It’s Never Too Late to Heal the Little Girl Within
Women our age were not raised in a world that took inner healing seriously. We were raised to handle things. And for a lot of us the phrase “inner child healing” implies bad parents. Some of them were.
And many women reach their 60s and 70s carrying pain that has been with them for decades. Pain that has shaped how they see themselves, how they love, how they trust, how they show up in relationships, and how safe they feel in the world.
But not every inner child wound comes from abuse or neglect.
My parents loved me. AND I’ve been carrying wounds since my childhood. That’s not a contradiction. It’s a fact.
Even in loving homes, there are moments that leave an imprint. Growing up poor. Attending four different schools before fifth grade. Being the eldest daughter. Having a sibling with a disability. My parents’ divorce. Being a highly sensitive child in a world that doesn’t understand sensitivity. Being bullied at school.
None of those experiences meant I had bad parents.
They do mean there was a little girl struggling to make sense of life with a child’s mind.
Many of the conclusions I drew about myself, about other people, and about what it meant to be safe, loved, accepted, or enough followed me into adulthood.
Understanding how my childhood shaped me is one of the most loving gifts I’ve ever given myself.
Research in neuroscience has shown that childhood experiences continue to influence us throughout our lives. The developing brain is shaped by our earliest relationships and experiences. The ones that nurtured us and the ones that challenged us. The love we received, the beliefs we absorbed, the ways we learned to feel safe, the moments that filled us with wonder, and the experiences that hurt us all leave their mark.
And it isn’t only the painful experiences that get stored. Dr. Stuart Brown, a psychiatrist who spent decades researching the science of play, found that our earliest experiences of joy, imagination, and creative freedom leave neural imprints just as lasting as the difficult ones. Which means the wonder she carried, the dreams, the magic, the knowing, those are not gone. They are stored. Waiting to be reactivated.
Our childhood doesn’t just shape our wounds. It shapes our strengths, our resilience, our capacity for joy, and the way we experience love. It all becomes part of us.
And now here we are. Sixty-something, maybe seventy-something, and something in us is stirring.
It’s her. The little girl inside you is not just carrying your wounds. She is carrying your treasures too. She remembers what made your eyes light up. She remembers the dreams that felt so real you could almost touch them. She remembers the things you loved before life convinced you they were impossible.
She also remembers what she knew. Before anyone taught her to doubt herself, she knew things. She could feel what was true before she had words for it. She believed with her whole heart that she could have anything she wanted, fix whatever was broken, find a way through whatever was hard. That certainty wasn’t childish foolishness. It was original wisdom. And it is still in there, underneath everything life piled on top of it, waiting for you to come back and claim it.
Children have a remarkable relationship with possibility. They don’t yet know all the reasons something can’t be done. They believe they can learn anything.
Become anything. Create anything. If something is broken, they assume it can be fixed. If something is difficult, they assume there is a way through it.
Before disappointment teaches caution and fear teaches limitation, children move through the world with a kind of trust that many adults have forgotten.
I think that is one of the greatest losses that comes from a difficult childhood.
Not only the pain it leaves behind. The possibilities it steals.
The healing I have done in my own life has taught me that the little girl inside doesn’t need you to fix her.
She is waiting to be remembered. All of her.
The wounded parts. The brave parts. The curious parts. The dreaming parts. The joyful parts.
The parts that still believe healing is possible. The parts that still believe life can surprise you.
The parts that still believe there is more ahead.
She is the most original version of you that ever existed. Before the world got its hands on you. Before you learned what to hide and what to shrink and what to pretend.
She had gifts. She had joy. She had a way of seeing beauty in small things that the grown-up you has been too tired to notice. And she has been waiting for the season when you would finally have enough room to turn around and look at her.
Turning toward her does not require you to go back and relive everything, nor does it require you to confront people who may not be living or who may not be capable of accountability. What it does require is the willingness to stop running from the tender places and start getting curious about them instead.
What did she need?
What brought her joy?
What frightened her?
What did she begin to believe about herself?
Where in your body do you still feel her?
The little girl within needs you to find her.
She needs you to sit down with her, in whatever way that means for you, through prayer, through writing, through stillness, or through the kind of honest conversation you have with yourself. She needs you to say, “I see you. I’m sorry it took me so long. I’m not going anywhere.”
That is the beginning. And it is enough.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re fifty-three or ninety-three. As long as you’re still here, it’s not too late to meet the little girl who became the woman you are today. She has been waiting for you. And I have a feeling she’ll be happy to see you.
Be blessed,
Taylor ❤️
This post was also shared with my Substack community, Heart of Healing
