Reparenting Your Inner Child: Transforming Childhood Pain Into Adult Freedom
The Childhood Moment That Changed Everything
Trigger warning: suicidal ideation.
When I was seven or eight years old, I walked into the kitchen and saw my mother crying in a way no child knows how to interpret. She had just learned she was pregnant with my younger brother. She didn’t see me standing there while she whispered to God, “Lord, take me away.”
That sentence lodged itself in my bones.
Later that night, I crept back into the kitchen alone. I opened the drawer, picked up the largest knife we owned, and held it to my wrist. I didn’t know what I was doing, only that my mother’s suffering meant something about me.
Thankfully, I put the knife away.
But the imprint of that moment followed me well into adulthood: sadness, responsibility for other people’s emotions, a lifelong relationship with depression, and the belief that if I was “good enough,” I could keep everyone alive.
It took years, and eventually reparenting my inner child, to understand that my mother’s pain was never mine to carry.
And if you’re reading this, there is likely a younger version of you who has been carrying something that was never hers, either.
Why Reparenting Matters (Even If You Don’t Think You “Need Healing”)
Most women who land on inner child work aren’t falling apart.
They’re functioning at a high level: building businesses, holding families together, showing up for everyone around them. They’re strong, capable, and often unaware that the root of their overwhelm is the child inside them who never learned what safety feels like.
Research supports this: childhood emotional neglect and traumatic imprints are strongly linked to adult anxiety, perfectionism, and self-sabotage (Felitti et al., 1998; Van der Kolk, 2014). And until these younger parts are acknowledged, they continue driving behaviors that look like resilience on the surface but feel like exhaustion on the inside.
Reparenting is the process of meeting these parts with the presence, attunement, and steadiness they never received, not to rewrite the past, but to free your future.
This is especially important for women 25–45 who are trying to build aligned lives or businesses yet struggle with visibility, consistency, self-trust, or feeling “not enough.”
How My Inner Child Continued Running My Life
I’ve spent my life in proximity to pain: a BA in Psychology, a Master of Science in Nursing, a decade in trauma ICUs, and now my work as an intuitive strategist and healer using the Akashic Records.
I understood trauma academically.
I understood healing spiritually.
But I did not understand myself.
For years, I rebuilt things (cars, careers, entire lifetimes) believing strength meant doing it alone. I raised my son solo and perfected the role of the caretaker. I kept achieving, producing, powering through, thinking maturity was measured in how much I could handle.
But inside was still that eight-year-old in the kitchen, trying to save everyone.
Reparenting asked me to stop saving and start listening. It asked me to mother the part of me who had never been mothered.
What Reparenting Actually Looks Like
Reparenting your inner child isn’t about affirmations or spiritual bypassing. It’s about gently reconnecting to the younger parts of you who are still frozen in time.
It looks like:
Sitting with your emotions instead of shaming them
Listening to the first layer of sadness, anger, or fear
Offering the comfort, boundaries, and reality your younger self deserved
Learning to self-soothe before self-sacrifice
Giving yourself the security you’ve been seeking from others
Inner child work is deeply supported by Internal Family Systems (IFS, Schwartz, 1995), attachment theory, and trauma-informed somatic research. The science is clear: when we integrate these younger parts rather than abandon or override them, our nervous system becomes more regulated, which shifts our behavior, our relationships, and our choices.
If I could go back to that night in the kitchen, I would kneel beside my younger self and say:
“You are not responsible for your mother’s pain. You are safe now. You are wanted. You are loved.”
Reparenting allows me to say those words now, and lets her finally hear them.
When Your Inner Child Begins Sabotaging Your Adult Life
Even high-functioning, spiritually aware women can be misguided by unhealed younger parts.
Self-sabotage often looks like:
shutting down when success approaches
people-pleasing in relationships or business
overeating, overworking, or emotionally numbing
hiding your voice online
procrastinating until opportunities pass
struggling to receive support
collapsing into shame after emotional triggers
As Olivia Amitrano shared in her conversation with Alyssa Nobriga on the Healing & Human Potential podcast, these “parts” often act out when they’ve been ignored or suppressed too long. She described her manager part, organized, productive, relentless, battling her inner child who just wanted to play, create, and breathe.
When one part dominates, life becomes unbalanced. When both are welcomed, life becomes integrated.
