Mantra with Jemma Sbeg - I Create Space for My Inner Child to Feel Safe and Loved

Episode Date: April 7, 2025

This week's mantra is I Create Space for My Inner Child to Feel Safe and Loved. Within each of us lives the child we once were, carrying hopes, wounds, and dreams that shape who we are today. In this episode of Mantra, we explore the power of reconnecting with your inner child, offering them the safety, love, and understanding they may not have always received. Nurturing your inner child isn’t about living in the past—it’s about healing, playfulness, and embracing a deeper sense of self-compassion. This Mantra will guide you to honor your inner child and create a space where they—and you—can truly thrive. For ad-free listening and early access to episodes, subscribe to OpenMind+ on Apple Podcasts. For more from OpenMind, follow us on Instagram @openmindstudios. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is Open Mind. Welcome to a brand new week. Here is your mantra. I create space for my inner child to feel safe and loved. I'm your host, Gemma Speck, and I'm here to guide you toward a more centered and fulfilling life. Each week I'll share personal stories and insights that are focused on a specific mantra, plus journal prompts and a weekly challenge for all of us to help put it into action. Think of mantra as your mental reset button, a way to stay centered as you juggle work,

school, family and whatever else life throws at you. Each mantra is a simple, powerful phrase you can repeat to refocus your thoughts and bring a bit of calm into your day. It's a small tool with a big impact, clearing your mind, lifting your mood and rooting you in the present. If you've listened to my other show, The Psychology of Your 20s, you know I'm all about those little nuggets of insight that make a big impact. So whether you're looking for some extra inspiration or you're just trying to ground yourself

abits the chaos, you have come to the right place. At Open Mind, we value your support. Share your thoughts on social media, and remember to rate, review, and follow Mantra to help others discover the show. For more exclusive content, monthly bonus episodes, early access, and ad-free listening, join our Open Mind plus community on Apple

podcasts. This week, I will of course catch you up on what's been going on in my life and then we'll dive into today's mantra. I create space for my inner child to feel safe and loved. This is all about reconnecting with the parts of ourselves that were once vulnerable, playful and full of wonder, offering them the comfort, the care, understanding and the love they may have not always received. Hey, it's Jemma and if you love mantra then you need to check out Starstruck with Ali

Looper. Each Wednesday, Ali sits down with celebrity guests for raw one-on-one astrology readings, decoding their birth charts and revealing how the stars have shaped their biggest life moments. From career highs to relationship drama, nothing is off limits. Starstruck is an open-mind original powered by Pave Studios. New episodes drop every Wednesday. Just search Starstruck wherever you listen to podcasts. With the Fizz loyalty program, you get rewarded just for having a mobile plan. You know, for

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Welcome back. We are going to get into this week's mantra in just a few, but before we do, guys, it's time for my highs, lows, and who knows. I want to talk about kind of time for my high lows and who knows. I want to talk about kind of a high, but also a who knows. Couple of weeks ago, I told you guys about my foster dog, Talu, who I've fallen in love with, turns out the animals have realized that we have space in our home and have come a flocking, they have come in leaps and bounds. I don't know what it is. I've heard it's called the cat distribution system, but the cat

distribution system has struck us. The other day, me and Tom were driving in Sydney. We were driving along like the Hume Highway. If you're an Australian, you'll know what the Hume Highway is. And we were kind of like in the part near Sydney. And there was this like thing on the road that people were swerving around and we couldn't quite tell what it was. It looked like an Ugg boot, like the shoe.

Then all of a sudden as we drive past, I slow down and it's a little kitten. It's a tiny little fluff ball and we rush out of the car, we grab her, we bring her into the car, and she is just terrified. Like we are chasing her down the road. She is terrified. She is tiny, like must not be more than four, five weeks old, like so, so small. And we just put her into the back of the car and she's just looking at us being like, thank you for saving me. And we took her to the vet. We got her all checked out because she was like not doing too well. Of course, at this point in time, we can't keep her because

we are not in the position to have an animal. And I actually think as much as I really, really want one, I'm trying to be very wise about it and give them the best life. But all the shelters are full at the moment in Sydney. She's so small, she's so little. So hey, if you want a little kitten, let me know. She's still at the vet and she's adorable, but what a fun little adventure. Honestly, I really do think that like the animals know, right? They know who to go to, such who's going to help them in a crisis.

