* Dear teaK:

I read a good portion of the communication between you and Peter this morning, and I think I have some understanding about a misunderstanding that I detected. I thought it might be helpful if I share with you my understanding of .. the misunderstanding:

You’ve been talking about inner-child work, healing childhood wounds (metaphorically, climbing a mountain), and Peter has been talking about the Buddhis principle of detachment (letting go/ freeing himself from the desire/ attachment to climbing that mountain).

You believe that either Peter didn’t do any inner-child work, or that if he did, he didn’t do enough of it, and therefore, he needs to do more. You’ve been telling Peter: climb that mountain again! If you do, once you get to the top, you will be healed and all will be well, and that mountain will be gone, no more climbing!

Peter is saying: I don’t want to climb that mountain because even if I climb it for the rest of my life, the mountain will still be there. So better I accept that the mountain is there and leave it alone, no need to climb it again.

As I see it, from personal experience, both principles are valid: an adult who was emotionally injured in childhood, to a significant or severe extent, needs to do inner-child work (and you described that work very well, teaK!). But at one point, the person needs to slow down and eventually, let go of doing the inner-child work even though the work has not been completed. The reason: this kind of work cannot be completed, there is no summit to that mountain.

At one point, looking at myself in the mirror, seeing a face of an ageing woman, I realized that some of the pain of childhood injuries will never go away because of its consequences: I cannot get my youth back, I cannot get my health back, I am facing more ageing, I can’t go back in time and undo all that immense waste of life, lost opportunities, a life unlived.

And I realized that this waste is not my tragedy alone, but that it is a human tragedy. I am not alone.

Realizing this, there was nothing for me to do but to let go of that mountain, to stop climbing it, to accept that it is there.  I am still interested in healing and learning, this is why I am here on tiny buddha,  every day. But I am not desperate, I no longer live under the delusion that there is an ending point to healing, and that better I get there sooner than later. There is no ending point, no summit to that mountain.

anita