Healing the Inner Child - Interview with author Jane Rowan

 

Adam: I'm extremely fortunate today to be interviewing Jane Rowan, a sexual abuse survivor who is kind enough to share her story and insights into healing the inner child. Jane is a former science professor and author of River of Forgetting.

1. Hi Jane, thank you for joining me today. Please tell me about yourself, and the work you do. I understand you're a writer and poet?

Well, for three decades I was a science professor, but I always had a creative life in my back pocket; I danced and kept a journal. I’ve been serious about creative writing for about ten years now. I love both self-expression and the craft of writing. I write poetry and memoir, also essays and a blog about the Inner Child. I’ve benefited so much from Inner Child work that I feel compelled to share the loving, healing concepts. To that end, I wrote a booklet, "Caring for the Child Within — A Manual for Grownups," which is a concise guide to finding your Inner Child.

I was sexually abused as a child. When recovered memories ambushed me, I undertook a healing journey that propelled me into a more creative, free life for which I am profoundly grateful. I live in New England, which I love, and I spend a lot of time in nature.

2. Can you please explain the concept of the inner child?

As my wonderful therapist explained it to me, there are parts of ourselves that get disowned early on, aspects that are not acceptable to our parents and the world we are growing into. These inner children hang around in the shadows of our psyches, often causing us to act out or to feel old fears. We need to integrate both what the inner children know and how they feel in order to become whole human beings.

3. How does sexual abuse make you lose touch with that child? And are you in a position to comment on physical vs. emotional vs. sexual abuse? Do you think one is worse than the other?

In many cases of childhood sexual abuse, the child is helpless to change the situation. If he or she can report the abuse to caring adults who take action, then the child can sometimes heal relatively quickly, with attention and treatment.

But many of us, including me, have had to keep on relating to the perpetrator. I had to live with my father, the abuser, and with my mother, who on some level allowed the abuse. I couldn’t afford to recognize my true emotions. My mother told me to forget about it, so I buried my feelings and even my memories of the abuse. I grew up successfully, it seems, but a part of me was stuck in a scared, desperate position. I repressed those feelings totally and only regained them in my 50s, after my father died.

More boys are subjected to physical abuse while more girls are sexually abused, according to statistics. I think that comparing suffering and trying to say who suffers more is a game in which everyone loses. The types of abuse are different, but they all have in common the element of betrayal. The child’s trust in adults is betrayed and broken, especially if family members are involved as perpetrators or as people who collude in the process or fail to protect the child. It breaks the child’s heart.

4. What is the difference in the inner child of an adult who was never abused vs. an adult who was sexually abused?

Nobody has a perfect childhood. Everybody, I think, has some "stuff" that is repressed or unutilized when they are a child. Someone might have had loving parents, but never had a chance to express his creative inner child. Someone else may have been cruelly teased by her family, and her inner child may be shy and unwilling to come out and shine. So I think that there are many subtleties and degrees of need of our inner children.

But I think that the inner child of an adult who was sexually abused tends to hide and feel ashamed and sad. I was amazed at the amount of grief and loss that my inner child expressed, when I first listened to her. I came to understand that she was showing my how betrayed and abandoned she felt. Then there was the rage that showed up later, as I gained the strength to be angry with my father-abuser and my mother-enabler. It is hard for a child to trust if she/he has been abused, so the inner child needs to be treated very tenderly and lovingly.

Some people may remember what happened and even remember it in detail (which I never did), but they may not have the feelings associated with the abuse. Those feelings have been hidden away. Being tender towards the (inner) child who was subjected to the abuse can be scary, because it unleashes powerful emotions of shame, rage, fear, etc. But this tenderness and love for the abused child is so important for healing.

5. How do you know if you're in touch with your inner child?

When I first began doing inner child work, I felt the Child’s presence mainly through grief and pain. I experienced great waves of sadness whenever she was near - the pain of betrayal, the grief of realizing how my parents had failed me, the loss of my illusions about my family. It was often hard to stay with the little one and not run away from her pain.

It took longer for me to learn to feel the tenderness and love towards this child and learn to listen to her subtler feelings.