And once you open your door to one, they all come rushing in. So it was actually just a really sweet moment and very, very cute. So my high for the week. OK, let's get into it. It's time for this week's mantra. I create space for my inner child to feel safe and loved. And let me tell you, I am so excited to talk about this mantra today.

This was the one that when we were first creating the show, I was like, could not wait to get to it because it is one of my favorite topics. I wanna start by clarifying who our inner child is. Who is this person everyone keeps talking about? You've probably been hearing a lot about inner child healing in the last maybe like two to five years. It's definitely had a moment. And to some people it may sound silly. It may sound a little bit strange. This is just such an abstract idea.

You know, you're no longer a child. Why does your child or your inner child deserve attention compared to your current self? The premise of inner child healing is that we are not just who we are now. We are everyone we have ever been. We carry all those past versions of ourselves with us, including their scars, their trauma, their injuries, and whatever we experienced at that particular age. Those experiences show up in our behaviours, our patterns, our

habits, and our attachment style. And what our present self may have forgotten, the inner child remembers. Maybe not through explicit memories, but through a gut instinct and learned behaviors and habits. And we're always a little bit unsure of why we are like this. Why do we react the same way? Why do we feel so fearful towards certain situations with really no explanation? It's our inner child. Our inner child remembers what it felt like to be told to be quiet, to be dismissed, to be hurt, to be excluded, bullied, to be abandoned, forgotten. All those deeply emotionally salient and honestly sad but powerful moments,

they are still there. They are still part of who we are at our core and in some ways, our identity. We've also got to remember childhood is such a formative time in life. In fact, it is the most formative developmental stage. At this age, we are like a big sponge. Quite honestly, we absorb everything around us because our brain is in learning mode. And because it's in learning mode, it's in absorption mode. Every single piece of information or thing that happens to us, we hold on tightly to

it. The good, the bad, the ugly, even if we don't recognize it at the time or in fact now, because of this, things that happen to us at this age are really significant. We are also at our most vulnerable because we are entirely dependent on our parents or caregivers for everything. And when I say everything, everything from our physical needs to our emotional needs to our social needs, we are just this innocent, vulnerable creature. This version of us, who we were as a child, is our most pure,

uninhibited, joyful version of ourselves. And they need protecting now as much as they needed protecting back then. So let's talk about why inner child healing is so important. I have a few reasons in mind. The first reason is that the things that occurred back then can show up now in less than ideal ways. For example, if your emotional needs were shut down, your calls for love or attention were ignored.

As an adult, you can find yourself ignoring your needs yourself because that is how you were taught to approach what you needed from others. You may also find yourself feeling like you're asking for too much or settling for less, all those kinds of patterns and habits of self abandoning. People often end up thinking to themselves, okay so why do I keep doing this? Why do I keep finding myself in situations that hurt me, that cause me harm, that I don't want to be in, not realizing that the answer is in the past? In a similar vein you may have

difficulty setting boundaries, you may feel innately unlovable, you may have a lot of guilt, and you're not necessarily sure where it comes from. I found that people who treat these problems as if a child or their younger selves were coming up to them and saying, help me with this, like love me, I need this from you, take care of me. It's a lot harder to say no to that version of you. It's a lot harder to turn them down or to turn our back to their needs, which so many of us are used to doing with our current selves, with our adult selves, right? There is a part of you that is calling for extra love,

that is calling for extra kindness from yourself and you deny it. If you imagine it's your inner child asking for it, it becomes a lot harder to do that. You know, your inner child deserves love the way you also deserve to love yourself right now. And I always say, you know, the next time you speak harshly to yourself,

you think you're stupid, you're criticizing your body, you're talking down to yourself, imagine your five-year-old self in front of you right now. Would you yell at them? Would you call them stupid? Would you say, God, like you are so ugly, you're so fat, you're such a mistake, you're unlovable? Can you imagine saying that to a five-year-old child? When you talk to yourself that way, that's who you're saying it to. The other reason inner child healing is so essential is because the older we get, the more we tend to lose a really important sense of wonder and curiosity. We develop a very clinical way of looking at life and we

feel more and more removed in my mind from very simple pleasures. Remember when you were six or seven years old and you didn't really care about just like getting dirty for the sake of it. You didn't really care about just like playing with some random kid in the park, or you were just so excited for Halloween every single year because it meant you were able to dress up.

