Innerchild Work + Activism

soothing my abandonment wound

Last December, I watched a clip of a podcast interview featuring Michelle Kim, a fellow Asian activist based in the Bay, talking about her childhood wounds when it comes to being triggered by people who don’t stand up against injustice. She put into language something that felt too familiar and resonant. Here is the transcript for that clip:

…understanding why other people’s silence activates me so much. Why is it that I am so disappointed and hurt and almost feeling betrayed at a personal level when people who I want to be in community with fail to show up in the way I want them to. Is this a matter of me not accepting people for who they are? Is this a matter of me? Wanting to get people to care about the same issues the the way I care about them?

So it’s been such a tricky conversation and not just about this particular situation, but in general in my life it’s something that I’ve been grappling with. And I continue to come back to this very core childhood wound around me feeling alone in the battles that I was fighting as a kid and I think there’s something really triggering for me to see injustice and seeing that people are turning a blind eye. And it activates something in me that makes me feel terrified that the people that I want to be able to count on will not have my back when I need support.

So when I see this dire situation unfolding in front of our eyes and the people that I’m supposedly in community with staying silent, I think I take it personally because the calculation I’m doing is - are you safe for me? Are you going to have my back when it’s my turn?

And I think that fear of abandonment, the fear of disconnection is so visceral that it becomes all consuming that almost my attention goes to trying to get people to care by trying to shake them awake, rather than even focusing on what is stopping them from being able to do that.

So when I’m at a much more, steady state, grounded state, then I can be a little bit more expansive and trying to understand how can we facilitate people being more courageous or being able to understand what’s blocking them so that we can collectively work on removing those barriers.

In my conversations with my people, I hear myself time and time again saying that we cannot compartmentalize liberation work. It isn’t just when we are in the streets.

It’s in how I love. How I relate. How I am in relationship with my bio family. How I create. How I talk to myself. How I pray.

Recently I have been especially tuned into my inner teen, because I’m going to be traveling to my bio family soon. Every time I’m in my childhood home, my inner teen makes an appearance - sometimes a bit more dramatically than others. Because I felt so abandoned in my younger years by my parents in times where I needed them to protect me the most, the slightly older parts of myself shows up to gain agency in my voice through harsh tones. Using straightforward language and walled up energy, I can see my inner teen grasping for control when I didn’t have any when I was younger.

As I was showering this morning, I saw how my walls grew thicker and thicker between middle school age and into my college years. I felt like I could overcome anything if I was able to compartmentalize what I thought and what I felt. From a young age I found that my magic power was the ability to shut off feeling. That coping mechanism served me well until it didn’t.

I grieve for my inner child who had to shut down feeling in order to move forward.

In college, I acknowledged for the first time with my therapist that what I experienced was abuse. From there on, it’s been a non linear journey of reclaiming feeling as a whole human and having an integrated relationship with my mind/body/spirit. I’ve been learning to ultimately feel safe enough in myself - and in community.

So when “community” betrays me by not aligning to my values, it’s not as simple as seeing people as human. It reminds me that I don’t just exist in a world where people make mistakes and they are just healing and learning. I exist in a fucked up world ruled by white supremacy and genocidal billionaires where it takes individuals to uphold the status quo. I exist in a world that the consequences of not aligning with true love is contributing to physical and spiritual death.

Not only does it remind me of all of that, but it triggers the younger parts of me to be afraid that sometimes the people who say they love me will not show up to do the right thing and protect me…a child. Seeing children in Palestine being blown up to bits, seeing children cry over their siblings and parents, seeing bags of children…my inner child is traumatized by seeing that what she fears is true.

This world doesn’t value the most vulnerable. My inner child is scared because in the face of seeing children being murdered and exploited en masse in Congo, Sudan, Palestine…I see who is sacrificing their comfort and who isn’t.

The last part of Michelle’s clip spoke to me, because I don’t want to be reactionary from a childlike fear even though it’s very understandable. I have committed in investing in my own healing in community, because that is part of liberation work. Just as much as I critique racists and zionists who function from a place of hate and fear, I also have to do everything I can to heal - so that I come from a place of rootedness and love and hope for the world we are ushering in.

So when I feel those fears of abandonment rise up, I show up for my inner child or inner teen. I show her that her fear is so valid and this is a scary world to live in. I show her that in the uncertainty and unpredictability, I love her unconditionally. I show her over time that as an adult, I have agency and that I choose to never abandon her. I show her that she gets to feel big things and that it can be safe with me.

What does Liberatory Imagination spark in me today?

Building a world where kids can be kids. When they cry or throw a tantrum, it’s because of something silly and mundane…like having to brush their teeth after a long day of fun. A world where all the adults are in community to take care of their physical and spiritual wellbeing. A world where there are no worries or anxieties of anything. They just have to focus on growing their curiosity and feeling good in their growing bodies.