have when you are hurt or betrayed or unexpectedly challenged in
some way. That’s your inner child. They need a hug from you. They
need you to say, “Hey, buddy. It’s okay. I know you’re hurt, but I am
going to take care of you.”
The functional adult steps in to reassert and reassure. To make
stillness possible.
We owe it to ourselves as well as to the people in our lives to do
this. Each of us must break the link in the chain of what the
Buddhists call samsara, the continuation of life’s suffering from
generation to generation.
The comedian Garry Shandling lost his brother, Barry, at age ten
to cystic fibrosis, and was left for the rest of his life at the mercy of
his distraught and controlling mother, who was so disturbed by the
loss of her older son that she forbade Garry from attending the
funeral for fear that he would see her cry.
But one day, as a much older man, Garry wrote in his diary a
formula that might help him overcome that pain and not only heal
his own inner child but pass on the lesson to the many surrogate
children he had as a mentor and elder in show business.* The
formula was simple and is key to breaking the cycle and stilling the
deep anguish we carry around with us:
Give more.
Give what you didn’t get.
Love more.
Drop the old story.Try it, if you can.