When your inner child is still waiting to be seen.
There’s a moment most people don’t talk about — when you realise growing older doesn’t always mean growing up.
When your body is forty but your heart is still sat in the school corridor, waiting to be picked, waiting to be seen.
Shadow work isn’t just digging into memories you’ve buried — it’s facing the parts of yourself you had to lock away just to survive.
And some days, all it takes to rip those locks wide open is a face from your past walking through a door.
The Moment You Realise You’re Still That Child
I wasn’t expecting it, of course. The last thing you expect when you’re sat in a dentist’s waiting room is for your past to stroll through the door like it owns the place. But there she was. A woman from my school days, looking every bit the same as she did back then, only now she had a child of her own in tow. And suddenly, I was right back there. Back to a place where I thought I was invisible. Where I never felt like I belonged.
I felt it in the pit of my stomach immediately — that old feeling, like a punch to the gut. Not the dramatic, cinematic kind, just the quiet, lingering kind that says, “You’re still not enough.”
You see, all I could think was that I wasn’t “grown-up” enough. I had children, sure, but they were born out of toxic situations, from relationships that never had the foundation of love or respect. And here she was, with her two children, coming in from a healthy relationship, looking like she’d done everything “right.” A mum who had it together, who’d played the game of life by the rules, and succeeded.
And I was just… there. A ghost of a woman, still stuck in the halls of my past, frozen in time. Everyone else around me had moved on, moved up. And there I was, waiting for the dentist like a teenager who never grew out of their school uniform.
The Echo of Emotional Neglect
I didn’t want to see her, honestly. Not because I hated her or anything, but because she was a living, breathing reminder of everything I didn’t get. The emotional neglect. The lack of validation. The feeling of being invisible.
I’ve spent so much of my life walking around with the heavy weight of other people’s expectations — expectations that never felt like they belonged to me. Every relationship I’ve had has been a struggle. I’ve bent myself into shapes to try and fit into spaces where I didn’t belong, just to be accepted. And, no matter how much I gave, how much I sacrificed, I always ended up alone. Left behind.
And in that moment, as I sat in the dentist’s office, I could hear the echo of those years of neglect ringing louder than ever. The feeling that no matter what I do, no matter how many birthdays I’ve had, I’m always going to be the last one picked. The one who doesn’t quite measure up.
The Shadow Work Nobody Tells You About
Shadow work — it’s not just about digging up memories. It’s about confronting the parts of you that you’ve locked away. The parts that remind you of everything you didn’t get, everything you missed out on, and everything that’s still eating away at you.
But it’s also about learning to stop hiding from yourself. To stop running from the truth that you might not have been given the love, care, or attention you needed, but you still have the power to change the narrative. The tricky part is, no one tells you that it doesn’t just come in the form of healing crystals and self-help books. Sometimes, it hits you when you least expect it. When someone from your past forces you to confront all the things you’ve been hiding from.
Facing What’s Been Left Unspoken
I didn’t expect that moment in the waiting room to hit me the way it did, but it’s one of those things you can’t prepare for. I didn’t get a chance to fix myself before I came face-to-face with the reality that I’m still carrying this baggage, this belief that I’m somehow unworthy of the life I want.
But in that quiet, gut-punching moment, I realised that maybe I don’t need to be fixed. Maybe I just need to stop pretending that I’m not already enough.
I’ve spent years believing that if I gave enough of myself, I could finally be seen. But what I’ve learned through shadow work is that the only person who can truly see me, who can truly love me, is me.
I can’t keep running from myself. I can’t keep hiding in the shadows, hoping someone else will finally notice me. It’s time I let myself stand in the light, even if it’s terrifying. Even if I feel like a fraud sometimes.
I might not have had the perfect start, I might not have the perfect story — but I’ve still got a story. And it’s one worth telling.
So, to anyone else who’s still stuck in the shadows, still waiting to be seen, I see you. I feel you. And I’m standing with you. Because maybe we don’t need to be fixed — we just need to stop hiding.
Lottie x
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