Recently, I heard someone talk about the concept of re-parenting themselves, working to connect with the child they had once been, and approaching that long ago child differently. Where there had been trauma or pain, the goal is to comfort and understand. Where there had been confusion and fear, the goal is to soothe and guide. It’s an opportunity to think about those experiences you had and re-direct their outcomes, re-direct your thinking and emotions.

It seems to me to be a more directed, but similar, approach to one often used in exercises on creativity. It’s a chance to surface all of the negative voices you may have encountered in your life and come to terms with them. Sometimes it is writing a letter, that you never send, to tell them not only that they were wrong but also what their doubts, derision of just lack of support meant to you and the impact that it has had on your life.

It is a rare person who does not harbor self doubt, a rare person who moves forward without fear or questioning, especially in circumstances in which moving forward makes you feel vulnerable. How many of us have confidence in some areas and are fearful in others? We wonder what would happen if we did not succeed, we wonder what others would say and we wonder how we would ever live with that failure.

If we dig deeply into ourselves, perhaps we can find the source of those little voices that tell us not to take a risk or that we can’t, perhaps we will hear those words in the messages we received from parents and others. They may have been well meaning words but that does not mean that they were not life limiting to us. And, we know, it’s beyond words, it’s the look on someone’s face when we suggest an idea and they are clearly dubious or dismayed. It’s the conversation we overhear that starts “What could she/he be thinking?” Our innate insecurities grab hold of those moments and hold them tightly, revisiting them often and letting them erode our ideas and our dreams.

I don’t feel a need to revisit my childhood and find ways to redefine my parents and their parenting. But I do find a need to be a better “parent” to myself. Where we try to encourage our children and believe, wholeheartedly, that they can do and achieve, we don’t always do the same thing for ourselves. I know I don’t and I think it’s time. I think it’s time to take “should I” and “but what if” out of my vocabulary and remind myself to just move forward, to remind myself that succeeding is as likely, perhaps even more so, than failing, remind myself (as my mother surely would have) that I can. Being kinder to ourselves, being open to possibilities, pushing fear away, in all those ways we can enter this new year filling our full hearts.