Healing my inner child: part 2

Reflections on my intense need for control and failing miserably

This is part 2 of healing my inner child. You can read Part 1 here:

Healing my inner child: part 1

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“Let’s go to Portugal,” my partner, Nate said.

Spending the winter abroad was a dream we had for years. We were both burnt out from the hustle culture that had become the norm and wanted to engulf ourselves in a place that prioritized slow.

Each year, as fall descended and the first frost arrived, we’d feel the familiar itch to get away. We’d send new ideas for new destinations, but never quite managed to make it work. “Life” just kept getting in the way.

Next year, we’d say.

As “next year” approached, Nate broached the topic again. “How about Portugal?” he repeated.

This time, my first reaction wasn’t the usual bout of excitement. It was a pit, deep in my stomach.

I was exhausted from juggling the emotional, mental, and physical load of my business. I’d struggled to maintain any healthy work/life boundaries, and I was feeling that weight. I was nearing the end of a busy retreat season, and my own bed, in my own little town, felt more luxurious than a villa in Portugal.

But I also knew that at the end of my last retreat, I longingly said to Nate, “I wish I could be a participant on a retreat like this.” Not as a leader and facilitator, but as a participant. I understood the magic that happens when you take the time to nurture yourself in a world that tells you there’s no time.

I’ve built a business supporting other people’s grief, when do I make space to hold my own? Or even more uncomfortable, when do I allow someone else to hold me in my grief? After years of holding space for others, I now wanted to gift myself that experience.

But how?

I thought about a widow’s retreat, a wellness retreat, a writer’s retreat. A silent retreat, a spiritual retreat, a spa retreat.

I was determined to Eat, Pray, Love my way into healing.

There was so much I wanted to accomplish — resting, writing, adventuring, restoring, moving, staying, memory-making. And also one thing I needed to accomplish — working (because like most, I can’t financially afford to step away from work to tend to my organism).

“What about Portugal?” echoed in my head.

Would it be possible to create my own experience? One where I can write and play and heal, on my own terms? Where I can be in nature and let my mind wander? Where I can make mistakes as I dip my toe in the waters of life?

Riding high from my aura reading, I was determined to make some changes in my life. And not in small ways, like “make room for play.” I wasn’t interested in a middle ground to healing my inner child. I wanted to steamroll myself through it.

“Ok. Let’s go to Portugal” I said.

I had a plan.

We would spend 6 weeks in Madeira, Portugal before my first retreat of the year. I would structure my day in a way that worked for me.

Instead of waking up and jumping into serving others, I would serve myself first. I would take advantage of the time difference, those early hours spent filling my own cup. Sunrise hikes, morning pages, writing the book — all would happen before the work day back home began. I’d make more time for play, for movement, for me.

I wrote in my morning pages about my ideal structure of the day:

• Wake up early — coffee and morning pages on the deck

• Work on the book

• Morning hike or adventure

• Picnic lunch (cute)

• Start the work day (which in Portugal is only a solid 4-6 hours)

• Cook dinner (with wine in hand and music in the background)

• Read or play a game with Nate

It was all very romantic and European. Relaxing and carefree. The perfect way to heal my inner child — eating good food, enjoying good company, and hiking through the mountains of Madeira.

Would it be possible?

Turns out, the answer is no.

In the month I’ve been here, not once, have I managed to write my morning pages, work on the book, and go on a hike — all before lunch. I still check my email first thing in the morning, from my phone, nestled next to me in bed. I still scroll through Instagram even though it enrages me every single time. I still binge the next episode of Lost¹ when my brain is too fried to think. I still feel stressed and anxious (although admittedly, maybe less so).

Not once have I lived out this “ideal” day.

Being in a new location doesn’t suddenly grant you more hours in a day. It doesn’t remove distractions — it just gives you different ones. Being in a new location doesn’t shield your little feeling heart from all the horrors of the world.

Instead of giving up, I created a new plan. Clearly, I was striving for too much. As my late husband, Brad once said, “Keep your expectations nice and low and we’ll have an epic time.”

I just needed lower expectations.

As I started to craft this new and improved, less rigid schedule of healing, while simultaneously asking Nate to write down his work commitments so we could fill in our mutual free time with all the hikes I’d researched, I had a sudden “oh shit” realization.

I’m trying to control my way to healing.

am i healed??

