The Work of Knowing the Self: Reclaiming the Inner Child in the Feminine Mysteries

There comes a moment in a woman’s life when the strategies that once protected her no longer sustain her. She may have created a functional life, a life that appears stable from the outside, one in which she is competent, reliable, and perhaps even admired. Yet somewhere beneath the surface, she begins to feel an unmistakable pull ; a deep, almost ancient longing to return to herself. This longing is not a yearning for improvement, transformation, or growth in the modern self-development sense. It is a call back to the forgotten interior of the psyche, to the part of her that existed before she learned how to adapt, to comply, or to survive.

This return is not a forward movement; it is, in the language of the feminine mysteries, a descent. The feminine path does not ascend away from the world into purity or light. It descends into the places of memory, emotion, body, and shadow. It is the very place described to us in the heroines journey, Persephones journey into the underworld. To know the Self is to drop into the depths where our earliest imprints and wounds reside. And at the heart of these depths, we encounter the figure we call the inner child.

The inner child is not simply a psychological construct of past experiences. She is the original psychic blueprint , to me she is the one who felt before she knew, who perceived without interpretation, who experienced reality with an openness that adults rarely remember how to hold. She is the repository of instinct, creativity, innocence, rage, longing, and unfiltered truth. And yet, she is also the one we first silenced. Most women learned very early that their emotional intensities were unwelcome, their needs were inconvenient, and their natural expression was too much for the environments they were raised in. And so, the child was not only wounded she was completely exiled or forced into an environment where she completely lost herself.

Most women i have worked with ( including myself for a long time) often believes she has matured beyond that early pain. She learns to speak in the language of spiritual practice, self-reflection, and emotional awareness. She becomes adept at caring for others. She may even dedicate her life to supporting, guiding, or healing. But all of this can occur while the child remains untouched, unheard, and waiting. Maturity without integration is simply adaptive functioning. It is survival in refined form. She becomes her ego , operating from her nervous system and her child like state, she has no sense of self or what she feels, thinks , wants and dreams.. she gets stuck in a fantasy while her life is that of nightmares.

To integrate the inner child is to acknowledge the cost of having abandoned her and to recognize that the parts of the self most deeply sought ; authenticity, vitality, passion, belonging, and freedom , these can only be reclaimed in relationship to her. Integration begins when a woman is willing to sit with the grief of realizing she learned to betray herself in order to be loved, where she completely numbed out and dissacosiated from her reality. It requires a willingness to feel rather than analyze, to allow emotion rather than manage it, and to remain present in the places where the psyche once split to protect itself.

This work is uncomfortable because it dismantles identity structures that the adult ego has relied upon. The woman who takes this descent will encounter all the ways she has compensated: the over-functioning, the caretaking, the capacity to hold others while secretly starving for someone to hold her. The places where she hasn't lived at all, has been leaning in and on those with a strong sense of self, even using their identitiy as her own. But something shifts when she begins to listen to the child with presence rather than pity. The relationship becomes less about healing a wound and more about restoring a truth that you were always worth listening to , supporting and loving.

You need to truly love her and stop abandoning her, only then will you reclaiming the inner authority. The woman who has restored her relationship with her inner child does not need approval to validate her choices, nor does she negotiate her truth to maintain harmony. She becomes grounded, open, speaks out, is sovereign, is not afraid to be fully who she is.

This is the essence of the feminine mysteries: not transcendence, but return. Not ascent away from the body and the world, but descent into the very places where we were once separated from ourselves. To know the Self is to come home, not to the person we have tried to become, but to the one we were before we learned to leave.

This is the true foundation of being grounded in the deep mystery of the feminine , learning that the underworld is the place where you meet this inner child over and over again and in this dark space you intergrate and bring new wisdom through your womb and into the world.

Here are some questions you can ask yourself to help integrate her:

• Where does the child in me still fear being unseen, unheld, or unchosen ; and how does she currently attempt to secure safety (approval-seeking, silence, over-giving, perfection, withdrawal)?
  Name the strategy. Name how it protects you. Name what it costs you.

• When I feel triggered or emotionally flooded, what age does that part of me feel like?
  What did she need then? What does she need now? And what does the adult woman I have become know that she does not?

• What would it mean to re-mother myself in a way that is neither indulgent nor dismissive ; but deeply attuned, boundaried, and firm in love?
  Describe, specifically, how that mother speaks. How she holds you. How she says “no.” How she says “enough.” How she says “I’m here.”

If you feel that you lost your inner child in the underworld ...

• Where do I notice myself imitating others rather than expressing my own preferences, style, or desires?
  Observe not with shame, but with compassionate curiosity. When you catch yourself mimicking, pause and ask why this feels safer than your own expression.

• Which parts of my inner world my feelings, needs, creative impulses—have I silenced to accommodate others?
  The feminine mysteries invite you to listen to these neglected parts. What do they want to say? What have you been withholding from yourself that, once acknowledged, could reclaim your energy and presence?

• When I follow my own instincts, what fears arise, and what truths do they conceal about my authentic self?
  Often, fear is a signpost pointing back to the parts of the inner child that need validation. Leaning into these instincts, even in small ways, allows your own identity to grow stronger, clearer, more embodied.

I love the Myth of Persephone as it so deeply mirrors this journey of the maiden to meeting herself in the darkness . In the depths of the underworld, Persephone discovered more than darkness; she encountered the fullness of her own being. Hades was not merely an external captor; he was the embodiment of her inner animus, the part of herself that holds power, discernment, and transformative intensity. By descending into the underworld, she faced the parts of herself she had long feared or denied, and in that confrontation, she found her sovereignty.

Like Persephone, we too are invited to descend into our inner realms, to meet the shadowed, powerful, and sometimes frightening aspects of our psyche. I have ventured here many times to meet the unintergrated aspect of my inner child and bring her lost parts back. I have discovered the animus within is not an adversary in me after all, but a powerful guide, a mirror reflecting where I needed strength, clarity, and assertion.

In reclaiming these inner forces, we step fully into our own authority, carrying the wounded child gently but firmly into a space of integration, where imitation and borrowed identity dissolve, and the authentic self rises, luminous and whole.

Collette