Dear Anita,

thank your for your perspective.

“You’ve been talking about inner-child work, healing childhood wounds (metaphorically, climbing a mountain)”

I actually didn’t equate the inner child work with climbing the mountain. It was Peter’s metaphor of his own process. I just noticed he said he’s tempted to climb it again (and similar metaphors, such as re-crossing the river), and that’s why I thought he isn’t so sure that he let go of say guilt of whatever emotions he was struggling with. I was simply noticing a certain hesitance, a certain doubt in his words, and thought that it means he hasn’t really let go, or that he might have let go just mentally, but not emotionally.

I know that many teachings talk about climbing the mountain and finally reaching some “enlightened” state, or a completely healed state. I don’t believe that, because we’ll never be perfect human beings, there’s always room for growth, so I don’t believe that we can reach some ultimate state of perfection.

And I agree with you, the inner child work isn’t supposed to go on forever, because once we’ve healed our main emotional wounds, the inner child isn’t hurting any more, isn’t craving for love, attention and validation, and we sort of integrate it into our adult personality. So it’s not the miracle cure for everything, but it can help in healing our major unmet emotional needs.