Remember, like, I don't know if this is a unique experience and I'm sure it's not like doing karaoke in your room to your like little CD player, or making up like fake scenarios and make believe and you were just so in awe of everything. You cannot like please do not forget that feeling and become closed and cold and shut off from like a world of wonder and delight. I can always tell when someone has kind of shoved their inner child into a box.

And I think that you probably know the kind of person I'm talking about. It's someone who finds offense in like any sort of fun and they just appear very heavy in their soul. Like they feel heavy and angered by so many pointless things, like other people's joy, other people having fun, other people's lives. They're so preoccupied with it. They don't know how to just sit back and embrace their own experiences and be concerned with their own happiness the way that, well, a child is. Your inner child doesn't care what

someone else is doing. Your inner child just wants to have fun. Your inner child just wants to be up for adventures and is up for learning. And your inner child is curious about other people rather than judgmental. So I think that's another component of this. When you focus on creating space for your inner child to be seen and loved and heard,

I also think you end up becoming more empathetic. You know, children don't judge. They don't yet know like the pressure of social expectations and the pressure to fit in or to not stand out or how adults make up all these rules even when they don't help anyone and we have to follow them or we're going to be scolded or there's going to be stigma and prejudice. Like children don't care. And I think that that's such an important part

about staying in touch with who you were as a child. It's who you were before all of these really heavy burdens were placed on your shoulders. Let me talk about one final reason. I promise it's my final reason today for why healing your inner child is so important. And this is one of the most convincing reasons. It just feels good.

It just feels really nice. The reason people love to hear about and talk about healing their inner child is because it actually feels really lovely compared to how we've typically been taught to treat ourselves. It feels good to be less harsh on ourselves. It feels good to be kinder.

It feels good to slow down, to be more gentle. It feels good to be less harsh on ourselves. It feels good to be kinder. It feels good to slow down, to be more gentle. It feels good to be curious. It sure feels good to watch your favorite childhood movies. The other day I watched Bend It Like Beckham and the Hannah Montana movie with some friends and oh my gosh,

it was so healing. For just that afternoon, I felt like I was 12 again and all the stuff that I worry about now, like my job stress, health stuff, friendships, money, none of it was that important anymore. None of it was relevant. It just felt really, really good. Look, I know that these ideas sometimes aren't what we're used to hearing,

and maybe you think it sounds childish, not to create upon here. But the real power of creating space for your inner child is that you get to pay attention to the things that we usually neglect. We get to pay attention to ourselves, we get to pay attention to our emotions, we get to create space for play, for creativity, for fun.

That's a lot of really amazing upsides to this process. But of course, there is still a lot to unpack here. Specifically, I really wanna talk about how we can actually engage fully in the process of creating space for our inner child. So stay tuned, we'll be right back after this brief pause. Are you crushing your bills? We'll be right back after this brief pause. Hey, it's Gemma and if you love mantra where we explore weekly wisdom and self-discovery, then you have to check out Starstruck with Ali Luber. Just like we explore mantras to guide your week, astrologer Ali Lubba reveals the deeper

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Visit rbc.com slash ion cards. Now that we've looked at the meaning behind today's mantra, I create space for my inner child to feel safe and loved. It's time to get personal with you guys. And of course, as we do every week, just share some of my own insights and reflections about this phrase. Now I want to start off kind of addressing something I said just before. I totally understand people's hesitations when we're talking about inner child healing because it's very opposed to perhaps what we typically

see therapy or healing or mental health as. And it's also very much opposed to how society in general says we should behave. But you have to embrace and I think overlook the parts of you that might think this is cringe or the parts of you that might be a little bit embarrassed or feel odd about connecting with a side of you that maybe is less mature and maybe is a little bit more silly. Like I do seriously believe that you can hold two parts of you and two truths at once. You can have this adult maturity and adult perspective and self-awareness of your problems, but you can also still maintain a childlike wonder and appreciation for your childlike

