"It is through healing our inner child, our inner children, by grieving the wounds that we suffered, that we can change our behavior patterns and clear our emotional process. We can release the grief with its pent-up rage, shame, terror, and pain from those feeling places which exist within us.

That does not mean that the wound will ever be completely healed. There will always be a tender spot, a painful place within us due to the experiences that we have had. What it does mean is that we can take the power away from those wounds. By bringing them out of the darkness into the Light, by releasing the energy, we can heal them enough so that they do not have the power to dictate how we live our lives today. We can heal them enough to change the quality of our lives dramatically. We can heal them enough to Truly be happy, Joyous and free in the moment most of the time."

(All quotes in this color are from Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls)

Codependency recovery / inner child healing is a way of life. It is a way to live life that works. It works to help an individual gain some freedom from the past. It is a path for living that facilitates developing a centered ground space within where inner peace exists. That creates the space for a person to be present in the moment and be happy to be alive - to connect with Joy - some of the time.

It is not something we do and then get on with our lives. It is something we do in order to Truly be alive.

Life is a process - a journey. By being willing to do the inner child healing we can learn to be present for the journey - and to have the capacity to actually relax and enjoy it at times.

One of the very valuable things that I have learned in my recovery is echoed in something that I often say to people when I first start to work with them. Most of my counseling work is done by phone these days, and often I will end the first session by saying, "Everything that happens in your life from now on, is part of this process."

We are here to do this healing. We are Spiritual Beings having a human experience - and we are in body at this very special time in history to do this healing work.

The inner child healing work is part of our Spiritual evolutionary journey. Doing this work requires consciousness raising - en-light-en-ment. We need to become conscious of our own inner process - by developing the detached observer / witness / detective / defense attorney / compassionate parent level of consciousness. The more conscious we become, the easier it is to see how powerful our reactive programming has been. By becoming conscious of it, we can change it.

By being willing to get more conscious we can start to reprogram our ego programming by using positive affirmations and self talk, by developing a Spiritual belief system that allows us to start being compassionate and Loving to ourselves.

By becoming willing to face the terror of healing the emotional wounds we can learned to release the dammed, repressed grief energy within us so that it is no longer defining us and dictating our experience of life.

Doing the healing work, making recovery a way of life, allows us to make choices to define our reality from a place of faith and acceptance instead of victimization, fear, and shame. It allows us to start having healthier relationships with our self and with others.

Becoming conscious and paying attention to the guidance from our intuition / Spirit, will help us learn to stop reacting to life and start having choices about how we respond to life. Responsibility - the ability to respond. We can take responsibility for our lives - and own our power as a co-creator of our life.

As long as we are reacting to life unconsciously out of our childhood emotional wounds and programming it is impossible for us to grow up. Recovery is about growing up - as I said in part 10 of this series on inner child healing (Inner Child Healing Paradigm):

"This work is about becoming an integrated, whole, mature, adult person in action, in the way we live our lives and respond to life events and other people. The only way we can be whole is to own all of the parts of ourselves. By owning all the parts we can then have choices about how we respond to life. By denying, hiding, and suppressing parts of ourselves we doom ourselves to live life in reaction."

Becoming an integrated, whole, mature adult does not come easily. It takes commitment. It takes action and effort on our part. We need to be willing to do our part in the process. We need to be willing to learn to be honest with ourselves intellectually and emotionally. We need to be willing to do the grief work. We need to be willing to be conscious - and to live consciously.

We can't do it perfectly. We will make gradual progress. We will resist and procrastinate and make excuses - because we are human. One of the trickiest things about his process is to stop judging ourselves for being human at the same time we doing whatever it takes to align with healing and transformation.

It is hard work. It is ongoing - it will keep changing and shifting and getting different, but it will continue for the rest of your life.

The rewards are awesome however!

I am going to end this article and this series with a couple of short quotes from near the end of my book Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls 

"We are Spiritual Beings having a human experience. We are here to experience feelings and touch and Love. The goal of the healing process is not to reach someplace where we are above all the human experiences and feelings. We are here to feel these feelings.

When we become willing to feel the pain, then we become capable of feeling the Joy. The Joy of doing this healing is incredible! Our job is to heal and enJoy. Our job is to be. We are here to be human beings, not human doings.

Our job is to follow the Joy to the Truth. Our job is to feel in the moment.

As long as we are reacting to old wounds and old tapes we cannot respond to the now. The more we heal, the more responsibility we have - that is, ability to respond. The ability to respond in the moment."

"This is a process, a process we are going to be involved in for the rest of this lifetime. We will never do it perfectly from a human perspective. But the more we are willing to choose to view life as a growth process, and to feel and remember the Truth within us, the more we will become conscious of the Truth that we are perfectly where we are supposed to be on our Spiritual Path - and that we are being guided Home.

There is Truth all around us. And the Truth is setting us free.

Through healing the inner child, we access Truth and Love. And the little child shall lead them."

That little child is within you. That little child deserves Love. That little child is you.

 The Grief Process