When Memories Return
There’s a paradox in healing: the less we chase our memories, the more they often find us.
When we stop digging, forcing, or demanding recall - and instead focus on creating safety in the present -we send a powerful message to our nervous system: you are safe now. And safety is often what allows the psyche to loosen its grip on what’s been hidden.
The Gentle Return of Memory
Sometimes memories come back as flashes - an image, a smell, a body sensation that feels achingly familiar. Other times, they return slowly, like puzzle pieces arriving out of order.
This can feel unsettling at first. After all, we’ve worked so hard to protect ourselves from these memories. But it’s important to remember: if they’re emerging now, it’s because some part of you is ready.
Your inner child has been waiting for you to have the capacity to be with her story. She trusts that the woman you’re becoming today can hold what the child you were could not.
Shadows That Speak
In my own journey, and in the journeys of women I walk with, I’ve witnessed how memories often surface after a season of building safety - after we’ve practiced self-compassion, after we’ve started to re-build a relationship with our body and it’s sensations, after we’ve softened into re-mothering our experiences in the present moment, after we’ve stopped abandoning ourselves.
This is the work we do in Mothering the Wound: we don’t go digging for memories. We create the ground for safety, presence, and compassion. And in that ground, sometimes the shadows step forward with their stories.
The Inner Child Archetypes help us here, too. When the Invisible Child surfaces in memory, we learn to see her - not with shame, but with tenderness. When the Performer remembers striving for love through achievement, we remind her she is worthy even in rest. Each archetype guides us to mother the part of ourselves that carries the imprint of what was once too much to hold.
Memory Is Not the Goal
Here’s the truth: memory is not the goal. Wholeness is.
Some people never recover every detail of their past - and they still find healing. Because healing is not about collecting the story; it’s about tending to the wounds that live in the body today.
Whether memory returns or not, what matters is that you continue to mother yourself here and now. That you offer compassion when the inner child trembles. That you stay present when shame whispers “not enough.”
Coming Home
If memories return, welcome them with gentleness. If they don’t, trust that your body knows what you’re ready for.
Either way, the path is the same: re-mothering the wound with love, presence, and safety.
Because the ultimate goal isn’t remembering everything - it’s remembering yourself.
