The side of you that never left you
There is a reaction that many of us know well, although we rarely talk about it.
Someone says something, a small criticism, a tone of voice, a silence that lasts an extra second, and something inside closes, or it overflows. The reaction is out of proportion to what has just happened, and somewhere in the mind, the question already appears: “Why did this affect me so much?”
It is not a weakness. It is not an exaggeration.
It’s a part of us that’s been waiting a long time to be seen, and it has a name: the inner child.
What is the inner child?
It is not a metaphor; it is a real part of us. The one that stores everything we live before we have the tools to process it.
The joys, yes, but also the fears and the needs that were not met. The beliefs we formed about ourselves and the world when we were still too young to question them.
It does not speak with words. It communicates through reactions
What I have observed over years of working with Ho’oponopono is this: The part of us that was a child doesn’t disappear when we grow up. It stays in the subconscious mind and, from there, operates, influences, and decides. Many times, without us noticing.
We don’t need to understand anything about psychology to recognize it. Just pay attention to what we feel when something affects us more than expected.
The wounds that no one sees
When we’re young, we depend on adults not only to survive, but to understand who we are. When something goes wrong in that process, the internal system does whatever it can: it saves that experience and moves on.
It is not a defect. It is a protection.
But those stored experiences don’t stand still; they become patterns, in beliefs like “I’m not enough,” “If I show myself as I am, they will reject me,” “Love always ends up hurting.”
Those beliefs continue to control our lives long after the original situation is over.
And it wasn’t always an obvious trauma. Sometimes the wound came from something that was apparently minor: growing up in a house where emotions were not spoken, learning that to receive love you had to act in a certain way, or feeling invisible just when you most needed to be seen. No one did it with bad intentions, and yet, something remained there.
The inner child does not judge the seriousness of what happened; it just records how you felt.
Signs that your inner child is asking for attention
There is no definitive list, but there are signs that appear very frequently, and when we see them, we usually recognize them immediately.
A criticism that hurts more than it should. A fear of rejection that kicks in relationships, even when there’s no real reason to feel it. The constant need for external approval to feel good about oneself. A very stern, almost relentless inner voice that never quite agrees. Or something more subtle: that feeling that, at certain moments, suddenly, you feel very small. As if the adult that we are was a step behind, and something older took its place.
If any of this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. And there’s nothing broken about you.
There is a part that is waiting to be seen.
Do you want to work with your inner child in a practical, supported way?
The inner child also holds something beautiful
The inner child is not just a wound.
It is also the part that knows how to be amazed. The one who plays without calculating. The one who loves spontaneously, without so much strategy or so much fear. When someone tells me that life has become too serious, or that they want to feel something again, what they are looking for is exactly that: to reconnect with the original vitality that did not disappear; it was just covered up.
Healing the inner child is not just letting go of what hurts; it is also recovering what was always yours.
The first step is not difficult. You just have to be honest.
You cannot heal what you do not recognize.
Instead of judging the reaction that has just appeared, start by asking yourself, “What is the child I used to be feeling now?” That is already a big change. It may feel small, but it is real.
Asking, rather than judging, is where it all begins. Not because it solves everything at once, but because it opens something that had been closed for a long time.
There are many ways to work with the inner child, and in my work with Ho’oponopono, what I’ve seen over and over again is that you don’t always need more words or more analyzing. Sometimes what is needed is cleaning, letting go of the memories that the subconscious mind has been carrying since childhood, and giving back the peace to that part of us that deserves it.
A practice that works where words do not reach
Ho’oponopono is a Hawaiian tradition of reconciliation and forgiveness that works directly with the subconscious mind. Not through analysis or understanding everything before it starts, but through something simpler, and at the same time deeper: love, responsibility, and forgiveness.
I’ve been sharing this practice with people all over the world for decades, and every time we work with the inner child, something very particular happens. It is not necessary to remember everything that hurts. Nothing needs to be revived. You just have to be willing to let go.
In my class about the inner child, we worked with exactly what I described here: those stored memories, those patterns that repeat themselves, that part of us that is still waiting for someone to see it.
It is not a class for those who have everything figured out.
It is for those who feel that something inside is still asking for attention. For those who recognized something about themselves by reading these lines, and want to know what to do with it.
If something you have read today touched you, don’t let it go.
Sometimes acknowledging something is half the battle won.
A space to heal the inner child with Ho’oponopono.
One Comment
Have read about the inner child and am still not very clear on it .