self. So I want to talk about the reason I became particularly interested in this. And it was because, you know, to be vulnerable, a history with childhood bullying. When I was a kid, I was really badly bullied. I was such a weird child. I've talked about it on the podcast before, but I was just odd and I was a little bit strange and because of that, children found the weak link, they found like the black sheep to kind of pick on and it was painful, right? Like any kind of exclusion or bullying when you're a child is like all you want is to be loved and held and respected and cared about. And you just want to have

friends. And these were these people that I thought were my friends and they were quite cruel to me and quite mean. I'm not even going to get into it, but that was the experience. And what I found was that because of that experience, I was very resentful. I was still very hurt, even as an adult. And I was holding on to all of these coping mechanisms that had protected me back then, but were now no longer useful. Withdrawing from people when I felt a little bit upset or unseen was not useful. Withdrawing when I felt a little bit upset or unseen was not useful. Withdrawing when I felt overwhelmed was not useful. Severing ties before I could get hurt was not useful.

I know why these habits and behaviors evolved now. Back then, I didn't want to experience that social rejection and that social pain. Anything that could put up a barrier between me and feeling those intense emotions or going through those experiences again seemed helpful. However, as an adult, they are not. They are not helpful. They are harmful.

And I realized that I was always going to almost sabotage my relationships if I didn't address this. I was always going to be looking for validation in the wrong places and all that resentment that I was carrying, because I was still indeed carrying it, was very heavy. It was very heavy. I still thought about these people. I was still hung up on these experiences, even though I'm sure none of them even remembered it. Everyone had probably forgotten. It was this integral part of how I saw the world and who I was. And I realized that in order to move forward, I had to focus inward. I had to ensure that that inner child version of me felt loved enough to let go of what it thought

was protecting her. And I also had to give her space to just be a child again and to just feel free and cared for. Finally, I think I faced this hypothetical and I posed it to myself. I could spend the next 10, 20 years of my life letting the unhealed version of me rule or I could care for her and reinforce that it was all going to be okay. And you know what? That is what I chose to do.

So how do we go about healing this version of us? How do we go about building trust with our inner child, particularly if perhaps past experiences have taught us that our emotions and our needs are not always going to be honored. Start by listening to the moments where you feel uncomfortable or you start to feel unkind to yourself. That discomfort, that feeling in the body of alarm or stress or yeah, just discomfort. That is the biggest sign that there is a part of you,

an unhealed part of you that feels triggered by a situation or feels unseen or is reverting to old habits. In those moments, I want your adult self to say, I'm in charge now, I'm gonna take care of the situation. You don't have to worry, I'm here, and I will make sure that you remain safe. And we are going to face this head on. We're also not going to speak poorly to ourselves.

Please and thank you. We are going to ensure that we interrupt all those times when we feel the need to criticize and be mean and hurtful to ourselves for whatever reason. If you find yourself saying those words we said before, words of anger and cruelty and just being mean to yourself for no reason, I need you to put your adult hat on and say, hey, don't talk to me like that, don't talk to yourself like that. That's not acceptable.

The same way that you would have wanted a parent or a teacher to step in for you. I also want you to make a commitment to yourself that you won't self abandon. Now self abandoning occurs when we neglect our needs for the sake of others interests or for the sake of their ease. Now if you were a child who felt like you had to earn love, who felt like you had to be good and well behaved in order for love to be given to you, who felt like your job was to make other people happy, this is probably something you really struggle with. I'm going to give you a bit of an example of this or a checklist.

Just mentally take note of how many of these, I would say, criteria of self abandoning apply to you. This is what self abandoning looks like. Prioritizing others' needs over your own, ignoring your feelings or needs. This is especially the case with family. You can tell that you're uncomfortable, you can tell that you need more, but you swallow your pride, you swallow your words to keep the peace. Saying yes when you mean no, this can look like doing favors for people all the time.

