Revisiting Childhood: The Power and Challenge of Looking Back

At the Water's Edge: An Invitation

Looking back takes courage—but it's the only path to becoming truly, beautifully whole.

   Twilight settles over the lake, the surface glassy and darkening to indigo. I stand at the shoreline, toes curling into the cool sand, the hush of evening broken only by the gentle lap of water against stone. In my hand, I hold an old photograph—edges curled, colors faded, the faces of children who once believed the world was both endless and perilous. One of those children is me.

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   There is a particular ache in looking back. Memory is a tide: sometimes gentle, sometimes fierce, always pulling us toward what we thought we'd left behind. At seventy-two, I find myself returning to the stories that shaped me—the ones I kept folded up like old letters in a drawer,  convinced that silence was the same as survival. Now, as I stand at the edge of these deep waters, I know: memory holds both pain and gift. To look back is to risk being swept under, but it is also to discover what waits beneath the surface—truth, meaning, and, sometimes, grace.

​Why We Turn Away
For years, I turned my face from the past. I told myself that what was done was done, that the child I had been was gone, her wounds irrelevant to the woman I became. This is a common story, isn't it? We learn early that some memories burn too hot to touch. We tuck them away, believing that forgetting is a kind of safety.
  There is a reason for this. The mind, wise in its own way, builds walls to protect us from what we cannot yet bear. We become experts at distraction—at busyness, at caretaking, at chasing approval. Anything to avoid the sharp edges of what waits in the dark. I spent decades moving forward, never daring to look over my shoulder. I told myself I was strong, that survival meant never letting the past catch up.
  But the past is patient. It waits in the quiet moments—when the house is still, when a certain smell or song cracks open the door. For me, it was the scent of coffee and something burning in a childhood kitchen, the sound of my father's voice, the ache of my mother's absence. These memories were not just stories; they were living things, shaping my choices, my fears, my sense of what I deserved.
It is no small thing to sit with old pain. To remember is to risk feeling it all over again—the confusion, the shame, the longing for someone to notice, to care. We fear that if we look too closely, we might drown in what we find. I understand this fear. For much of my life, I believed that silence was the same as survival. I was wrong, but it took me years to know it.
  If you, too, have turned away from your own beginnings, know this: you are not alone. The instinct to avoid is not weakness; it is a testament to your will to endure. But there comes a time when the cost of forgetting outweighs the risk of remembering. When the only way forward is through.

What the Past Really Holds
  When I finally began to look back, I expected only pain. I braced myself for the old wounds—the sting of my father's words, the coldness of my mother's gaze, the poverty that pressed in on all sides. My father was a complicated man: brilliant and terrifying in the same breath. He taught me to love books, to ask questions, to hunger for knowledge. But he also taught me fear, using the same hands that turned pages to remind me of my smallness.
  My mother was there, but not really there—present in body, absent in protection. I learned early that some needs would go unmet, that love could be conditional, that safety was a privilege, not a right. These truths shaped me, carving out spaces of longing and resilience in equal measure.
But the past, I discovered, is not only a ledger of hurts. It is also a map of survival. In the shadows, I found small lights: an aunt who took me in when home was not safe, a teacher who saw me when I felt invisible, a neighbor who offered a warm meal without asking questions. These moments of grace were lifelines, proof that kindness can bloom even in hard soil.
  Looking back, I see now that my childhood was not just a story of brokenness, but of becoming. The patterns I learned—how to disappear, how to endure—were born of necessity, but they also revealed strengths I did not know I possessed. The past holds clues to who we are: our tenderness, our tenacity, our capacity for hope. To revisit these memories is to reclaim the parts of ourselves we thought were lost.

The Courage to Look
It takes courage to look beneath the surface. To wade into the deep waters of memory is to risk being pulled under by currents we cannot control. But it is also an act of profound compassion—for the child we were, for the person we are becoming.
Looking back is not about wallowing in pain or assigning blame. It is about witnessing. About saying, "This happened. It mattered. I matter." In my own journey, water became my metaphor and my solace. I spent years treading water, fighting to stay afloat in a sea of secrets and shame. I believed that if I stopped struggling, I would drown.
But deep waters, I learned, can also hold us. They can be a place of rest, of transformation. To descend into memory is to trust that we can breathe there, that we can survive the telling. It is to offer our younger selves the kindness we may not have received, to say, "You did not deserve what happened. You are worthy of love."
This is not easy work. It asks us to sit with discomfort, to let go of old stories that no longer serve us. It asks us to be gentle—with ourselves, with those who hurt us, with the parts of our history that remain unresolved. But in the act of looking, we become witnesses to our own lives. We reclaim our narrative, our voice, our right to be whole.

What Healing Looks Like
Healing is not a straight line. It is a winding path, full of detours and setbacks, moments of clarity and days of doubt. For me, healing began when I stopped running from my story and started listening to it. When I allowed myself to feel the grief, the anger, the longing for what might have been.
As I confronted the past, I found a deeper self-understanding—a freedom from patterns that once defined me. I learned to recognize the ways I had tried to disappear, to make myself small, to earn love by being useful or invisible. I learned, too, that I could choose differently. That I could build a life rooted in truth, in connection, in the quiet certainty that I am enough.
Community became my lifeline—service, friendship, the simple act of showing up for others. Small acts of kindness, both given and received, became the stones on which I built my new life. I moved from surviving to thriving, from silence to song. But I do not pretend that the work is finished. Healing is ongoing, a practice of returning—again and again—to the deep waters, trusting that each time I surface, I am more whole than before.
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An Invitation: Come to the Water
  If you are reading this and feeling the pull of your own past, I invite you to begin—gently, courageously, with compassion. You do not have to dive in all at once. You can start at the shoreline, dipping your toes, letting the memories come as they will. Trust that you are stronger than you know, that the waters of your history can hold you.
  Looking back is not about getting stuck in what was, but about making peace with it. It is about finding the gifts hidden in the shadows—the resilience, the tenderness, the capacity for hope. It is about becoming whole, not in spite of what happened, but because you dared to face it.
  My memoir, Deep Waters: A Memoir of Childhood, Betrayal & Becoming Whole, launches on August 15th — and it is my offering to you: a companion for your own journey into the past. May it remind you that you are not alone, that your story matters, and that healing is possible, even in the deepest waters.
I would be honored to have you join me at the launch on August 15th as we step into these waters together.
  Come with me. We can breathe here.​

We attended a Damron reunion. My father dropped us off with our mother. He didn't attend since my mother's father, Grandpa Damron, stopped speaking to my father when my mother ran off to Greenup, Kentucky to marry. Back row, left to right: Bobby, David, Esther, the author, Mom and Debbie, Front row: Martha, Eva Linda, Mary Anne.

Nancy E. Randolph is the author of Deep Waters: A Memoir of Childhood, Betrayal & Becoming Whole (High Point Books), launching August 15th. At seventy-two, she writes to honor the stories that shaped her and to invite others into the healing power of looking back.