of us who were once silenced.

Carlin