Smiling to the Inner Child

A Loving Kindness Practice for Healing Relationships

This article has been adapted from a recent live stream session on relationships and loving kindness meditation. It’s also available in audio and video (YouTube) format on my podcast “Hello Beautiful Souls.”

How often do we find ourselves caught in the web of high expectations with others? How frequently do we forget to be generous with the people in our lives, forgetting that they are not just the adults we see before us, but also wounded inner children carrying the weight of ancestral wounds and generational patterns they're trying to move through, just like we are?

This morning, as I reflected on the challenges we face in our relationships, I was drawn to share something that has profoundly shifted how I approach connection and conflict: the recognition that when we project codependent energy onto others—expecting them to be everything we need in order for us to be happy—we take one of the most disempowering stances possible.

The truth is, we have to be everything we need for ourselves to be happy. And I believe that starts with existing on solid ground.

Standing on Solid Ground

What do I mean by solid ground? It's about dissolving ourselves of the fantastical illusions we might hold onto, recognizing that these illusions often set us up for failure. They're not solid ground—those illusions will dissolve, often with considerable pain and suffering.

Solid ground means seeing the whole person, seeing the fullness of the human condition that we all experience in varying degrees. We're all shifting dynamically from moment to moment, breath to breath, depending on what life is offering us in each moment.

When we understand this, we can move beyond surface behaviors and responses to look deeper—to the inner child of each person, including ourselves. We can ask: What wound is being activated in this experience for them? What wound is being activated within me?

The Language of Empowerment

Even our language matters in this work. When we say someone "makes us" feel a certain way, we're using codependent language that keeps us disempowered. Taking responsibility for how we respond and what we feel doesn't mean others' actions don't have impact—it means we reclaim our sovereignty over our emotional responses.

Our emotions come from a simple equation: experience plus narrative equals emotion. If we experience physical pain or emotional triggers, the narrative we add to that experience will either exacerbate our suffering or create openness and ease. There's a continuum between these two, and we have more control over where we land than we might realize.

Moving Beyond Judgment to Generosity

Most adults are struggling with wounds from childhood. As hard as this may be to accept, recognizing this truth creates opportunities for generosity instead of staying stuck in cycles of judgment and avoidance.

When we see someone becoming angry or unavailable, when we can connect on solid ground beyond the surface and beyond fantastical illusions about how all adults "should" behave, we can offer compassion for ourselves and others. This doesn't mean bypassing or skipping over difficult emotions—it creates softness and openness in the space.

Even if the other person can't meet us there, we reclaim how we want to exist in the world. We build emotional resilience and, over time, can shift the dynamic entirely.

The Practice: Smiling to the Inner Child

Inspired by the wisdom of Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, I want to share a loving kindness practice that has become central to my approach to relationship healing. This meditation cultivates compassion by connecting us with the innocent, wounded inner child that lives within every person.

How to Practice: A Step-by-Step Guide

Click here to be guided through the practice.

Preparation:

• Find a comfortable seated position

• Allow your eyes to gently close

• Take several low belly breaths to settle into your body

• Lengthen your spine and find a posture of dignity and peace

• Release anything you've been holding from the week

Stage 1: Connecting with Your Heart

• Breathe into your heart space

• Become present to all that is alive within you—light and shadow, bright and dull places

• Allow pure love and kindness to arise

• Experience all of yourself without judgment

Stage 2: Your Inner Child

• Visualize your five-year-old self sitting before you

• Notice their disposition—the ways they were seen and unseen, wounded and wild

• Breathing in: witness this younger version with compassion

• Breathing out: smile to your inner child

• Continue for several minutes, offering loving kindness to your younger self

Stage 3: Your Mother's Inner Child

• Visualize your mother at age five sitting before you

• See her beyond the adult version you know well

• Imagine all parts of her—wounded, wild, and free places

• Notice the ways she was seen and held, and the ways she wasn't

• Breathing in: witness with compassion

• Breathing out: smile to your mother's inner child with loving kindness

Stage 4: Your Father's Inner Child

• Invite visualization of your father at five years old

• See beyond what you know of him as an adult

• Become present to the fullness of his childhood—wounded and wild and free places

