Looking for the Eyes That Will See Me

Dear Ones,

There is a moment in deep healing when the body softens. Not because the pain is gone, but because a part of us has been seen. Often, that part is young. Very young. And very patient.

One of my “jobs” is facilitating reunions and I love it. From a shamanic lens, a soul retrieval reintegrates fragmented soul parts that have become separated due to trauma, shock, and difficult emotional experiences.  When a soul part returns, especially a child fragment, it does not ask for explanation.  It looks for orientation. For resonance. For the eyes that will see her/him and not flinch. For the breath and love that will stay.

As I do before healing sessions, I journeyed on behalf of a client who had booked a Reiki appointment but was clearly arriving with a deeper readiness. In the journey, I found a 4-year-old child.  She was beautiful, sad, and quietly longing for eyes that would see her and transmit the love held behind it.  And she was ready for the moment when her adult self would look her in the eyes and truly say: You are not invisible anymore and you are loved.  

When I facilitated the soul retrieval, I guided the adult client to see herself sitting across from her younger self and make eye contact not as a task, but as a homecoming. To hold her gaze steady that the child feel the vibration of her heart through it.  The child, sensing the shift into the resonance of safety and love, relaxed. Not because everything had been explained, but because someone was finally present and she was being seen. I facilitated the integration and she returned home bringing her gifts.  It was beautiful, as it always is. 

This experience reminded me of something essential in my viewpoint of both trauma work and energy healing: the human psyche organizes itself into layers over time. In moments of rupture, neglect, or overwhelm, younger layers split off  in preservation. And in moments of coherence, they begin to return.

This is the three-layer self:

1. The Younger Part

• The part seeking orientation and reassurance

• Often encoded with early wounds, unmet needs, or pre-verbal experiences

• Sensitive to shifts in field safety and coherence

2. The Survival Identity

• The part that knows how to navigate the world through adaptation

• Highly functional, strategic, often over-responsible

• Sometimes skeptical of healing, because it "got things done"

3. The Sovereign Adult

• The part emerging through choice, embodiment, and self-recognition

• Willing to listen, to pause, to feel

• Capable of holding both the young and the strategic parts in love

Healing doesn't ask us to "fix" the child or silence the survival part. It asks us to become coherent enough to listen through them. To stop demanding that they be different before we offer love. We are not here to save the younger self. We are here to become the one she/he can come home to.

This is the stabilizing function of the sovereign adult: not perfection, but presence. Presence is love. 

Stabilizing the Three-Layer Self:

• Pause before reaction. The one who wants to defend or run is not wrong. Just ask, "Who in me is speaking right now?"

• Offer language to the young one. Even a whisper: "I'm here now. I see you. You're not wrong."

• Thank the survival part. Not sarcastically. Truly. It got you here.

• Breathe from adult coherence. Lengthen the exhale. Come into the room.

And when expansion comes, as it does, we stay adult through the expansion. We don’t contract into smallness to be polite. We also don’t bypass the scared parts to perform sovereignty. We simply keep listening to what is here now and feel the fullness of our presence.

This is the essence of healing in Shamanism.

Resonance. Reunion. Return.

And always the unflinching eyes that say:  I’m here. You can come back now.

Love, 

Emily
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