When I was intentionally beginning my personal healing work, the writer my therapist was using and encouraging all clients to read was the work of John Bradshaw, author of Home Coming: Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner Child. This book discusses how the process of healing your wounded inner child is one of grief, and it involves these six steps. The first of these six steps is trust.

The person we most need to trust in our lives is ourselves. In order for us to begin our own healing process (emotionally, mentally, physically, or spiritually); we must begin by trusting ourselves. For many people, our wounded inner child is in hiding. That wounded part does not trust others and to some extent does not even trust the older version of who we are. To keep themselves safe, they learned to hide until they could find someone who would be a supportive and non-shaming ally.