This is a list of most of the general types of inner child "persona" that can be present within us. I will probably think of a few more next week. They are meant as a general guideline to help you identify some of the reacting parts of your emotional inner landscape. We all had our relationships with ourselves fractured into pieces as we were growing up. It is very important to start bringing some peace to our inner process by owning those inner children, hearing them as we were not heard.

Two more points come to mind as I am wrapping this up.

1. I used the term persona just now to describe the inner child/archetype places within us - that feels like a good word to me. They are not actual personalities. People who suffer from multiple personality disorder are beings who were pushed farther than the rest of us. The wounding process involves the same basic dynamic - in fact, I learned a lot about my own inner process by studying cases of multiple personality - but multiples were broken in harsher ways (usually in an intentional and/or ritual abuse manner that amounted to torture.)

2. It is quite normal for a female to have one or more male inner children and natural (although much harder for the male to own due to cultural dysfunction) for men to have a little girl or two within. On top of the emotional dishonesty that men are programmed with, the homophobic nature of society makes it hard for men to even conceive of such a possibility. Women, who of course have more permission for emotional honesty and less strident homophobic programming, also were raised in a society (and with role models) that taught them that men were better than women. It was pretty natural (up until recently when more empowered female role models are available) for a girl to wish she were a boy at some point in her childhood.

Love is the answer. We are learning to Love ourselves. In order to do that it is very important to own all of the wounded parts of our self so that we can then be a Loving parent to our self. Being a Loving parent does include being willing to set boundaries for the child. That is part of a parents job. So too, is Loving, nurturing, and protecting the child. Part of Loving a child and meeting a child's needs is to set boundaries. Since no one could do that in a healthy way for us, it is vital to learn to do it for ourselves.