That's self abandoning because you don't actually want to do it, but you feel like they won't like you or that you'll be rejected or thrown aside if you don't give everything to them. Another word for that is of course, people pleasing. Taking the blame when things go wrong, especially at work. I see this a lot in people who, um, whose parents got divorced when they were quite young. They didn't want this tension or these arguments between their parents and they kind of learned to blame themselves for what was happening or to put themselves in between their parents as a buffer and take blame for things as a way to try and bring

about peace or stability to a situation. As an adult, you know, it probably didn't work in childhood. It's probably not going to work now and it's definitely not going to work for you. The final example of self abandoning I have is changing plans to fit other's schedules. I guess this is another example of people pleasing, but it's definitely something that I see us do in friendships and in love in our 20s and beyond where we just want to make it as easy as it can be for someone else to like us and to love us, because a small part of ourselves, this inner child part feels like there's

an aspect of us that is innately unlovable. So if we can just make it easier by being passive and a bit of a pushover, then we are more likely to have that love that we always craved. Again, when you are standing up for yourself against these instincts, when you are fighting the battle between you and the self that wants to put in these coping mechanisms and self-abandon, I want you to imagine that you are an advocate for your inner child.

I want you to imagine again that you are this parent, you are this authority figure, you are this teacher, someone that you trusted in my mentor who is stepping in and pushing through and saying, that's not what we're doing. I'm in charge here. You don't get to treat yourself like that. I would also say, and this is the fun part of it, allow yourself some of the luxuries and the small things that you did as a child. I'm talking the trinkets, I'm talking the toys, I'm talking the movies.

I'm talking like the childhood snacks that you used to really want when you were a kid. The other day I was at the grocery store and I don't know if anyone remembers these like small yogurt tubs and they have like chocolate yogurt in them with like M&Ms and like flip cups. It's very hard to explain. If you know what I'm talking about, you'll know what I'm talking about. I had like a gorilla on the front and I just bought one for myself.

I was like, my inner child would really like this right now. And I think that it's time that her and me spent some time together and that she felt a little bit spoiled. It cost me $3. I sat in my car and I ate it and I just sat there and it felt like I could just smile and just like throw my legs back and forth and feel giddy because here I was having this very pure innocent experience that brought me back. Now some part of inner child healing is the treats and the luxuries and the fun.

Equally you also have to give yourself discipline. Now discipline is something that people don't talk about a lot when it comes to inner child healing and I understand why it's not quite obvious, but in my opinion, it is just as important as the fun and silly stuff. Creating space for your inner child to feel safe means creating a safe environment and a safe structure and routine and showing them that they can trust you to do what's best for them. You know, you would not let a five-year-old not get enough sleep or be around people who

were cruel or unkind to them. You would not let a five-year-old do things that were self-destructive or harmful. Don't let your adult self do those things either. You are the parent in your life right now. You are coming in as this authority figure and you're saying, I'm going to take care of you. Part of taking care of your inner child means giving yourself discipline and structure to flourish. Another way that we can do this is tapping into our creativity and imagination.

Engaging in a hobby that you once loved as a child and getting into that flow headspace is such a wonderful way to create space for your inner child to be loved and to be seen and to bring you back to those really innocent pure moments. Something I've been loving recently that has definitely replicated some of that childlike wonder and calm that I had as a child is colouring in. Colouring in but not the kind that you're used to. The really simple bold children's books that are made for children between four and seven years old.

Sitting in front of the TV and colouring in every night has old children's books that are made for children between like four and seven years old. Sitting in front of the TV and coloring in every night has done remarkable things for my mental health and I didn't think I was going to get so into it. But I think it's the sense of just like contentment and just doing something for me and again having that discipline to not just let me go on my phone or do the simple thing. When we are creative as well, we achieve some of the highest states of consciousness possible. It's at that point that I also think we can really create the peace and stability and the environment to start tackling some of the deeper and darker stuff.