I was trying to heal my inner child, not by letting go, but by clinging on to control more tightly than ever.

Of course I wanted a plan. Of course I wanted a system. A checklist. Proof that once all my boxes were completed, I’d be healed.

Because little Dana survived by being “perfect.” By being good. By being a person who could prove how fine she (and everyone else) was by creating a systematic plan.

She survived by being in control (even if it was a false sense of control).

But you can’t control your way into healing.

And damn does that piss me off.

I don't blame myself for this intense need for control. My world has repeatedly been ripped out from under me. Of course, I want to hold on to some semblance of control (or all the semblances of control).

I wanted to believe that with the weight of fate on my shoulders, as long as I did everything right, it would work out.

But gripping tightly to control, needing to do it all alone, overplanning, overscheduling, over-controlling, didn’t prevent the worst.

I still got cancer. Brad still got cancer (and died). My dad got cancer (and died).

Control didn’t change any future outcomes. It only stole my sanity.

It reminded me of one of the biggest fights Brad and I had after he was diagnosed (you can hear the details of that in last week’s podcast episode).²

I needed to feel in control. I needed to believe that if I did all the right things, I could save him. If I just stayed positive, made healthy meals, did the research, set up the right appointments, chose the right path, found the loophole, believed he would survive — if I did all that, he would survive.

But Brad didn’t survive. And controlling didn’t change that outcome. It only stole our sanity.

Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

Time and time again, I have sat firmly in the driver’s seat, white-knuckling the wheel, and holding my breath as I drove through the tunnel into darkness. My face blue, determined, before the air explodes out of me — hope left deflated in my rearview mirror.

Time and time again, through tightly fisted hands and gritted teeth, grasping for control.

And now realizing I never had any.

It was all a mask. For fear, for insecurity, for instability. A way to disconnect from my emotions so I could keep moving.

I can’t control my way into healing.

Brad once asked me what it would be like to give up my to-do list for a week. I scoffed, wondering why I would ever consider giving up something that was so clearly helpful in managing my anxiety. I couldn't — no wouldn’t! — give it up for a day.

But what if he was right?

What if the key to healing isn’t control, but giving it up?

I imagine it’s hard to tend to your inner child when you’re constantly planning, scheduling, controlling the outcome — when you’re constantly having to be so fucking perfect.

I think back to that aura reading, reflecting on the needs of sweet Little Dana.

wild & free

There was a time when she scrambled up trees, with scraped knees and unbrushed hair, and temporarily traded her life for the stories of her books. When shame hung on her body, large and tented, like her oversized tees.

But before that, she cackled as she trampled through the muddy woods, dirtying up the dress her mom made her wear. She finger-painted in the yard with her brother, the world their canvas. She wiped the melting ice cream from her cheek with the palm of her hand before scampering off to play.

Before that, her day was controlled, not by a calendar, but by the setting sun, when the collective call of neighborhood parents echoed to come home for dinner. When she squeezed in one more round of capture the flag in the culdesac before the food went cold.

Before that, the world could be trusted and she was safe.

Until it no longer could and she no longer was.

How do you heal when, for so long, you’ve lost all sense of safety?

I don’t know. But it’s probably not another plan, another system, another checklist.

Maybe healing is simply about savoring the fruits of life, squeezing every drop of that messy, pulpy juice, and tasting its sweetness as it drips down my chin.

Maybe it’s about loosening my grip just enough to let life surprise me. Maybe it’s about sitting in the muck, the uncertainty, the joy, and the absurdity of it all.

Maybe it’s traveling to Portugal and failing spectacularly at my perfectly planned healing journey. Maybe it’s learning to be wholly unproductive. Maybe that’s all okay.

Maybe healing looks less like a perfectly executed itinerary and more like drinking wine on a Tuesday afternoon, relishing in the fruitlessness of it all.

Because, in the end, what if healing isn’t controllable at all? What if it’s just living?

What if healing is really just about surrendering control?

Maybe healing is ending this post without any answers or perfect last lines — and instead stepping away from this computer to join Nate, who is waiting for me at our favorite local Portuguese pub.

A luta continua

1. My toxic trait: watching apocalyptic television shows to feel better about the current state of the world. When my dad was dying, I distracted myself with the entire Game of Thrones series.

2. This episode was a hard one to share. Listening to it again, I cringe at how little I understood. And how desperate I was to believe Brad’s fate was within our control.