This mirrors what trauma-informed researchers have been saying for decades: the parts of us we reject become louder; the parts we listen to become softer and wiser.
The Link Between Reparenting and Attracting What You Want
In the podcast, Amitrano and Nobriga explore how reconnecting with the inner child unlocks creativity, clarity, and courage, because regulating your nervous system changes your capacity to receive.
A regulated inner child:
trusts you
feels safe expressing desire
allows rest without guilt
encourages aligned risk-taking
lets you play again, which fuels creativity (and business)
As Amitrano shared, “Your inner child holds your genius.”
When she is seen, heard, and nourished, she stops demanding attention through chaos or collapse and starts collaborating with your adult self. That collaboration births intuition, creativity, and the kind of internal alignment that naturally attracts better relationships, more income, and opportunities you once felt unworthy of receiving.
Reparenting in Business: Why You Can’t Grow If Your Inner Child Is Unseen
Many women come to me because:
their offers aren’t converting
their audience feels flat
their message lacks clarity
their intuition feels muted
their business feels heavy
They think it’s a strategy problem. Often, it’s an inner child problem.
The part of you who learned to stay quiet may stop you from being visible.
The part who learned to overgive may exhaust your nervous system.
The part who never felt safe may resist success because it feels unfamiliar.
As a strategist, healer, and AI builder, I see it constantly: clarity in business comes from clarity in your inner world.
Until the younger you feels safe, the adult you will feel split: ambitious but hesitant, visionary but overwhelmed, intuitive but afraid to lead.
A Simple Way to Begin Reparenting Today
Here’s a gentle practice rooted in IFS, somatic awareness, and trauma-informed care:
Find a quiet place. Close your eyes.
Recall yourself at a tender age. Notice her posture, her emotions, and what she’s carrying.
Turn toward her with compassion. No cheerleading. Just presence.
Ask what she needs. Safety? Rest? Truth? Connection?
Offer that need without conditions. Even if it feels unfamiliar.
Give her one promise you can keep today. Something small. Small promises create self-trust.
Reparenting is not about perfection; it’s about presence.
As Olivia shared, healing begins with the smallest acts: eating breakfast, resting when your body asks, slowing down to listen. These tiny repairs create a new internal reality where self-worth becomes lived, not forced.
Intergenerational Healing: Understanding the Story You Inherited
One of the most powerful parts of the Nobriga–Amitrano conversation was the reminder that you can’t hate someone whose story you truly know.
Understanding your lineage, their losses, their limitations, their trauma, doesn’t excuse harm, but it makes forgiveness possible. It helps you see your mother not as the source of your pain but as the carrier of her own.
This is supported by research on intergenerational trauma (Yehuda, 2014) showing that our nervous systems often reflect stress patterns passed down from previous generations.
Breaking the cycle doesn’t require you to fix everything. It just requires you to take one step further than those before you.
Choosing Joy: One of the Most Mature Things You Can Do
Joy can feel unsafe when you grew up in chaos. It can feel irresponsible when you grew up as the caretaker. It can feel indulgent when you grew up minimizing your needs.
But choosing joy is one of the most grown-up things you can do. Let your inner child see that. Joy is not childish. Joy is healing.
Resources to Support Your Inner Child Healing
Free Guided Meditations
These are gentle, accessible ways to reconnect with your younger self:
Inner Child Healing Sleep Meditation
https://youtu.be/R2OfD00e6Tk?si=hXY9Cm7bjaoi6PnAActivate the Light of Your Inner Child Guided Meditation
https://youtu.be/_-xbDXCYKOs?si=sS8nhxCfmzrAHVJa
Paid Resource: You Are Enough (MRR)
A supportive tool for building self-worth from the inside out:
https://dreamstarot--fireflylifecoaching.thrivecart.com/you-are-enough-mrr/
Final Thoughts: Your Younger Self Deserves to Rest
Reparenting your inner child is not only about reliving your pain; it’s about finally giving yourself the safety, softness, and steadiness you never had access to.
It is inner work that changes outer worlds.
It is emotional healing that becomes business clarity.
It is nervous system repair that becomes self-trust.
It is forgiveness that becomes freedom.
You don’t need to do it alone. You don’t need to be perfect to heal. You only need to begin.
And when you’re ready for deeper clarity, business alignment, or energetic healing, you’re always welcome to explore my work at Aligned Wealth Strategies, where strategy meets soul, and where your inner child finally gets to be held.
