New Child Wound Unlocked
I’ve written before about how I have a core memory of being seven in second grade and thinking I was fat. Specifically, I was going to school at St. Paul’s that year, and we had to change from our uniforms into our little red branded gym shorts before lunch. I remember sitting down at the cafeteria table and looking down at my thighs and thinking that they were fat. I internalized that I was fat.
Mind you, I grew up at a time when our system was heavily impacting women to be thin. It was the early ‘90s, and thin was in. My own mom is so small, she’s fun-size. She’s always been naturally petite in both height and weight, but I remember her constant subliminal angst over her own weight even though—again, she was tiny. It wasn’t her fault—this was just the conditioning of both her generation and the current culture.
But that stuck with me, and what’s more, I internalized that approval was directly correlated to my weight. While I won’t go into detail here (saving it for the book), there are several moments in my life that reinforced this internalized message—body image means approval, and it wasn’t necessarily approval from men I was seeking—it was parental approval. Nobody told me to feel this way. Nobody outright said that love and acceptance are conditional on how thin you are, but I internalized it deeply nonetheless.
Meanwhile, seven-year-old Amy also knew that she wanted to be a writer. She wanted to write books and stories. Once I learned to read, I read serial novels obsessively. My favorite series was Girl Talk, which was about four best friends in middle school who were doing life—crushes, bullying popular girls, and life experiences. My mom got all of the books that were available, and I read and re-read them constantly because even though the series went much higher in volume, there were only about 12 I could get my hands on before I outgrew them. I still remember deciding to write my own stories about four middle school girls and their crushes. It was—as you can imagine—aggressively bad, but I was like, 10, so there’s that.
Decentralizing Men (A Roast to Disney in the Key of F(—k))
Anyway, I recently also wrote that I have **finally** decentralized men. By that I mean that I grew up with a dad who was emotionally unavailable, so I also internalized a deep and desperate desire to be loved even though I would be an adult before I knew what unconditional love from a partner really felt like and what it felt like to unconditionally love myself (it hits different—if you know, you know). Still, I was, even after my last breakup with Mr. Heinous, a total lover girl, which was repeatedly exploited by my fan club* (*dudes who want the reward without the effort—no offense, but if it looks like a spade and plays like a spade, then it’s a spade). But I naively allowed it because—ugh, lover girls, am I right? (What are these boundaries and standards you speak of?)
Again—this is all so much conditioned for us. Look at the movies we grew up on—and the music? The soundtrack of our lives was all about blind devotion (looking at you, Whitney “I am nothing without you” Houston). Romantic comedies that all ended with the girl being chosen by the guy proliferated. Before that? Disney poisoning. The Little Mermaid is literally a movie that prioritizes a young woman giving up her voice, her power, for a dude she meets once and then using her body language (image) to persuade him to choose her (pick me!), which he does. Then, as if she’s property, gets to be with him because her dad gives her his blessing and essentially gives her away. Literally, what the f—k.
And then there was my first favorite Disney indoctrinator—Sleeping Beauty. Yes, an enchanting tale of a girl who comes of age and is immediately cursed to basically put her life on hold until a prince can save her with his magic kiss, so her life can truly begin as his bride. They show you the happily ever after, but they don’t show what comes next—gee, I wonder why? (If you’ve ever been in a relationship with a totally unqualified, entitled, misogynistic ingrate like I was with Mr. Heinous, you’ll understand.)
Finally, we had Beauty and the Beast. Yes, a lovely tale about a covert narcissist whose internal ugliness is externalized so much so that he scares the shit out of the single-minded townspeople who foolishly worship the overt narcissist, Gaston, who Belle rejects on principle because his entitlement and egotism are cringe AF. When Belle is literally kidnapped because she’s saving her hapless father, she looks beyond the Beast’s ugly exterior to see his potential because like all well-read, kind-hearted women, she’s a true empath. She suffers his abuse with grace and (misguided) understanding (because let’s be honest—her dad set the bar low) and treats everyone in the Beast’s house who he otherwise abuses and objectifies dignity and respect. He expects total capitulation from all of his household—who symbolically are not real people, only things, to him, and when he gets injured by overthrowing Gaston, because of Belle’s love, he turns back into the most arguably unattractive prince in Disney history. Believing he’s changed, Belle marries him. Like girl. No.
What did we learn from that? If you love him enough, you can change him! And if you’ve ever been with a covert narcissist, then you know the real answer is absofuckinglutely not.
