Give Your Inner Child Permission to Heal: Kristin Folts (Transcript)

Here is the full transcript of Kristin Folts’ talk titled “Give Your Inner Child Permission to Heal” at TEDxOcala conference.

Listen to the audio version here:

TRANSCRIPT:

September 11, 2001

September 11, 2001, where were you? Give yourself permission to go back to that day and feel your emotions, your shock, your anger, your sadness. I remember that day vividly. I was nervous about my first humanities exam of the new semester as I hopped out of my fire engine red T-top Camaro thinking I was hot stuff.

It would be 20 short minutes from that moment that my world would change forever when my felt safety and security were stolen by strangers. In my memory, there is a clear cut line between before 9/11 and after 9/11. Sometimes, our mind loses the details of our life while other moments of our lives are as if they happened yesterday. This is what trauma does in its rawest form, whether you are 5, 15, 25, or 75. It influences how we see life and creates seen and unseen emotional wounds of unequivocal proportions.

Fast forward almost 20 years, and my life work has revolved around helping children and families heal from their traumas. My heart is working with adoptive parents loving children with complex traumas. Hello, my name is Kristin Folts, and I am your inner child healing guide.

Beginning Your Healing Journey

And in this moment, I am giving you permission to begin your healing journey to wholeness. First, we must put on our inner child trauma glasses. By looking at trauma from a different lens, we create space to heal our own childhood pain points and help us show compassion to others who may be wearing their traumas like an unspoken badge of courage.

I find that when I look at trauma as an unspoken or unmet need for healing, it brings empathy and understanding to the emotions, feelings, and behaviors because of the present and unconscious inner child wounds. These wounds can be major or minor experiences in your life that I like to call big T traumas and little T traumas.

They can be multi-layered and even multi-generational. Because of your inner child wounds, you block away part of your authentic self that you want to protect. While this is for good reason, it is more beneficial for you to give yourself permission to heal.

The sad truth of the matter is, is that whether you remember your traumatic events, your body and your mind remembers, your subconscious mind remembers, I should say, and it keeps count of every moment of fear, abandonment, rejection, shame, and helplessness you have experienced. Trauma knows no race or religion. It is not selective or predestined to occur, and no one is exempt from possibly being on the receiving end of a traumatic event.

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Faces of Trauma

So what does a person with trauma look like? It could be anyone you know. Is it a veteran fresh off the battlefield? Is it the working professional that doesn’t quite remember that fateful night? The names and the faces are a blur, but the nightmares and the counseling sessions remind them that something did happen, but there’s not much hope for closure or justice, or is there?

Is it the countless immigrant children who have been separated from their parents, looking for a better life here in the States? Is it the unkempt little boy in your child’s third grade class that is holding on to the hope that he will be reunited with his parents and his siblings? I knew this little boy, and he held on every day and would ask me, “Do I get to go home today? I really miss my little red race car.”

Last but not least, is it children impacted in the classroom, at the grocery store by nameless strangers, by a nosy neighbor, or you’re at a commuting event when everyone becomes a victim, when another human decides to end their life in the name of religion?

Now that we have a defined hypothetical idea of what a person with trauma may look like, let’s talk about what your inner child is saying to you as an adult. Here you are, 30 or 40-something years old, and your inner child becomes emotionally triggered. You are now a scared and broken version of your seven-year-old self long ago.

You were, up until this point, living up life with your 2.5 kids, white picket fence, money in the bank. You’re in a job that stresses you out, but you stay because it pays the bills, and your inner child comes knocking on your door one dark and stormy night. What do you do? Do you black out the house, shut the blinds, and hope your inner child thinks you’re not home?

Or do you acknowledge and give yourself permission to revisit your pain points from your childhood so that you can move on and be in a new and improved version of your adult self? Just for fun, let’s invite your inner child in for a cup of tea. This allows you to acknowledge your experiences, gives you permission to receive guidance, it opens you up to healing your secret pain points, and it allows you to grow as you walk your healing journey. By doing this, you’re leading your inner child to heal and create space to declare an “I am” mindset and liberate you from a “me too” mentality.

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I am an overcomer, I am resilient, I am a voice, and my story matters. In the next step of your healing journey, there are five things I want you to tell your inner child when you come knocking on your own door. One, I give you permission to heal. Two, I give you permission to forgive yourself and others. Three, I honor our journey together. Four, I love you. Five, thank you. Wow, isn’t that powerful?

The Healing Journey

Giving ourselves permission to heal?

Every person in this room has a triumph and tragedy story. They have scars and what ifs and wants and dreams. I would be setting you up for possible failure if I did not tell you the healing journey is not always one of glitz and glamour.

Sometimes it is the ugly cry, gut-wrenching kind of healing experience that you need to have to walk yourself to wholeness. I was reminded of a profound outlook on healing the other day that I would like to share.

When I was 32 weeks pregnant, a close relative of mine delivered a gorgeous stillborn little boy. She was 29 weeks along. There was no medical reason for this to occur, and my family was devastated. That same day, I was diagnosed with late-term gestational diabetes, and my doctors were concerned for my unborn child. My dreams of a peaceful water home birth with my favorite midwife were shattered. My courage was tattered and torn, and I was grieving for my family hundreds of miles away from me.

As I felt my daughter moving within me, I was taken back to a moment in time when again I was scared and helpless, and I was only four. I had locked away part of these emotions and feelings for many years, and I had two options. Option A was to stuff my emotions and feelings further down into the corner of my soul and pretend everything was okay. And option B was to make a conscious choice to processing what had happened long ago.

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I am happy to say I chose healing that day. A few weeks later, I had a heart to heart with my grieving relative, and she had something very profound to tell me. She said, “Kristin, you must walk through the pain, not around it, not over it or under it. You have to walk straight through it.”

And on the other side, waiting patiently and lovingly for however long it takes, is healing and wholeness. Otherwise, it will just keep knocking on your door. So today, it’s time to give yourself permission to heal your childhood pain points, honor your memories and emotions, and then release them so that you too can walk your healing journey to wholeness. Thank you.

SUMMARY OF THIS TALK:

Kristen Foltz’s talk, “Give Your Inner Child Permission to Heal,” delves into the profound impact of trauma on individuals, regardless of age. She vividly recalls the pivotal moment of September 11, 2001, as a turning point in her understanding of safety and trauma. Foltz emphasizes the stark contrast in her life pre and post the 9/11 attacks, highlighting the enduring nature of traumatic experiences.

With nearly two decades of working with children and families to heal from trauma, she positions herself as a guide for inner child healing. Foltz introduces the concept of “inner child trauma glasses” as a metaphor for a new perspective on addressing and understanding trauma. She differentiates between major and minor traumas, underscoring the importance of acknowledging and healing from both to reclaim one’s authentic self.

The speaker addresses the universal and non-discriminatory nature of trauma, suggesting that anyone can be affected by traumatic events. Foltz’s narrative extends empathy towards various faces of trauma, from veterans to immigrant children, illustrating the widespread impact of these experiences. She advocates for confronting and healing from childhood traumas as a pathway to emotional and psychological wholeness.

Throughout her talk, Foltz champions the power of granting oneself permission to heal, presenting a compelling case for the healing journey as a transformative process towards resilience and understanding.