Traveling with your inner child

Inside every woman there is a Child, fragile and courageous, who knows who we are and what is best for us. Her voice, however, often goes unheard, by us and by those around us . Claudia Scarpati, a systemic-relational psychologist, in her essay "From the Wound to Home" (Mondadori, 2026, pp. 500, also available as an ebook), addresses those who have learned to smile while collapsing inside, to please others while forgetting themselves.

With careful writing that caresses and delves, a writing born of twenty years of experience with patients , Claudia Scarpati leads readers on a therapeutic and transformative journey divided into three seasons of the soul . The winter of wounds, that is, the moment of acknowledging pain, is followed by the spring of thaw, the phase of reconnection leading to the summer of blossoming, with rebirth. In short, a book that aims to be "a caress" for the little girl who felt invisible , waiting for a hand that never came. A caress for all the women who today find the courage to look at her again, "not to fix her or change her, just to be by her side," as the author writes.

We asked Claudia Scarpati herself what motivated her to write the book after so many years of working as a psychologist:

This book takes shape in the silence and truth of my therapy room, preserving the voices of the women I have guided over the years. Their lives and paths seem far apart, yet they are united by the same wound: strong women, tireless points of reference for the outside world, who, in the intimacy of their relationships, once again felt fragile, negligible, needing to prove their worth. Reconnecting those women to the child they once were is not a theoretical exercise; it is a liberation that transforms posture, gaze, and daily decisions. My intention was to make that process accessible beyond the space of the session, offering a roadmap to anyone who feels the need for a first, protected inner haven.

The title is From the Wound to Home...can you explain it to us?

Often, because of our wounds, we learned to abandon ourselves very quickly, living in a perpetual state of alert: careful not to disturb, never to disappoint anyone, convinced that we had to work hard and make sacrifices to deserve a crumb of affection. We donned heavy armor and distanced ourselves, ending up feeling always out of place, always exiled. The wound was precisely this: the breaking point where we distanced ourselves from our truth in order to survive. The book accompanies the journey backwards: a slow, sometimes arduous, but profoundly liberating return to our inner space. Coming home means reinhabiting ourselves. It means discovering that we are our first safe haven, an intimate place where we don't have to prove anything to anyone, where every emotion is legitimate and our story can finally be embraced with tenderness, without a trace of shame. And when a woman becomes her own home, it can be recognized by the simplest and most authentic details of her daily life: by how she allows herself rest without the torment of guilt, and by the courage to choose relationships that give her peace, not anxiety or trenches.

The book talks about a journey with your inner child...what is the inner child?

The inner child is not an abstract concept or a New Age metaphor: it is the living, emotional, and somatic memory of who we were. It is that part of us that preserves intact our earliest fundamental needs—to be seen, protected, welcomed unconditionally—but also the responses we had to construct to adapt to the environment in which we grew up. When we learned as children that to be loved or safe we had to be good, quiet, precociously adult, or invisible, we made a survival pact. As adults, we believe we've overcome everything simply because we've become autonomous and responsible, but every time in a relationship we experience disproportionate anxiety about being abandoned, a paralyzing sense of guilt when saying 'no,' or the feeling of not being good enough, it's not the rational adult speaking: it's precisely that child who is being activated, with her fears and ancient defenses. Taking this journey doesn't mean staying trapped in the past or giving in to regret, but rather performing the most mature therapeutic act there is: stopping expecting others to heal those wounds and becoming, today, the welcoming and solid adults that that childlike part of us still desperately needs in order to finally rest.

In the book there is the prospect of "building one's inner sanctuary"…but what exactly does this mean?

It means ceasing to be a house with doors wide open to the storms of others and building, within ourselves, the first true space of non-negotiable safety. For those who learned from an early age to take care of everything, the internal landscape is often colonized: there is no threshold separating their experiences from the needs, expectations, or anxieties of those around them. Building this sanctuary has nothing to do with isolation, but is an act of profound emotional ecology. It means creating an intimate space where we suspend all obligations to perform, where there is no need to be strong, to be useful, or to continually prove that we deserve our place. It is the place where we learn to filter access, leaving emotional blackmail and the noise of the world outside the door, to finally offer refuge to our childlike selves: a protected space where they can shed their heavy adult armor and rest, knowing that now there is someone watching over them. Ultimately, it means becoming their own solid ground. A firm and welcoming point to which you can always return when the sea is rough outside, to remember who you are beyond the role you have been forced to play."

After the winter of wounds and the spring of thaw, we have the summer of authentic flowering... what is this phase characterized by?

The summer of authentic blossoming isn't a fairytale ending where wounds magically vanish, but the exact moment when you stop expending your vital energy defending yourself or making yourself indispensable, and finally begin to use it to exist. It's characterized first and foremost by the end of performance: the ancient reflex of having to earn love through sacrifice is broken, and you discover the freedom of being in relationships without having to take on the atmosphere, the tensions, or the needs of those around you. All that energy, sequestered for years by hypervigilance, comes back to you in the form of rest, authentic desires, and clear boundaries, leading you to choose relationships based on reciprocity and not on the familiar condemnation of having to save someone. But above all, summer is the time of inner peace between the adult and the child: there's no longer any need to wear the armor of the woman who never collapses, because now there's a solid internal presence that can protect your vulnerability. It's a phase that is recognized in the body: the shoulders finally lower, the breath begins to open again and we grant ourselves, without asking anyone's permission, the right to lightness."

How can we make the flowering last longer and prevent the wounds from resurfacing?

The first step to making blossoming last lies in dispelling an illusion: we can't prevent old wounds from resurfacing, because our history cannot be erased. Emotional scars are like old fractures: in certain moments of stress, fatigue, or when faced with family relational dynamics, they will sting again. Thinking we must be 'healed forever,' without ever faltering again, is just another form of perfectionism that rekindles performance anxiety. True stability, therefore, lies not in the absence of relapses, but in the time it takes to recover and the quality of our response to ourselves. If before, the wound automatically dragged us back into the old pattern—pleasing, isolating ourselves, sacrificing ourselves so as not to be abandoned—now we learn to notice the alarm bell the exact moment it rings. We no longer blame ourselves for feeling fear or guilt; we stop, breathe, and intervene like conscious adults before automatism takes over. Keeping the blossoming alive means choosing, every day, a gentle fidelity to our own needs and limitations. It means remembering that we are no longer that helpless child at the mercy of events, but women who have learned to inhabit our own inner sanctuary. And that, even when the wind is blowing strongly outside, we always know how and where to return home.