Hiding In The Laundry Room
Welcome to Cheaper Than Therapy, a newsletter by Shani Silver. This newsletter does not publish free content, but if you’d like to read it you can subscribe here. Thank you for enjoying the work of independent writers.
In January of 2019 I began an inner child healing modality called To Be Magnetic. They describe it differently, and focus more on the manifestation side of things, and you know what…let ‘em—because that happens, too. It’s not for the uncommitted, if you want more information than that from me, you’ll need to ask. I bring it up because it involves revisiting the childhood memories we’ve stuffed into mental closets to forget about. It’s how I learned that forgetting and ignoring your past only delays the arrival of the future you want. Deal with the past, or repeat the past. Up to you.
There’s a roster, a track listing of major memories that keep coming up for me in my inner child work, the ones that continue to stand out as those that define current patterns. I hate them all, but at least this way I get to put them to good use. My upbringing didn’t soothe upset children, it shamed them. A cruel tactic you’d never see at today’s dinner tables but one deployed with such frequency during my childhood that I learned to never get upset at all. All natural emotions ever brought me as a child was embarrassment. If you don’t want a kid to…fuck I don’t know, express feelings, just shame shit out of them in front of the only people they know and love. That’ll shut ‘em up. That will teach them not to get angry, cry, or even have feelings—it’s dangerous.