• Breathing in: witness with compassion

• Breathing out: smile to your father's inner child with loving kindness

Stage 5: Someone Difficult

• Think of someone you have moderate or mild difficulty with

• Visualize this person at age five sitting before you

• Become present to their possible wounds and wild, free places

• Consider where they might have been seen and heard, and where they weren't

• Breathing in: witness with compassionate eyes

• Breathing out: smile, offering love and kindness

Stage 6: The Collective

• Visualize the tender inner child alive in all beings

• See the five-year-old in all eight billion souls in human form

• Include all animals on land, air, and sea

• Include all plant life—flora, fauna, fungi

• Include all entities and souls in the great beyond

• Breathing in: witness with compassion

• Breathing out: smile with love and kindness to all

Integration:

• Allow all visualizations to dissolve

• Stay connected to your breath and the energy of pure love and kindness

• Rest on solid ground, seeing the fullness of existence

• Set a conscious intention to be more loving, kind, and patient with all the inner child energy present within each person

From Normal to Natural

This practice emerged from a profound inquiry that shaped my twenties: "Is what's normal natural?" This question, inspired by Neal Donald Walsch's "Conversations with God," led me to examine whether my normal way of being was actually natural for me.

I defined natural as inherent or innate—what was naturally within me as I entered this world. I began asking: What would I do if it weren't for society's expectations, family programming, or the need for validation and belonging?

This inquiry led me back to childhood, to the moment when I started betraying my natural self for normalcy. It was always a survival strategy—fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. For me, it was often freezing and fawning: people-pleasing, staying silent, masking my true nature.

Reclaiming Your Emotional Sovereignty

Inner child work becomes essential when we realize we're continually giving responsibility to others for how we emotionally feel and respond. It's like creating a bomb of unprocessed energy and emotion within ourselves, then handing everyone else the red button while trying to control their behavior so they won't push it.

The real work is recognizing that we unconsciously gave others that power. We're still looking for the parental figures who should have helped us learn emotional regulation in childhood. But as they say, "no one's coming." We have to do that work ourselves.

The goal isn't to avoid having emotional responses—it's to have them with eyes wide open, with intention, and hopefully with love and tact, rather than being lost in big emotions because we haven't been present to them.

Living from Solid Ground

When we practice smiling to the inner child—ours and others'—we're not bypassing the very real challenges in relationships. We're approaching them from a place of compassion and understanding that creates space for healing and transformation.

This practice helps us remember that our normal—the patterns we've adapted to survive—may not be our natural way of being. Just as we can see that our collective normal isn't natural (we're overextending resources, disconnected from the natural world), we can return home to what's authentic for us.

We are nature. Returning to our natural essence—not trying to fit in or betray ourselves to belong, but naturally belonging to the fullness of our world—is the gateway to liberation.

The next time you find yourself in conflict or feeling triggered by someone's behavior, try this: pause and visualize their five-year-old self. What wounds might be activated? What parts of them weren't seen or held? Then breathe, witness with compassion, and smile to their inner child with loving kindness.

Watch how this simple shift in perspective opens your heart and creates new possibilities for connection, even in the most challenging relationships.

If you're drawn to exploring these themes more deeply, I invite you to experience this practice and others like it. For those seeking immersive healing work, join us at the Creative Essence Retreat (September 26-28) in a stunning 700-acre old-growth forest in Northern California. This gathering focuses on returning to what's natural, connecting with plant and animal wisdom, and choosing regenerative ways of living that restore and uplift our world. Click here to learn more and sign up.

Remember: this breath, this day, this body you're in—it's all enough. The opportunity for healing and transformation is always available in this present moment.