Content Warning: Mention of caregiver abuse.
When I moved to the woods five years ago, I was surfing a lot of uncertainty. Feeling lost and in need of a healing journey I turned to a daily walk practice that really helped me move through a dark night of the soul.
I kept remembering this time when I was five years old and I got to go back to live with my mom after circumstances landed me with my dad and his parents. Mom had my bedroom all set up for me. Care Bear sheets, a Care Bear comforter she sewed for me. A little clock radio next to my bed.
I treasured that clock radio–it was the first time I had ever had control over music in my life and I could listen to the soft rock hits of the 80s through that radio while I went to sleep.
While I was living with my dad and his parents, my Grammy physically, emotionally and verbally abused me. A tiny four year old.
Caregiver abuse is all too common and I can’t give you a formula for recovery from it. But I can share with you how I walked my way back into parts of myself I abandoned after that abuse.
It was either a psychic reading or a card reading that showed me I needed to connect with my inner five year old. I had the inkling (and following our intuition is a path to healing) that connecting to her would help me release the pain from that time and unpack some of my swirling feelings during my gay divorce.
Remembering that clock radio, I started walking in the woods and listening to the “Top Hits of 1984” which was the year I was five years old.
Teaching Fat Kid Dance Party Aerobics, I use nostalgia and music as a portal to transport and connect to our inner child. I thought this would help me.
A healing journey isn’t flipping a switch and everything is better. It’s a circuitous path of making more nourishing choices, witnessing parts of ourselves without judgment, backsliding and returning to the path, weathering emotions that are uncomfortable and eventually feeling better.
That playlist connected me to a time when things were very hard, uncertain and painful for me as a child without anyone to guide me through it. And now that I’m a grown-up, with tools and patience and unconditional love and acceptance for my inner child, I can be the safe space she needed to process those Big Feels.
I had another reading in early 2023 that told me my inner 11 year old needed attention, so I did the same thing with walks in the woods to “Top hits of 1989.” I actually had a few big break throughs watching my favorite movie from that year, The Little Mermaid.
I had a party last year and when putting together the playlist for my friends I considered when each person was five years old and put songs on the playlist from those eras. It was a big hit!
There’s so much more to say about the process of inner child healing, and I’ll be writing more about it in the coming weeks. We teach what we most need to learn and I’ve been doing this work for many years!
In the meantime, I have developed several aerobics classes that focus on 80s Inner Child healing & 90s inner child healing that have come out of my healing process, if you care to dance with me! Here’s a class you can rent or if you want the whole collection, check out my theme classes in the On Demand membership. Pretty much any class I teach involves inner child healing, because Fat “Kid” Dance Party is about healing that kid that felt left out, whether or not you’ve had a fat experience.
Dancing and play help us learn and heal 7-20 times faster than just reading and listening to things. I hope you dance!
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