In a healthy mother and baby relationship, a secure attachment is formed when they are responsive and can provide nurturing care, protection, and emotional support. Building a secure attachment is important for:

• Babies’ brain development.
• Learning to self soothe.
• Feeling deserving of care.
• Seeding self esteem.
• The first experience of love.
• Building confidence to communicate their needs.

2. Anxious attachment : This attachment style happens when parents are inconsistent with care so the child does not trust if their needs are going to be met or not. This anxious attachment style shows up in adult relationships as:

• Difficulty trusting others
• Low self-worth.
• Fear of abandonment.
• Craving closeness with unavailable people.
• Being overly dependent.
• Requiring frequent reassurance that people care about you.
• Being overly sensitive to a partner’s actions and moods.
• Being highly emotional, impulsive, unpredictable and moody.

3. Avoidant attachment: In this dynamic the parent cannot show up and the child knows that their needs are not going to be met. This leaves them feeling unloved and insignificant.  Avoidant attachment shows up in adult relationships as:

• Compulsive self reliance.
• Fear of closeness.
• Disconnection from your emotions which means you’re more likely to minimise the emotions of those close to you.
• Relationship sabotage, (i.e affairs.)
• Preferring casual relationships (hook up’s and situationships.)
• Emotional unavailability.

4. Disorganised attachment: The child experiences and/or witnesses abuse and will act out/in through withdrawal and/or intense rage. Disorganised attachment shows up in relationships as:

• Confused emotions swinging between love and hate for your partner.
• Insensitivity, controlling and mistrust.
• Explosive drama and/or abusive behaviour.
• Being hard on yourself and others.
• Refusal to take responsibility for your actions.
• Feeling unworthy of love and fears abandonment.

Justice for your inner child involves creating a safe, nurturing, and validating environment where your inner child can flourish and thrive, free from the burdens of the past. If you found this content helpful, click here to join the email list for more healing content. 

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The goal is not to hate that part of yourself, but to build a relationship with it so it no longer dominates your thinking or sabotages your future choices. 

This week’s heartwork: Tune into the voices of your inner critic. What messages do you hear from this critical voice, and where/who do you think they originated from in your childhood? Does your inner critic treat your inner child the way your parents treated you?

If you found this heartwork valuable and would like to explore deeper healing, there are additional journal prompts available for free in the Sista Sanctuary.

Click here to join the sistahood today.

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If you’re hysterical, it’s historical! I first heard this phrase in recovery and it helped me explore how my past was leaking into my present.  

If you were hurt as a child without having a safe adult to support and soothe you, you may have buried these layers of pain to cope. If you struggle to love yourself or be in healthy relationships and friendships, it may be your buried childhood wounds being activated. The healing process means educating ourselves with not just what happened to us, but the impact it has on our adult lives so today, I want to share five types of inner child wounds.

1.Abandonment: When a child feels neglected, or unloved by caregivers, this leads to feelings of insecurity, rejection, and fear of abandonment in adulthood.

2.Betrayal: When a child’s trust is violated by caregivers or significant others through deception, dishonesty, or broken promises, this leads to adult, relational mistrust.

3.Humiliation: When a child is shamed, belittled, or ridiculed by caregivers or authority figures it sets up feelings of worthlessness and a fear of being judged or criticised as an adult.

4.Rejection: When a child is invalidated, dismissed, or not accepted by caregivers or peers, this feeds feelings of inadequacy, shame and fear of rejection.

5.Injustice: When a child experiences unfair treatment, injustice, or victimization by caregivers, peers, or societal systems, this  can lead to self hatred, anger and a sense of powerlessness as an adult. 

Racism, anti-blackness, patriarchy and other oppressive systems, are the abusive, toxic ‘social parents’ that add additional wounding to each of these layers. Healing involves acknowledging, decolonising and processing these early experiences to reframe the relationship with ourselves, others and our culture.

What does inner child work mean for black women? 

If you’re ready to start doing your inner child work, click here to join the Sista Sanctuary where this month’s theme is Justice for Your Inner Child.

The post If you’re hysterical, it’s historical! 5 Inner child wounds you need to heal. first appeared on June Allen.

This week’s heartwork: Reflect on a life changing memory from your childhood that still holds emotional weight. What comes up for you around this memory, and how does it show up in your behavior as an adult?

If you found this heartwork valuable and would like to explore deeper healing, there are additional journal prompts available for free in the Sista Sanctuary. Click here to join the sistahood today.

The post Is your past hurting the present? first appeared on June Allen.

The post What does inner child work mean for black women? first appeared on June Allen.

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The post Colourism, mixed heritage and the mother wound. first appeared on June Allen.

First, let’s talk about the narcissistic mother, whose self-absorption dominates everything. In her eyes, the daughter is not a separate individual but rather a competitor to be conquered. She uses shame like a weapon to control and manipulate, leaving her daughter feeling invisible and without any true sense of self.

Second is the overly enmeshed mother, whose smothering ‘love’ knows no boundaries. She disregards her daughter’s autonomy and demands that her own emotional needs be met at any cost, blurring the lines between where she ends and her daughter begins.

Third, we have the control freak mother, whose own life is chaotic and out of control. To regain a sense of power, she seeks to dominate every aspect of her daughter’s life, leaving her feeling suffocated, angry and powerless.

Fourth, these mothers are trapped in their own pain, addicted and unable to fulfill their maternal roles. As a result, wounded daughters often find themselves in a role reversal, caring for their mothers and neglecting their own needs in the process.

Finally, the fifth toxic mother type are those who neglect, betray and/or inflict physical violence on their daughters and fail to protect them from external abuse.

Does any of this resonate with you?

Understanding these dynamics is not easy, nor is it something you need to navigate alone. None of this is your fault. You deserve to be loved, respected, and cherished for who you are.

If you relate and feel ready to join me for the deeper work, there are still some tickets for the Managing Mothers Day half day, in-person retreat where we’ll explore the black mother wound and how to deal with the complexities of Mothers Day as a wounded daughter.

There are also some 121 slots available if you would like private therapy.  Full details can be found here.

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