Jeanne Marie Ketchel
Channeled by Jan Ketchel

Today, Jeanne answers a question asked by a Reader. When this question came in last week Chuck was in the midst of working on this week’s essay for Chuck’s Place, Healing or Possession? We had also decided to do another audio session with Jeanne based on the second chapter of Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet, titled, On Marriage. We hope you will enjoy the combined insights of these three works, today’s message, the audio message, and Chuck’s essay, all based on similar subjects of relationship and inner work.

Dear Jeanne,
For years I have been striving, as I am sure are many others, to re-parent my hurt inner little girl. I have been led to and stayed in many an unhealthy relationship trying, of course unsuccessfully and inappropriately, to get her needs met. Lately, I have been struggling in my present intimate relationship not to pull on my partner to meet my hurt inner child’s needs. I have difficulty discerning whether my hurt child is leading or if I am with a partner who obstructs my child’s healing, as my partner and I are in such constant conflict and defense with each other. I would appreciate any clarity or guidance you can offer.

Blessings,
NS

My Dear One, I must say that your dilemma is a common one, but first must you conclude that children do not belong in an adult relationship, at least not unhealthy children. By that, I mean that in order to be a consolidated adult so must you work on your child self outside of a relationship. A lost child self will remain not only lost but also confused if brought into an adult situation that requires maturity, openness, trust, and honesty. First your child self must trust you, the adult self, and allow you, the adult, to engage in relationships in the adult world you live in. The question of the inner child is both complicated and broad in scope, with so many aspects to consider, that I may not cover in one session, but here we go:

Most important is your resolution of your child self, independent of any type of relationship, whether lover, partner, children, business, or outer world interactions. Your inner child must relate to you, the adult, as mature and enabled. Your inner child is not meant to come along with you on your journey through life, but is meant to fully merge with you, and these are two different things. If you simply bring her along, then are you burdened with her, but if you resolve your inner issues stemming from her earliest experiences, enticing her to accept them as her journey, fully realized for its truth and meaning, then may she accept her place in your past and recede in your present life. For only in fully accepting her place in your life can she allow you to proceed, fully knowing that you are not deserting her, but only that you have fully accepted her as well, and your journey is now merged as one contiguous journey, rather than two that will continue to do battle until resolved.

Your question also encompasses relationships. In my understanding of a true relationship, so do I invite you to consider your adult self separately from your child self. If your adult self is ready to embark on a deeply trusting relationship with a partner who is also ready for such compatible travel, so must you understand that trust, openness, and honesty must also be at the basis of this relationship. Your inner little girl or boy must be comfortably and safely asleep, merged in full recapitulation and acceptance, for a truthful relationship to ensue, with innocence and trust of each other, at its core. To fully trust your partner, must you have had the greater experience of fully trusting the self. You see?

In order to engage in an adult relationship, that will be more than just a struggle, must you and your partner be allowed to have access to each other’s innocence, and fully allow your own innocence to participate. By innocence, I do not mean your hurt, wounded, or unresolved inner child. I mean your fully merged and resolved child, your energetically present child who is contented to live life with you, present, trusting, and available when appropriate.

I fear that many people do not fully understand who their inner child self is. Is she or he someone you left in the past, confused, dazed, and unclear as to her or his role then, and equally confused as to her or his role now? A confused child is a heavy burden to carry through life, for that child does not understand the journey being taken. If you have not been truthful and perfectly honest with your inner child self, so will there be no resolution of conflict in your outer life, for that inner child will appear quite often, in order to remind you that you have not been honest, and you have not taken care to reveal the truth of the world as you now know it.

Many people prefer to placate the inner child. This can take many forms, such as buying it nice things, feeding it and serving it whatever it asks for, giving it unconditionally for what you consider its earliest lacks of attention and promise. Yet is this the wrong method of attention. Such attention will merely attach that child self more firmly to an old idea that cannot work in an evolving premise. In order to evolve must truth and honesty be, first and foremost, a part of your interactions. The first truth is that all must grow up, mature, and move into adulthood. Some people do this very well, but yes, they often leave their child self behind. The first truth in returning to the child self is to reconnect in a new way, as the adult who fully accepts the truth of the child’s existence, knowing, above all else, that every encounter in early life was necessary for growth of spirit.

In order to fully merge with this child self, I suggest a very deep process of confrontation as the child emerges in the process of your everyday life. Is this child self, who is present in your life, carrying old ideas of the self based on old roles, old rules, old critics, and old patterns of soothing? As the adult, must you not only parent, but you must be an evolutionary parent who is capable of swiping aside all the old ideas of the self, bringing in a new perspective. You are not on a rescue mission. You are not on a mission of placation, or tending to the needs of a big baby. You are on an evolutionary mission of truth and acceptance, based on new rules, new truths of life, to guide the self through these times of difficulty.

Once one is accepting of life as a journey and views all aspects of life, past, present, and future, in the context of life as a journey of necessity and growth, so then is one ready and available to accept the truths that one holds so deeply inside. The child self holds many truths too, in spite of the many untruths that keep it in a state of frozen regret. A child self holds the keys to innocence, to spirit connection, and to your adult self, in truthful and honest living, as well. Once your child self is allowed release from the past, so is your adult self free to move forward, unburdened too.

In case of archaic possession, it is up to the mature adult self to find meaning and explanation for such possession. I contend that there is possession of one kind or another involved in most people’s lives, until confronted, recapitulated through investigation and questioning, and until finally released through acceptance, with truth and maturity as the basis for life. Only in acceptance of self as a journeyer taking a journey of self-discovery in order to grow beyond the old methods of doing life, repeating the same mistakes and habits, will evolution be achieved.

You see, you must be able to allow the hurt inner child to scream aloud or sit and pout in archaic possession if that is what that aspect of child self elects to do. But know that there is another aspect of child self, innocence, that is not interested in such possession, but instead desires release into life as a trusty companion, offering the balance that your hard working mature adult self needs, in order to fully live.

I speak, most certainly, of your process as a maturing adult, fully capable and reliable. Your process is individual and must be acknowledged and dealt with on an individual level. Your journey, although intertwined with the journeys of others, must not be confused with or by the journey of another. Your ability to detach the self from the relationship must continually be explored in order for partnership and relationship to prosper. Who are you separate from your relationships? Each of you in a relationship (parent/child, lover/lover, employer/employee, etc.) must determine your own issues, even as you may see them mirrored in your partners, or triggered by your partners, or foreshadowed by your partners. These are the signs and triggers inviting you to absolve each other of the difficulties of the inner self. These are the moments of retreat and self-investigation, of ownership of your inner dilemmas, and confrontations with the truths of the self.

It is a difficult process. First must one confront the truths of the self, for only then will one be in a position to determine if the partner and relationship meet the needs of the true self, or if they hold the self caught in old places of inner struggle.

If evolution of self is your truthful quest in this lifetime, then that must be present in every aspect of your life. Only in being truthful with the self can you be truthful with others. For if you cannot accept who you are, then who can? Only in self resolution, and learning to love the self for the journey taken, will you achieve love of others for the journeys they also have taken and must take. Often are our journeys interwoven so that we may learn something important about the self, and this is true for both partners. Maturity is required in order for partner growth and partner acceptance to become part of a continued journey, with the mature adults leading the process, for only with such evolutionary guidance will progress be made.

I hope I have offered some new ideas for your adult self to work with, My Dear. May your child self be allowed out of the closet, and may her innocence be acceptable to you. For that is what you, as the adult, are looking for. It is what she is hoping you will find acceptable, and it is what must be released for a new kind of merger to happen, so that you may proceed fully balanced, with truth and love of self at your core.