You'll often find that when you're making art, when you're doing something with your hands, when you're in this flow state, that's when perhaps big thoughts and insecurities and emotions do start to filter to the surface because you've created a calm mental space where they feel they can come out of their shell. Two final things I started doing,

and don't worry, I'll keep them quick, and they are super, super simple. I now have a photo of my childhood self as my phone background. This has been revolutionary. It's been so firstly grounding, but it's also reminded me on a daily basis who I was speaking to, who I needed to protect, who I am taking care of,

and who I'm being mean to at times. And I've also found incredible power in being able to self-soothe. Self-soothing is actually a term from parenting guidebooks around how children at a young age need to learn how to take care of themselves. Those principles still apply now. When you are in emotional distress, when you are unhappy,

when you are frustrated, sad, grieving, whatever it is, you can self-soothe through touch. Literally give yourself an embrace. It's called a self-embrace or a self-hug. There have been so many studies on this, particularly during COVID that found that literally putting your hands over your shoulders and squeezing yourself in gives you so many endorphins, brings you a sense of calm. It's not as amazing as someone else who you love hugging you, but it's almost there and it makes you feel supported by the

most important person in your life, which is you. As we sit with everything this mantra really brings up today, I think it becomes really clear that healing our inner child isn't just about looking back at the childhood injuries and wounds we might carry, it's actually about how we choose to show up for ourselves now. The thing is, you cannot change the past, but you can change how you approach the emotions of the past and the coping mechanisms that came from the past in the present. And with that in mind, I'd like to share our deep thought of the day.

If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete. And that's from Jack Cornfield. The reason I love this quote is because it causes me to really reflect on how much unconditional love and forgiveness and kindness and generosity I have for so many people in my life that I do not have for myself. Also how much forgiveness I have for other people in my life, but not myself. And I think it's because since I was young, I was so conditioned to be so hard on myself and I had to achieve and I had to be good and I had to be liked. And I hold

myself to this like, wretchedly high standard that's actually never going to be met. And it's just insane to me how we have all this compassion and love for other people. We're willing to accept their mistakes. We see them with nothing but rose-tinted glasses and love. And then when we look at ourselves, it's like, wow, who was this monster? Who was this creature? That's not going to fly anymore. If you want to create space for your inner child to be seen and loved, you have to start taking all that compassion and empathy and saying to yourself,

I deserve that as well because so much of who I am now came from this child version of me, this maybe even teenage version of me who was hurt and tried their best to do what they could with the circumstances and is still trying to protect me to this day. They deserve love. Now, I'd like us to take a few moments to pause and really sit with this mantra. They deserve love. Now, I'd like us to take a few moments to pause and really sit with this mantra. In just a moment, you'll hear our custom music track to help create space for you to absorb today's insights, because there have been a lot of them, and consider how you might bring this mantra into your week and even beyond. How can you make healing your inner child and creating space for them a priority?

And if this practice isn't your style, if it doesn't resonate with you, that's totally okay. Feel free to skip ahead about 30 seconds. So as you settle in, keep our mantra in mind. I create space for my inner child to feel safe and loved. Let it guide your thoughts as the music plays and give yourself a moment to reflect and connect with what this mantra means to you. Beautiful. Now that we've explored the depth of this mantra, it's time to bring it into our daily lives in a tangible way.

Up next, we'll turn these insights into action with reflective journal prompts and of course our weekly challenge to help you nurture your inner child. So stick around for more after this quick break. Guy Ritchie. We shake the right hands, break the wrong ones. Comes the next great crime series. And when someone forgets their place, I've got a man for that. For himself. Starring Tom Hardy, Piers Brosnan, and Helen Mirren. We've got everyone where we want them.

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and it's a show about the modern day cults we all follow. Think less Jonestown and the Mansons and more Disney adults, church camp, momfluencers, or people who are just obsessed with their Stanley Cup. I'm Amanda Montell, sounds like a cults host, and every week I choose a different fanatical fringe group from the cultural zeitgeist and analyze it with the help of expert guests, listener Collins, and fascinating stories to figure out if the group of the week is a live-your-life, a watcher back, or a get-the a get the fuck out level cult. If you're new to the show, I recommend starting out with one of my favorite episodes, like the one on the Cult of Purity Rings featuring Kelsey from Normal Gossip.

