The Ones You Locked Away

There are parts of us we learned to lock away long before we learned how to love ourselves. Parts that were too loud, too sensitive, too angry, too afraid. Parts that were shamed until they learned to hide in the dark. This piece was written for those parts. The ones who carried us through survival and were never thanked for it.

This reflection comes from years of trauma work, inner child healing, and learning that the behaviors I once hated in myself were not flaws. They were protection. They were love wearing armor. What follows is a love letter to the parts of me I once tried to silence.

THE ONES YOU LOCKED AWAY

In the quiet chambers beneath my ribs

live the exiles I once condemned.

The ones shunned, dismissed,

shoved into a darkened closet

and told they were filth...

unworthy of daylight...

unworthy of breath.

I believed what the world taught me.

That those parts were shameful.

That survival carved them monstrous.

That I should silence their trembling hands

and swallow their cries like poison.

And yet...

when I turn toward them

I find faces shaped from my own bones

eyes pleading

I did what I did to keep you alive.

Why won’t you love me.

Why won’t you see me.

They were never villains.

Only children carrying torches

through a world that froze them solid

and punished them for daring to keep me warm.

Any soul locked in a closet long enough

will learn the language of claws

and howl at its own reflection.

Pain taught them to fight.

Fear taught them to hide.

I taught them to believe they deserved neither sky nor gentleness.

But beneath the bruises

beneath the instincts I learned to hate

lies the truth:

they were the ones who took the blows for me

the grit-workers

the shield-bearers

the guardians stitched together

from desperation and love.

When I offer them tenderness

their rage softens

their shaking slows

their stories spill like sacred rainfall.

They stop behaving like shadows

because they are no longer chained to one.

And I see them then

not as broken

not as disgrace

but as the very reason I survived.

Healing is not abandoning the parts, I fear.

It is unlocking the door

and whispering

Come home.

It is letting the wounded good inside me

step into the light

and remember

they were never unworthy.

They were only waiting

to be seen

to be held

to be loved

into freedom again.

So many of us grow up believing healing means becoming someone else. Quieter. Softer. Easier to accept. But real healing is not erasure. It is reunion. It is learning that the parts we tried to exile were the ones who stood between us and the fire. When we stop fighting them, they stop fighting us.

If you have parts of yourself you learned to hate, I invite you to sit with them today. Not to fix them. Not to change them. Just to listen. You might discover they were never your enemies. Only your earliest protectors, waiting to be loved home.