Inner Parent

We all need an inner nurturing parent, and an inner facilitating parent. We need unconditional love, nourishment, containment, and kindness. And we need support, protection, direction and instruction. 

The Good Mother has historically been the dominant archetype of containment, nurturance, holding, supporting, and giving. The Good Father archetype has included the positive qualities of acceptance, encouragement, protection, boundaries, unconditional support, and facility.

Today, we recognize that parenting, good parenting, does not come in any one gender form and that these archetypal attributes are not restricted to a gender, unless we insist that it be that way. The reality is that both forms exist in all of us. We can accept any female mother who wields the sword against the beast in protection of her offspring and any male father who wraps his child in his arms and says, “You are safe; I will hold you tight and allay your fears.” Even though these non-traditional ways of seeing the parent occurs all the time, we are just untrained in recognizing them. For the sake of the work in this book the archetypal instinct to mother, I refer to it as “nurturer”, and the instinct to father, I call the “facilitator.” They are equally powerful. 

We all need an inner nurturing parent, and an inner facilitating parent. We need unconditional love, nourishment, containment, and kindness. And we need support, protection, direction and instruction. This kind of inner parenting enables us to nurture and facilitate the Child Self and the Child we may be raising. As children, we did not have perfect nurturers or perfect facilitators, and the goal of perfection is an unhealthy one at best. Now our goal is to become conscious and compassionate about how we were nurtured and facilitated. The need for this inner parent is so great that we are called upon to cultivate these qualities inside ourselves. 

When we don’t experience positive inner nurturing in our adult lives, the Child Self will continue to re-experience the wounds of childhood without moderation. We will launch into our parent complexes and unconsciously react from that place. 

The inner nurturer is the place where we can experience the nurturing parent we always wanted and want to be. We don’t need to separate from the inner nurturer to individuate. When we create the inner nurturer, we get to consciously capitalize on the best of the nurturing we received as well as the nurturing we needed but didn’t get. 

Perfection 

It's interesting

the things we canonize

like difficult dead mothers.

My Mom was only difficult because

she suffered

and that injured us.

But she LOVED

and she LOVED as completely as

she could. And

therefore, because of her,

a little in spite of her, I LOVE.

nurturing the self is like painting nature,

you notice it with intention,

you express it with developing skills,

you hang it on the wall, 

complete in what it is,

and only that;

a representation of perfection. 

When we support the development of the Child’s inner nurturer, we are cultivating the child’s capacity for self-love. Both are necessary to prevent unhealthy dependence on others as well as to love others unconditionally. 

To the Child we are raising we might say:

“I think I know what I am supposed to do for you. I am trying my best. Only you really know what you want even though it can be hard to figure out. Let’s try a bunch of different things—it is okay if they are not the right things, we’ll keep trying until we figure it out. I am the one who is here to care for you, and I am going to try hard.” 

To the Child Self:

“Little one, I know you are not feeling nurtured. You remember what that felt like. But I am here, and I will make sure you don’t face that feeling alone. I will be the one in front of you finding the way, using my instincts where yours are not ready, and making sure, you are taken care of. Come here and stand behind me. I’ve got this.”

The facilitator parent says to the Child, “You’re amazing, what are you interested in and how can I help?” This parent sees, knows, observes, and moves to act in the most supportive and protective ways possible. It does require paying attention and adjusting to what the Child needs as opposed to what the facilitator needs to help with. 

This is a good example of an effective facilitating parent: 

The child is 8 months old, perched on his bottom and assisting himself around in a pre-crawl scooting fashion. His dad is on the floor a few feet away with a new squeaky toy, something to encourage him to crawl. The boy scoots himself over to the shelf where the package of diaper wipes is sitting. He pulls it off the shelf. While moving it around a bit he hears the crinkling sound and he taps and pounds on the opening plastic door as well. The father is articulating what he sees, “Oh you want that, not the toy- (dad squeaks the toy again). Oh, you got that off the shelf. Now you are so happy with yourself. Oh, you like the noise…”. The father stops trying to get the boy interested in crawling. Finally, he says: “Maybe you want to open it?” The little fellow glowed and laughed and continued to pull at the package and hit it, scraping his not yet coordinated fingers across the plastic door.” 

Our Child Self needs the help of the inner facilitator whenever there’s something to discern or get done and the Child Self feels stuck. The inner facilitator will hear the call for help when your Child Self is triggered—e.g., put down, boxed in a corner, and can’t figure your way out. Your inner facilitator will not listen to any disparaging, judgmental messages that have left you frozen and unable to respond. It will help you move forward. 

It may sound something like this: 

“Little one, I know you are frozen, you can’t move now because you didn’t have an adult hand to guide you forward as a child. But now, I am that adult and I have great facility. Let’s get this done.” 

Sometimes a dream will come along and tell us just what the Child Self needs and what we don’t want to repeat when parenting the Child we are raising.

Alice’s dream of her dead mother’s closet went something like this: 

“I needed to find something to wear to a fancy event. I turned to my mother’s closet —a place I always held in awe, a palace of clothing. My mother had died years ago. I thought I would find something to wear, something cool and retro and sophisticated. Nothing fit or felt right. Of course, we were completely different people. After searching through her clothes convinced something would fit, I stopped in my tracks, realizing that I didn’t have to be there, didn’t have to take responsibility for my mother’s way in the world, and didn’t have to be like her, as she wanted me to be. As I started clearing out her clothes, I realized, “No, not mine”. 

When we consciously provide the Child we are raising with a positive nurturing and facilitating parent (parents), and the Child Self with the same positive inner parenting, we are helping build confidence, competency, self-love, and support for the True Self.