We also just did an episode on the Cult of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. Discussions get very juicy on Sounds Like a Cult. The show is available on all major podcast platforms, and new episodes come out every Tuesday. For more, find the show on Instagram at Sounds Like a Cult Pod. Let's dive into how we can bring this week's mantra to life in a real practical way, starting with our journal practice. Now, again, if you don't have your journal right now, I totally understand. No worries. Just take a moment to reflect on these prompts wherever you are in your own mind. Here are a few questions to help you reflect and connect again with this week's mantra,

I create space for my inner child to feel safe and loved. First, in what ways do you still carry the emotional wounds or unmet needs of your younger self? How do they show up in your present day thoughts, behaviours or relationships? Next, are there moments when you dismiss your own emotions, playfulness or creativity because they feel childish or unimportant? Where do you think that belief comes from? And finally, what words of comfort, validation, or

encouragement did you long to hear as a child? Can you offer those words to yourself now? Every week, I also love to share a challenge inspired by our mantra to help you take on the challenge of how to share a challenge inspired by our mantra to help you take what we discuss and turn it into real actionable steps in your life. I'd love to hear how it's going for you, so reach out to me at mantra open mind on Instagram and each month I'll be responding to your questions and comments in our special bonus episode

available exclusively on Open Mind Plus. Okay, so this week's challenge is actually a bit of a crossover from the last journal prompt we just discussed. I want you to write a letter to your younger self. This week, it's only going to take you maybe 10 minutes. And all I want you to do is just write in a stream of consciousness voice, what does my inner child need to hear? What do they feel perhaps they need to be forgiven for? Or what do they need to receive unconditional love towards?

Offer your younger self the love, reassurance and validation they may have not received, and tell them how it turns out that it's all going to be okay. Read it aloud, just keep it somewhere safe, whatever you want to do with it, but please keep it as a reminder of your commitment to nurturing that part of yourself. I honestly think you can do this exercise

more than once as more things come up for you because someone reminded me the other day, healing your inner child is not a linear process. Things come up at different times in different moments. The commitment that you have to this part of you is lifelong, so come back to this exercise whenever you need it. And as a

reminder, reach out to Mantra Open Mind to share how this challenge is working for you. Share your little baby picture on the back of your phone screen or on your mirror. I'd love to see how you guys are integrating some of these practical tips. tips. Alright as we wrap up this week's episode, I want to share my final thoughts about this mantra. I create space for my inner child to feel safe and loved. I want to finish off by saying the parts of you that felt neglected, guilty, betrayed,

abandoned, hurt as a child, they do not disappear. And what we don't address does end up dragging us down and shaping who we are. The best part about this practice is that yes, it is hard at times, it's also so deeply rewarding and fun. It's actually just so much fun to engage in being playful and messy and creative and just letting yourself embrace adventure and awe. Not much healing allows us to go and buy a trinket or a fun childhood snack or watch our favorite childhood TV shows, but this one does.

And as you move through this week, try to focus on creating space for your inner child to feel seen, heard and loved in the way that they deserved and you currently deserve. See if it makes a change. And remember, healing isn't about rewriting the past. Unfortunately, that's not something you can do, but you can meet yourself where you are now with compassion and the care that you always needed being the primary adult, being the parent in your life now who is going to take care of you. So make that space, approach it with intention and let's see how it

transforms the way you show up for yourself. Thank you for joining Mantra, an exclusive Open Mind original powered by Pave Studios. At Open Mind, we value your support, so share your thoughts on social media and remember to rate, review and follow Mantra to help others discover the show. For ad-free listening and early access to Mantra with me, Gemma Spegg, we invite you to subscribe to Open Mind Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'll share another insightful and introspective mantra with you next Monday.

Until then, keep showing up for yourself and your journey. I'm Gemma Speg, see you next week. Mantra is hosted by me, Gemma Speg, and is an Open Mind original powered by Pave Studios. This episode was brought to life by the mantra team, Max Cutler, Kristen Acevedo, Ron Shapiro, Stacey Warren Kerr, Sarah Camp and Paul Leberskin. Thank you for listening.

Ever wonder what the stars have to say about your favorite celebrities and yourself? Allie Luber is breaking it all down on her brand new show Starstruck. New episodes drop every Wednesday. Just search Starstruck wherever you listen to podcasts.