MessyJessyCreatesArt

 The Inner Child Project:   The Toddler Self 18 months-3 years Part 1  The Toddler is mobile enough to walk away from the caregiver and verbal enough to refuse and protest.  They are learning how to establish and maintain personal boundaries- emotional and physical separations from the caretakers.  This teaches you how to be independent.   Testing how much you  can participate in the outside world and still come back to your caretaker and  be loved is a dynamic you will carry into every relationship.   In The Inner Child Workbook , under the section for the Toddler Self, exercise #1 asks 5 questions  which deal with saying and being told no as well as honoring boundaries.  These question are meant to make you think about your ideas and behaviors now and how they effect your relationships.  Exercise #2 is an extension of thinking about how we carry these issues into our lives today.  This ...

The Inner Child Project- The Infant Self The first part of the infant self can be found in my previous blog post  https://messyjessycreates.blogspot.com/2018/02/the-inner-child-project-infant-self_28.html This painting is of me as an infant.  After working through the exercises for this developmental stage of my inner child, I could paint myself as a happy infant. According to Cathryn Taylor in The Inner Child Workbook, There are several steps involved in dealing with childhood pain which are used at each level of child development AKA with each of your inner children. Identify the pain Researching your pain Regressing to the feelings of your self at that level of child inner self Objectifying your pain Grieving your inner child's pain Healing your pain and reclaiming your joy Each of these steps is accompanied by numerous exercises to help you through this journey.  If you are really interested in healing, many of our adult issues come from n...

The Inner Child Project- The Guardian This year I have been doing some inner child work (see my other blog posts) and came to the point in the process where I am supposed to create a Guardian to look over and protect my inner children as I do this work.  I happened to be participating in a free mini-class by Ivy Newport (  https://ivynewport.com/spring-fever  ) in which we use our own portrait to create a guardian angel.  While I was working, it just hit me out of nowhere that I should be my own guardian angel- my grown self.  So, I finished the painting and call her "The Guardian" and she will join my other inner child paintings to watch over and protect all of the inner children.

The Inner Child- The Infant Self The painting of the child in the crib represents needs not being met.  For me, this was mostly related to trust.  The painting is mostly watercolor mediums and pastels. The degree of nurturing, safety, and trust you feel toward others is a clue to the degree of nurturing, safety, and trust you felt when you were an infant.  From birth to about 18 months, the developmental task you needed to master was bonding with your caretaker and learning about nurturing and trust.  If this did not occur, you may grow up to fear closeness or remain  forever dependent on others to meet your needs.   One of the exercises in the book asks questions and then you can see how you fare in each of the categories of safety, nurturance, and trust.  I failed trust and did not do too well in safety.  Nurturance was ok.   Potential issues from this developmental stage include: Fear of intimacy because it cou...

The Inner Child Project Day 3 Chapter 1 of The Inner Child ends with a meditation where you envision a garden that symbolizes your past and the revision of the images at each stage that we will examine as we work with our inner children within.  This image will be continuously worked with throughout the healing process of the inner child.  Here is the beginning of my garden painting.

 The Inner Child Project Day 2    This work comes from prompts found at Free Your Inner Child  which happens to be a free e-course.  I combined prompts from day 1 and day 2 to create my mixed media piece of art.  I always loved to make costumes, dress up, and play pretend.  I based my piece on this.

The Inner Child Project This year I have decided to work on my inner child.  I have several resources to guide my way through this process including The Inner Child Workbook .  I have a journal to take notes and write about the suggested exercises.  There are also suggested art prompts as you can see below..... my first art piece, a collage....... "Responsible Adults/Parents".  My printer was running low on ink but I rolled with it and used the blue pictures as my jumping point for the color palette.  As I mentioned before, I have other resources and some art pieces on canvas that I will be sharing along my journey this year.