I learnt a life-changing lesson from a book I was recommended: Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma by Peter Levine, a groundbreaking researcher into the ways humans fail to mimic animals in their ability to dispel trauma from their bodies in quick time.
Some of us knew the screaming hunger of a rigid feeding schedule, longing for the milk-filled breast that satiates the magnificent trauma of being helpless in a newborn human body.
As I began to acknowledge my inner children, see them, hear them and love them, their unmet needs became easier to recognize and they began reaching out to me in healthier, less destructive ways.
You see, it is not my mission to empower anybody. I cannot help but recognize that the word itself entails that power is being 'given' instead of revealed. I cannot give something that is already the very basis of who you -- who we -- are.