Soul Letter : She Knew Before I Did

journalling with my inner child & beginning to embody my neurodivergent truth

Dear beautiful one,

This part of my journey is new.
Still tender. Still unfolding.
But something within me has been whispering for a long time and over the past few months, I’ve finally started to listen.

It began gently, after the ending of my twenty-year relationship,
a season of profound change that offered me something unexpected:
my own room, for the first time in so long. My own rhythm. My own sanctuary.

In that space, cosy safe, sacred, I began to meet a part of myself I’d tucked away long ago.

My inner child.

Beautiful encouragement from Susannah Conway’s Creative Joy Club led me to really welcoming little Emily into my space.

Each day, I have given myself permission to journal not just as the grown-up,
but as the girl I used to be.
With stickers.
With coloured pens.
With the kind of stationery I’d hidden away in drawers and boxes.

I created a space where she could feel safe to speak.

And when I asked her:

“What would you like me to know?”

She told me.

She told me she had always felt different.
That school was socially confusing.
That she was so often in trouble at home for saying the wrong thing, for reacting “too much,”
for being too sensitive.
She told me she never felt like she belonged.
But that she had also always known the truth:

✨ You are wired differently. And that’s not wrong.

And as I journaled with he, this bright, gentle, feeling little girl, I began to notice how closely she resembled the children I am mothering now.

My own inner child began to speak in the language of my neurodivergent children.

The sensitivity.
The overwhelm.
The curiosity that won’t be quiet.
The grief of not quite fitting.
The brilliance of seeing the world in spirals and textures, not boxes and straight lines.

It hit me in waves:

Of course I see them so clearly.
Of course I understand them.
Because somewhere inside me… I am them.

They’ve been my mirrors.
By parenting them with presence, I’ve begun to reparent myself with compassion.
Their self-recognition has become my permission.

And now, as I breathe into my own unfolding,
I hold my children and my inner child at once,
gently, bravely,
learning to belong to ourselves…
together.

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This journey isn’t finished.
There’s no neat resolution here, only a deepening.
But I wanted to share this now, in the middle of the unfolding,
because maybe you’re in it too.

Maybe you’re journalling with your own inner child,
and she’s just beginning to feel safe enough to speak.

Maybe you’re not quite ready to claim a label,
but you are ready to stop pretending to be someone you’re not.

If that’s you, I see you.
I honour the quiet courage it takes to even ask the question.
You’re not too much.
You’re not broken.

✨ You are a beautiful, necessary variation in the symphony of being human.
✨ You are wired for your own wild rhythm.

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🌿 Inner Child Journal Prompts

offered with softness + deep honouring

Choose one or two to sit with today. Let your younger self write freely,
with crayons, gel pens, stickers, or even drawings. Let them speak without correction. Let them be heard.

• What would you like me to know today, little one?

• What made you feel safe when you were small? What made you hide?

• What was misunderstood about you that still aches now?

• How did you learn to mask? How would you move without the mask?

• Where in your body do you still carry fear of being “too much”?

• If I could meet you at 6, or 10, or 14… what would you want me to say to you?

• What do you wish the grown-ups had said?

• What would feel really good right now? Colour it. Name it. Claim it.

Let this be a ritual, not a task.
A return, not a fixing.

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Thank you for reading this part of my story.
It’s still blooming but I promise to keep sharing as it does.

With rose light + wild roots,
Emily
☽ HeartWild
sacred rhythms for sensitive souls