Dear Tracy, Laura, Melanie and Melissa, Your sharings with each other on this theme are steeped in your commitment to your recovery work. I love seeing this. Please remember. In conversation we talk about the eight year old, the eleven year old, what the baby needs, what the teen-ager wants. It's easier to talk this way because it simplifies a complex internal psychological experience. However, please keep in mind that these descriptive words do not refer to something external to yourself. These "children" are images, symbols of aspects of you. When you are kind to an aspect of yourself you will feel it. When you are uncaring and rejecting of an aspect of yourself you will feel that too. And the you that is making the decisions to ignore or accept or embrace an aspect of yourself is an aspect of yourself too. Yes, it's complicated. Going for the short hand of imagery and discussion of inner children gives us all a way to talk about and understand these inner complexities. You can write what they say, draw how they look, describe in words or pictures what they see and understand. And, you see from what I just wrote that the "they" word can lead you to think of "them" as outside yourself. As long as you keep reminding yourselves that "they" and "them" are aspects of you, you will make progress in your healing work. Please remember that every image you have and your awareness of yourself as "I" are all aspects of the one person you are.