My Ho’oponopono Letter to My Inner Child
A great self-love exercise to connect with our inner child
A while ago, I wrote a Ho’oponopono letter to my inner child.
My letter was just one of the ways that I could reach out to her. After discovering that I have been neglectful of her for ages, I knew that I needed to make up for lost time. By then, she was extremely unhappy about being ignored. When activated, Girl Girl (my inner child) had the ability to reveal the intensity of her anger through me (the adult self).
It didn’t use to be this way. Before, she was very good at hiding her emotions and bottling her feelings on the inside. But I’ve noticed that over the years, she would get louder and louder. She was no longer content with keeping small, invisible, and unacknowledged. Girl Girl was pretty done with hiding.
At first, I could not understand why I was emotionally reactive to seemingly small triggers. In fact, at times, I felt blindsided. I had little idea that it was my 5-year-old whose feelings of being unloved, rejected or abandoned were being activated. She would take over whenever she was triggered.
It took me ages to figure out what was happening.
Can there really be two parts of me — one the seemingly wiser self and the other, a self that could be feeling hurt, angry, and so on?
Even though I was exploring energy healing, meditation, and journaling work, meaningful answers somehow eluded me. Eventually, my journey led me to discover that I could be engaged in spiritual bypassing and that the missing answers for me lie with my inner child.
Well, things changed after I started to see her. I worked on connecting with her. One of the exercises I did with communicating with Girl Girl is to write a Ho’oponopono letter to her.
What Ho’oponopono Prayer Is
If you don’t know what Ho’oponopono is, the ancient Hawaiian Ho’oponopono is a prayer practice that is described as:
(a) “To put to rights; to put in order or shape, correct, revise, adjust, amend, regulate, arrange, rectify, tidy up make orderly or neat, administer, superintend, supervise, manage, edit, work carefully or neatly; to make ready, as canoemen preparing to catch a wave.”
(b) “Mental cleansing: family conferences in which relationships were set right (hoʻoponopono) through prayer, discussion, confession, repentance, and mutual restitution and forgiveness. The prayer comprises of 4 simple short phrases: I am sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you.
Many people use the prayer as a mantra for restoring self-love and balance.
My Ho’oponopono Letter to My Inner Child
Well, I used the short phrases as a starting point for each paragraph in writing my Ho’oponopono Letter.
Basically, each paragraph has the theme of expressing Repentance, Forgiveness, Gratitude, and Love.
It is from my wise inner parent that I addressed my letter to her. Being able to connect with her was of utmost importance. My letter was written with sincerity, humbleness, thankfulness and care.
Writing a Ho’oponopono Letter to Your Inner Child
Would you like to try this exercise too?
You can use the Ho’oponopono prayer on its own or you can expand beyond the 4 phrases when connecting with your inner child.
If you are just using the prayer on its own, I suggest repeating it over and over again.
In the second option, allow the words to flow from your heart as you visualise your inner child receiving them.
You can choose to say the words out aloud or to write a letter.
Let me know how the exercise went for you :-)
Hope this helps, Evelyn
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