N8tivegirl

Healing the Inner Child — Part 1

Naming the Age of the Wound

No one really knows what it feels like to grow up without your mother

when she is physically present,

but emotionally absent.

To have a mom,

yet still feel like you don’t.

At five years old, you notice things you don’t yet have language for.

You see your friends with their moms—

their hair being brushed,

their bows being tied,

their hands being held.

Their mothers teach them how to be girls.

How to feel special.

How to feel chosen.

And you watch.

You aren’t an orphan, but you feel like the odd girl out.

Your mom is there, but not there.

She doesn’t sit with you.

She doesn’t linger.

She doesn’t look at you like you’re the center of her world.

Mama is busy.

Chasing a dream.

Chasing love.

Chasing the next man.

Or maybe mama is somewhere numbing herself—

drunk, distracted, distant.

And at five years old, you don’t judge her.

You just wonder.

Who teaches me I’m pretty?

Who teaches me I’m wanted?

Who teaches me I matter?

Because at five, everyone around you seems to have their mom.

Everyone… but you.

This is where the wound forms.

Not because your mother was evil.

Not because she didn’t love you in her own way.

But because something essential was missing.

And when a child doesn’t receive affection, attention, and affirmation at the age she needs it most, she doesn’t stop needing it.

She learns to look for it elsewhere.

Healing begins when we stop pretending this didn’t hurt.

When we name the age of the wound—not to blame, but to understand.

God does not heal the woman by ignoring the child.

He heals her by going back with her—

into that moment,

into that ache,

and whispering what she never heard:

You were loved.

You were wanted.

You were never invisible to Me.