Celebrating Our Inner Child

How does celebrating ourselves change from childhood to adulthood?

By: Shannon Brault

As we near the end of the year, I find myself wondering what I can do to celebrate the accomplishment of making it through 2020. When I was in elementary school, my dad would take me to get a Happy Meal to celebrate an accomplishment, but now that a decade has passed since then, not to mention a pandemic, I can’t help but think that a Happy Meal wouldn’t bring me the same excitement as it did before. How do you celebrate making it through another stressful semester, an accomplishment, or simply keeping yourself alive? 

Maybe some of you do celebrate with Happy Meals, but I’m going to guess that the majority of you do not. The way we celebrate ourselves and our accomplishments changes over time, as does just about everything else, but how do you celebrate yourself and connect to your inner child, who maybe hasn’t healed from childhood trauma? 

The older I get, the more I learn the importance of being compassionate towards yourself. I can easily get stuck in the past thinking about all the things I could have done differently or beating myself up for not healing “fast enough” from past traumas that continue to affect how I communicate with the world. What I have learned is that having compassion for your inner child, who maybe hasn’t healed to the extent she needs to, is one of the most important things you can do. 

Maybe you don’t get a Happy Meal to celebrate, but you continue to become happier and more confident as you see yourself learning, growing, and healing. The more I see myself growing and becoming confident in who I am and who I’m becoming, the more I celebrate myself for showing up as who I am.

Connecting with your inner child is also important in moving forward. If there is something you haven’t healed from, connecting to that version of yourself can help you move forward. Every version of yourself has been and is a part of you. That may not be who you are anymore, but it was at one point. Being able to lend a hand to your younger self and tell her that it’s okay to be hurt and to be healing is the best thing you can do. You’re allowed to comfort yourself too.  

This year I dyed my hair purple to connect with a younger version of myself, who had wanted to do that for a long time. As strange as it was, this helped me to see, hear, and value my younger self. It felt like I was healing and helped me to continue to be passionate towards this younger version of myself.

The ways we celebrate ourselves change over time, but what shouldn’t change is our compassion for ourselves and for one another. To move forward and heal from past trauma and experiences, we need to be compassionate with every version of ourselves and understand that we’re doing the best we can with the resources that we have. It’s okay to accept that there is a part of you that hasn’t healed completely, and it’s also okay to take the time to heal in whatever way helps you the most.