I digress. So, after spending the last two years feeling like I was ultimately being taken advantage of because so many men—regardless of political affiliation or how much they act like they value feminist principles—are conditionally entitled in how they relate to women (we’re equals, dammit), I finally said enough. I was tired of having my attention demanded upon without their affections actually being about me. The last straw came when I was sick and the person I’d been kind of seeing didn’t ask if there was anything they could do or even ask how I was feeling. Gotcha. I hit the threshold where I was beyond sick and tired of the expectation that my attention and time are things people are entitled to without selfless and mutual reciprocity. I was tired of self-abandoning. Just no, dammit. No more. Enough. I have put my needs on the back-burner for the better part of a decade.
This August will be seven years since Sean passed away, and starting in September 2018, I was caring for my sick spouse. Raising small children. Putting my editing company on hold to the point of burying it. Losing job opportunities. And ultimately sacrificing everything I’d worked so hard for up to that point. Then I had the most pathetic low-vibe dudes trying to hit on me after my husband died—like a month later. Their selfish entitlement was hurtful. Clearly, I was just an object to them—an ends to a means, so I could affirm their delulu dreams of heroism. Oh, fuck off. And then came the overt narcissist who was incredibly manipulative (the Gaston character if you will), so of course, the Beast (AKA, Mr. Heinous, the covert narcissist with his superficial self-effacing humor) seemed like someone who genuine.
And like empathetic effing Belle, I saw through his obviously wounded exterior into the potential that never manifested because why would it? I was already pouring into him. I was just trying to show the idiot he was lovable the way he was. I hoped that if he learned to love himself he’d learn to reciprocate with emotional intimacy. But of course, he didn’t because just as the Beast felt he was entitled to the devotion of his fine china, he felt entitled to the unconditional love I was giving. Honestly, Amy. Listen, watch Beauty and the Beast as a cautionary tale and not some romanticized “if you love them enough” delusional fantasy because that bitch was trapped in that castle.
It didn’t end in childhood. In our early 20s, Sex and the City romanticized the anxious / avoidant attachment drama with Carrie and Big. There is nothing sexy about constantly self-abandoning to chase the affections of someone who keeps pulling away, Carrie. But these were the models we were raised with, ones where the patriarchal hierarchy upholds men at the top and women and children as subservient, which is wrong because it compels us to chase external validation and approval. I’ve been there, so I can say for free that it’s not your fault if you ended up in that kind of situation.
I’m Still Standing…in the Same Spot?
I digress. So, after all of that experience and de-conditioning, I’ve finally decentralized men, and I finally have made the time to focus on my writing. Pause. I said I finally have time to focus on my writing. Pause. Why in the hell am I not writing? I have these wonderful ideas for books, and I’m freezing. Why. Am. I. Freezing?
I have finally made the time by setting boundaries like a boss babe, and I’m stuck. Why am I stuck? For the past month, the ennui has been driving me crazy, so naturally I made things worse by dissociating on Instagram reels for hours. I couldn’t figure it out. I asked the universe to buy me a vowel. Please help me see what I’m missing here—why am I finally able to do what I’ve always wanted, and yet I’m not?
Am I lazy? Am I a narcissist who is suffering delusions of grandeur where the only success I’ll really achieve is in my head? I have no one to blame for inaction but myself, so what’s going on? I have one precious life, and if I don’t start where I am, I’ll never get anywhere. I have the key. I have the car. I know where the ignition is, but I still needed something to turn over before I could get moving.
So, I considered…I do need to give myself a little grace. I know I am once again shimmying off the effects of CPTSD. I know that being group cyberstalked took a lot out of me, re-triggering my visibility wound and fear of exposure—and the irony is that as a writer or any kind of artist, visibility is essential (note to self…see how Sia does it…lots of dark sunglasses and wigs…got it). I’m kidding. That doesn’t impact my invaded cyberspace, but I did have to remind myself of the axiom that nobody is really paying attention to me. Even if the past couple of years suggest otherwise, nobody is watching, so dance, monkey.
So, okay, I’m dealing with that. My next fear is what if I write it, and it’s absolute shit? Okay, so, clearly there’s a little bit of lingering perfectionism in there, but also—remember, Amy, they call it a SFD—shitty first draft—for a reason. (Note to self—put this on a Post-It and stick it to the iPad.) I have to remind myself to be brave enough to do things poorly. I don’t need more preparation—I need action. Right. Got it.
But I still wasn’t moving. Why am I still feeling stuck? For the past couple of nights, I’ve woken up in the middle of the night and laid awake for hours, my mind constantly popping up with intrusive thoughts, bringing up old emotions that I feel like I’ve dealt with (my astrology friends would blame Mercury retrograde and Neptune in Cancer or Aries or wherever the hell it is for this, so, sure, let’s blame that.).
