Once there was a little girl who, as we all do, grew up in layers.
Every experience she went through, every new thing she learned, and every year that passed by created a new layer, each one on top of the last until she became a grownup.
Her name was Abi.
...
A lot of those layers were nice ones. Winning the spelling bee, summertime at the pool with friends, or her first kiss. They’d become warm and fuzzy memories for her to look back on.
But some of those layers—some of the early layers when she was still very small—were not so nice. They were sad, and fearful, and wounded. Still, they were buried so far down that Abi forgot they were even there.
...
One day as she sat quietly by the window, drinking a cup of tea and reading a book, she heard crying. There was no one in the house except herself, so she looked out the front door. There was no one there, either, and still she heard crying. Where was it coming from?
She walked to the kitchen and the crying seemed to follow her.
She went to the bedroom and the crying did, too.
The dining room, the bathroom, and back to the window… the crying was everywhere.
Suddenly Abi realized it was coming from inside her! Deep down beneath the layers of vacations and bike rides and sleepovers, the little girl she used to be—her inner child—was sobbing her heart out.
...
Just because grownup Abi had forgotten about those not-so-nice experiences didn’t mean that her inner child didn’t remember. She still lived in those layers. She was still hurting. And she was all alone.
Abi reached out to her and gently touched her arm. “Sshhhhh, it’s okay,” she whispered. “You’re safe now.” Her inner child looked up at her with wide, sad eyes, and Abi felt all the pain as if it were her own… because, in fact, it was.
“I can’t stay here in these layers with you,” she said, “but that doesn’t mean you have to be alone.”
An idea was forming in her mind. A way to keep living in her own grownup layers, while staying connected to her inner child and giving her comfort.
“I’m going to make you a doll.”
...
So Abi set to work and pulled out some bright and happy fabric, some pretty yarn, and a needle and thread. She used a pair of big scissors to cut a simple pattern, and with every stitch she spoke the words she’d needed to hear when she was a child:
“You are loved no matter what. I am so proud of you. Nothing will ever change that. You are bright and beautiful and brilliant, and you make me so happy. You don’t have to do anything but be just who you are. You are loved. No matter what.”
When she was done, she had a little cloth doll with yarn pigtails, and it wasn’t perfect but it was full of love.
...
As Abi gave it to her inner child, she told her, “You keep this with you, and it will remind you how much I love you.” The child nodded.
Abi continued, “I might not be your actual mama, but I poured ‘mama juju’ into this doll as I made it. So everything you can’t get from your mama you can now get from me: comfort, protection, encouragement, and lots and lots of love.”
Her inner child took the doll and held it. Slowly her energy shifted, and the longer she held it the less sad she looked. Soon she was beaming! All of that love was spreading healing through all the layers of Abi’s life.
...
A few days later, though, Abi heard crying again.
Reaching back through the layers, she was surprised to find that it was not her inner child who was crying this time. “Where is all of this sadness coming from?” she asked the child.
Still tightly holding onto the doll, the little girl explained:
“It’s the other inner children. There are so many of us, buried under the layers, still hurting. We’re all over the world, in towns and cities and villages, in houses and huts and even castles.”
...
Abi’s heart nearly broke as she listened to the crying, understanding now that it was a thousand thousand voices of children, wounded and forgotten. Children who needed to be seen, remembered, and loved. Children who, for whatever reason, had no “mama juju” to comfort and protect them.
“I’m going to make them all dolls, too,” she decided. “I’m going to pour my ‘mama juju’ into them and send them out into the world.”
Her inner child, still wide-eyed but no longer so sad, smiled at her. “It helps,” she said. “It doesn’t fix everything… but it helps.”
...
So Abi did.