Dear Cali Chica:

When we are children, scared and stuck, we disassociate. The fear disassociates from the events, so when we remember our childhood as adults, the memories are dry or even pleasant. The fear is not there in those dry memories.

But the fear is not gone. It’s been our experience all along. We fear and go numb, numb and get scared, distract and back to fear, and sadness and anger, the secondary feelings following fear.

We keep experiencing the experience of childhood in the present while remembering our childhood in a dry manner, devoid of the strong feelings experienced then.

To re-associate, we have to be aware of the fear now, and realize it is the same fear of then. We then know that it really was us then, so many years ago. To state it personally: it really was me those many years ago.

anita