I began pursuing my MA in Art Therapy last year. With the changes of going to a different school and changing jobs, I felt a bit untethered the first bit of time. Feeling uncertain and intimidated, I was working through inner child healing and enacting healing from childhood trauma.

One of my safest relationships in life is the friendship/mentorship I have with a former teacher. We’ve worked through it together, but when I was her student as a teenager, I pictured her and my therapist rescuing me. I idealized other families because I wanted to feel safe and welcome at home. It’s been cathartic to hear classmates find safety in community members like teachers, too, especially because they feel a similar way and didn’t experience the childhood trauma I did. It feels validating to know wanting this support is just a human thing, too. 

My mentor wasn’t aware of this push-and-pull of safety until I was an adult, but I also felt it could have been apparent — from sticking closely by her side like she was a safety blanket or a cherished stuffed animal. All of these feelings were normalized for me by her and my therapist. There is a child within who was hurting a lot and wanted to be loved and accepted. It’s easy for us to want what we don’t have and to seek the light. 

No one has told me in my life that I need to start saving myself or that I need to do x, y, or z to help myself. I’ve had the opportunity to address things in my own time and in my own way. In healing, I’ve adapted to my own methods of finding safety. I work through many of these things on my own and with the support of my therapist, but no one guides me but me. It feels freeing this way because it’s indicative that I haven’t done anything wrong and that it’s okay to take my time to heal. 

During these changes in my life last year, I sought healing my own way by accident: I began listening to a song my mentor sings over and over again. She is a singer-songwriter and has this sweet song called Little Christmas, which is about her first child. It is by her band The Classic Brown and is on their album “For Christmas’ Sake”. In the song, she and her husband recorded cute little noises their baby made — little cooing. I would listen to it to lull me to feeling safe enough to fall asleep for a few months last year. Through listening to the song, I’d feel the wide range of emotions of trauma healing, and the song would calm me down and remind me I was safe.

I have been so loved and supported during this time, but there was a part of me needing extra comfort and also a release of the childhood trauma mourning as I take this great big step into further adulthood. Some say that baby steps aren’t about being tentative, but are actually “a great unbalanced, wholehearted, enthusiastic lurch into the unknown.” This brave attempt of self-soothing was exactly that. 

I really relied on the song some nights. Taking this next step to become an art therapist, work hard as an art therapy intern, and thrive in grad school, as well as leaving the life as I knew it for the last five years behind, I think I realized I was letting go more of my childhood from that previous chapter of my life. It hurt a lot to realize that I’m closer to mid-life than the childhood I wanted my mentor to take care of me in. 

I think it’s easy to be weirded out by this for those who don’t understand trauma, but when I shared with her that her song was played the most in 2024, due to having it on repeat, she didn’t comment anything negative; she understood.

What I’m proud of currently is that I shared with her that it’s now been a few months since I’ve relied on her song to feel safe. I told her while it’s still a beautiful song and I’ll still listen to it at times, I feel like it was time for me to let go of that security blanket and rely more on myself. This method has always been part of my processing and healing — relying on outside validation and support before I can fully step outside to rely on myself. My mentor knows this process helps me best, so I appreciate that she trusted me to let go when I was able to. None of this was planned, nor finding comfort in the song, but I also trusted myself to find catharsis in it during a challenging transition of leaving behind my old life and recreating safety in the here and now. 

I don’t think it’s necessarily maladaptive to rely on a song, but the goal for me was to take her comfort and support and begin to find it in myself, and I did. In my inner child healing, I pictured her comforting Little Lex and mothering her. As strange as that may sound to some, I wasn’t properly soothed as a child and had to soothe myself. Oftentimes, I didn’t have the skills to do so, so I’d cry for hours alone. As I said, there is still that child within, and sometimes she is hurting today, so it is my responsibility to soothe her. To a compassionate, caring person, it makes perfect sense why I feel a need to reach out for comfort. 

The major progression in all of this today is that through relying on this outside support, I can now picture adult me stepping in and soothing my inner child. I couldn’t have gotten to this place of self-healing without those initial steps. 

Childhood trauma is difficult because we cannot go back in time. In lieu of trying to go back in time, we learn to openly mourn. I’ve learned that my mentor cannot be a parent to me, nor can she be a parent to me as a child, but she can be a friend, mentor, and chosen family. Sometimes we need to have others venture outside their roles mentally in order to heal the past. I think there will always be a part of me that wants her to be my parent, but now that I am equipped with better skills, the ability to reparent myself, and healing distance from it, I feel comfortable to let go of the short-term coping and embrace my own self-love and inner comfort. 

You are not crazy or a bad person for trying your best to cope with childhood trauma. Sometimes we find ourselves coping in ways that we may not fully understand. It’s okay to feel confused or embarrassed, but it’s never shameful. The very root of this is deep, aching pain, and sometimes we have to comb back through the past in order to embrace today and all of our freedoms.