I Still See the Same Memories. I Simply Understand Them Differently Now.

There are moments from my childhood that I can still see as clearly as if they happened yesterday. Some of them are full of warmth.

I remember a home where I felt safe. I remember reading books under a tree at school while I waited for my brother. I remember bringing friends home because I was proud of where I lived. I remember parents who loved me and did their very best for me.

Those memories are just as real today as they were then.

But there are other memories that stayed with me too.

As a child, I never questioned them.

I simply accepted them as part of life.

I didn't stop to ask whether they were unusual. I didn't analyse them or try to explain them. Children don't do that. They simply experience the world they are given.

Looking back now, I realise I spent much of my childhood observing.

Watching.

Listening.

Taking everything in.

There were things I saw, things I felt and questions that lived somewhere inside me, but I didn't have the words to explain any of them. They simply became part of my story.

It has taken me many years to realise that children don't need to understand something for it to shape them.

That thought has stayed with me throughout my years as a counsellor.

We often say that children are wonderful observers but poor interpreters.

When I first heard those words, they stopped me in my tracks because they described my own childhood so well.

Children notice far more than we often realise.

They notice the atmosphere in a room.

They notice when someone changes.

They notice what frightens them, what comforts them and what leaves them feeling confused.

What they cannot always do is make accurate sense of what they have observed.

So they carry it.

Sometimes for years.

As I began writing Standing on the Edge, I found myself revisiting those early memories.

The memories themselves hadn't changed. What had changed was me.

I was no longer looking through the eyes of a little girl trying to make sense of the world.

I was looking through the eyes of a woman who had spent years getting the help I needed and counselling others, studying human behaviour and discovering God's healing in my own life.

For the first time, I could look back with compassion instead of confusion.

I could see a little girl doing exactly what every child does.

She was making sense of life with the understanding she had at the time.

That doesn't mean every conclusion she reached was true.

It simply means she was trying to understand a world that was much bigger than she was.

I wonder how many of us are still living from conclusions we reached as children.

Beliefs we have never questioned because they have always felt true.

Perhaps part of healing is not trying to erase the past but allowing ourselves to return to those memories with greater wisdom, greater compassion and the gentle invitation to see them differently.

That has certainly been true for me.

Many of the reflections I share in Standing on the Edge: A Fight for Freedom were born from looking back, not to relive my childhood, but to understand it.

Because I still see the same memories.

I simply understand them differently now.