Inner-Child Seeks Approval & Validation: Apply Within
For some reason, early this morning, body image came to mind. I remembered a conversation I had with a friend who has noticed one of her children has become people-pleasing, and she expressed concern over that. She said it has to do with the child’s dad’s approval being conditional on whether or not he does the things he wants them to do regardless of the child’s personal interests. Ah, self-abandonment, I know thee well.
But it occurred to me—I am 43-years-old (and not a day over 12), and though in the past I have begged my parents to really show a curiosity or an interest in what I do and create as a writer, they don’t. I know they want me to be happy, but I realized there was still an unhealed little girl part of me in there that desperately wanted that approval, much in the same way I used to ask Mr. Heinous to read my writing and show an interest in me as a person (how cringe of me, I know).
I thought about this the other day during my walk. I walk for 30-45 minutes a day to maintain my health and a size that my dysmorphia can live with, and I thought—I can be so disciplined with this, so why can’t I do it with my writing? I’ve done hard things before, things I once believed were impossible. I didn’t think I could ever run more than 6.2 miles when I was running all of the time, and I proved myself wrong by training and going on to run multiple half marathons (two official, and a few others just because). So, no, I can be disciplined, and I can do anything I put my mind to. Yes, I need to sit down and really show up for myself, so what’s happening inside that’s stopping me?
Then I realized it was the trapped little girl whose interests in writing weren’t validated, and I never really learned to seek my own approval, which is why I have hit multiple milestones in life and accomplished a lot but that I never really celebrated or gave myself much credit for. I never saw my parents celebrate goals or achievements or really get excited about what one another was doing, so I never learned to do it for myself. So, it definitely wasn’t some kind of narcissistic belief that I’m some kind of literary badass without the work to back it up (phew)—because I definitely do not believe that. No, it’s actually an unhealed child wound combined with having goals and dreams that aim high.
Right. I know how to handle this. I’m not saying it’s a quick fix, but it’s a matter of using what I know about internal family systems therapy and going inward to talk to those parts of myself that need to learn to self-validate. It’s a matter of going back in and celebrating the parts of my life that deserved to be cheered for with those former versions of myself. It’s also learning to celebrate wins out loud with my own kids to show them that yes we need to slow down and actually get excited for milestone accomplishments. Before I got up, I did do some of that work. I feel exciting about moving forward now because I understand what’s been in my way in a way that wasn’t clear before. When there’s a solution, problems rapidly become fixable.
By helping the past versions of myself that were conditioned to seek external approval and validation for superficial things (like my appearance) but that didn’t get that for things that mattered to me but that were invalidated because of lack of acknowledgement—like writing or choosing myself (hello, creative writing master’s program), I am getting out of my way and doing the damn thing. It’s my responsibility to be the adult I always needed, which is what underpins reparenting.
I will say that I do know I can celebrate my wins now. Or I can at least show emotion when I know I’ve done something of value—when I finished Letters of Jude: Messages of love and healing to and from the other side, I burst into tears because I had achieved something valuable and meaningful to me. I wish I could say I did that in 2022 with Secret Mobile: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and Obscure, but I wasn’t quite there yet, but that, too, was an achievement, and it was, like what I’m working on now, a vital part of coming back to life and myself after Sean died.
“You’re Not Broken”
I often think back to my CBT therapist saying, “You’re not broken,” in that first year after Sean died. I may not have been broken, but I was definitely fragmented, and it took a lot of work to gold leaf all of the parts of me back together. Part of that was undoing systemic conditioning and the rest was healing what my inner child needed but didn’t get. Not because I have parents who didn’t want to but because whatever they weren’t able to give me was because nobody gave it to them, and they never did what I am doing—getting curious enough to learn how to give it to myself. As I told my friend—I am the way I am because of love. I loved my own kids so much that I wanted to learn how to become the mom they needed, the mom Sean believed I could be.
I didn’t have a map. I made my own because I was aware that I’d emerged from adolescence into young adulthood an anxious, anorexic, binge-eating bulimic, insecure woman-child with low self-esteem and raging imposter syndrome and gaping abandonment wounds. Clearly, something went wrong, and I wanted better for my own daughters. I can say with total confidence that the work works, and one thing I am working on writing is explaining chapter-by-chapter how I did the work because I want to help others learn how to live their best lives. It’s my way of paying it forward because of the authors whose books helped me when I needed it the most.
Tara Schuster’s Buy Yourself the F—king Lilies gave me my first toolkit, which is a big reason I did not end my life in December of 2019. The other reason was love for my daughters and knowing that even though I thought I was the worst person in the world who ruined everything she touched at the time, they thought I hung the moon, but I desperately needed that toolkit to get started. I have the confidence to write about my process now because it doesn’t have to take seven years to get to where you want to end up. It can happen instantly once you know what to do.