The Day I Stopped Abandoning Myself: A Return to Kindness
How turning toward my own pain, with kindness instead of fear, became the doorway back to wholeness.
Original artwork: B. Littleton
There comes a moment in every life when the old ways of coping stop working. I used to think I could outrun my pain if I stayed productive enough, wise enough, spiritual enough, busy enough. But every time I processed a memory or faced a setback, I wasn’t just dealing with the present moment. I was brushing up against old states of being I had tucked away for decades, hoping they would quietly disappear.
Marion Woodman once wrote that the body becomes the storage vessel for whatever the psyche cannot yet bear. I feel the truth of that. What I couldn’t speak gathered in my throat. What I couldn’t grieve settled in my chest. What I couldn’t face sank into my belly like a stone.
And when I tried to bypass the hurt, when I convinced myself I was “fine,” I was really gaslighting the most tender parts of me. I was telling myself that my own experience didn’t matter, that my own pain wasn’t worth tending. I made the unbearable quiet. But the unbearable never vanishes. It waits. It waits patiently until life cracks open just enough for everything unprocessed to rise, often at the most inconvenient time.
Clarissa Pinkola Estes says that every woman carries a fierce and protective instinct deep in her bones. I think of this as my inner Bear. The part of me that stands behind me when I finally turn toward what hurts. When I call upon that Bear, I’m not summoning strength as much as I am summoning permission, permission to stay with what I’ve spent years avoiding.
So I sit with the grief I once walked past. The old shame that built its nest in my body. The memories so confusing I thought there was no way through. I let them be fully present. I let them speak. I let them tremble and soften and unfold in their own strange language. And in those moments, I practice giving myself the kindness I never knew how to offer, the kind of steady, patient care my orphaned self has been waiting for. Even in the panic of being present with pain, I stay with myself gently.
Because here’s what I’ve learned: these neglected parts of me aren’t trying to ruin my life. They’re trying to return home. They only ever wanted to be seen, heard, welcomed back into consciousness. The moment they feel accepted, they lose their grip. They become smaller, gentler, less potent. They become satisfied.
And the more these inner orphans feel at home in me, the more at home I feel in myself. The strife I used to carry inside me no longer spills into my outer world. When I bear witness to the parts of me I buried, strife becomes satisfaction. Resistance becomes relief. Fear loosens its hold.
The unlived life doesn’t disappear simply because we trained ourselves to stay strong or stay quiet. What has no words finds another way to express itself. Fatigue, anxiety, tightness in the jaw, heaviness in the chest, not as signs of failure, but as messengers from the soul. Each symptom carrying a small piece of a story I once could not bear to feel.
What if the ache is a doorway?
What if the anxiety is something tender awakening?
What if the shame is a young part of me asking, “Will you stay this time?”
The soul speaks through sensation when it cannot find language. Heat. Contraction. Numbness. Trembling. The body becomes a poet of what the psyche has not yet said out loud. When I turn toward these sensations instead of away, I feel something inside me shift. The body softens. The psyche exhales.
And this is the deeper truth I keep returning to. The day I stopped abandoning myself was the day I stopped repeating that early childhood experience of feeling punished with withdrawal and silence. Instead of bracing for abandonment, I settled into a grace so pure and true it felt like coming home to my own life at last.
Because when I hold my own hurt with kindness, nothing inside me has to fight for attention anymore. Nothing has to erupt to be known. Everything in me can return home.
And the soul, finally heard, begins to reveal what it has been holding for me all along.
May you offer yourself the kind of kindness you once believed only others could give.
May the orphaned parts of you feel your presence and soften in your hands.
May every ache, tremble, memory, and tightness become a lantern that guides you home.
May you remember again and again that you were never meant to walk away from yourself.
You are your own safe return.
written by Bren Littleton
Original artwork: B. Littleton
Tin Flea Press c 2025