These days our time together (what I call my "Big Jane" and the little ones) is varied. Some days I feel the presence of my Good Girl and her anxieties about the world and I need to soothe and reassure her. Sometimes I sit with the intention of being present to the inner children and I feel blank or confused, only gradually getting a sense of their needs. Some days I feel a yearning for love and I sit in my imaginary cabin and rock for a long time in the rocking chair, simply hugging and loving the inner child.

In this way, being present to the inner child is a meditation. Things are always changing and it takes some clear intent for me to be patient with the experience as it comes and goes.

6. What's really helped you in your healing? How did you start the healing process?

My therapist was my lifeline. Fortunately, she was already there when the first memory hit me. It hadn’t been lost, but I had not faced its significance. I remembered a time when I was three years old and I was sitting on the toilet, and it hurt when I peed. I knew that my parents said it was because I slipped on the rim of the bathtub, but I knew their story was false. What could this mean? How was it that I got hurt?

From this one clear memory I descended into a storm of doubt, grief, shame, and the emergence of further body-memories. Through all of this, my therapist gave her loving, clear attention to the inner child who was wounded and confused. She modeled for me the process of loving the child, and so I developed, slowly, a strong inner parent. Now I can look at my early photos and feel such a wonderful, encompassing love for this sturdy, loving, eager child.

7. What difficulties did you encounter as you were healing and how did you deal with them? For example, in your friendships? In your relationships? What about school? What about work?

I was a science professor at the time or the intense inner work. I came to see that my tender regard for my students was nurtured by my own suffering. However, the split between my relationships with distant, "rational" colleagues and my inner life of turmoil and emotion was sometimes very hard to bear. I maintained my professionalism and did my work. But I saw colleagues indulge in screaming fits in the halls when they didn’t get the lab space they wanted. Shaking my head in wonder, I thought, “At least, I am aware of my inner child.” Some people seemed just acted out without restraint.

 

Relationships were tricky while I was immersed so deeply in the healing process. Some friends could listen to my fears and sadness, while others shied away from the hard stuff. I lost a friend or two, and gained others.

8. Do you have any comment on the subject of false memories?

I was terrified that my memories were false. For several years I wrestled with doubt every day. I was torn in two between my loyalty and love for my family and the ugly thoughts and body-memories that surged in me.

Gradually I had to believe that I wasn’t making these things up. I couldn’t have imagined the body flashbacks - they were way beyond my control. Since I never confronted my father (who was dead already) or even my mother (who died a few years after the memories returned), what possible motivation could I have had for "false" memories? Also, the therapist who helped me was extremely careful not to suggest anything to me; she just listened to what came. As she said, "People don’t make up things like that for fun."

I was mightily persuaded by the work of Jennifer Freyd, author of the book Betrayal Trauma: The Logic of Forgetting Childhood Abuse. A research psychologist, Freyd argued that the closer the relationship of the perpetrator to the child, the more likely the child would forget. She presented evidence showing that children whose abuse was medically documented even forget, in a substantial number of cases, that they had been abused, and those who were abused by close relatives were twice as likely to forget, compared to those abused by strangers.

9. Do you have any parting words of wisdom for sexual abuse survivors (or abuse survivors in general)?

Healing is possible! It takes a lot of courage and a lot of work, and I do believe it requires the help of a caring, expert therapist in most cases. Not every therapist is skilled and experienced in abuse work—choose carefully! Be prepared to go to dark places, but learn to accept love and help when they are offered.

There is so much life and love and creativity possible to those of us who have been sensitized by difficult experiences. We have many gifts to offer to the world.

10. Are there any upcoming books or future work you would like readers to know about?

Well, I have an ongoing blog about the Inner Child and memoir and a website with a number of resources for survivors of childhood abuse.

The exciting news is that my memoir, The River of Forgetting – A Memoir of Healing From Sexual Abuse, will be published in December 2010 by Booksmyth Press. I’ve had some wonderful comments from people who have read it, including Marilyn Van Derbur, the author of the bestselling Miss America By Day, who said, "This inspiring, important book shows that healing and joy are possible after childhood abuse." Patricia Lee Lewis called it "unforgettable." There are more details at www.riverofforgetting.com.

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