Healing Doesn’t Always Happen All at Once: David Deane Haskell on Inner Child Healing, Shame, and Finding His Way Back to Himself

Sep 22

“It does get better. But slowly.”

For more than 40 years, David Deane Haskell carried shame connected to something that happened when he was far too young to understand it.

His mother died by suicide when he was four. At nine, David learned more about the circumstances of her death and experienced what he now describes as an overwhelming “shame attack.” He carried that fear, grief, and unearned shame with him for decades.

In this episode of Spiritual Friction, David joins me for a deeply vulnerable conversation about addiction, codependency, inner child healing, spirituality, loneliness, and the slow process of finding his way back to himself.

His story is not one of suddenly waking up healed.

It is a story about what can happen when we stop running from the parts of ourselves that have been asking to be understood.

The parts of us that get left behind

David describes his inner child not as one singular younger self, but as different parts of himself connected to experiences that became frozen in time.

There is the “lonely boy” sitting in a bedroom filled with toys but wishing he had friends to play with.

There are the “runaways”—younger versions of David who ran away from home and became lost.

And there is the “shame shocked boy,” the nine-year-old carrying fear and shame after learning about his mother’s death.

For years, many of these experiences remained buried.

David tells me that one of those childhood memories did not fully return to his awareness until he was 55.

And perhaps there is something meaningful in the timing.

The memory surfaced while he was somewhere he felt grounded and safe—somewhere, as he put it, where he quite literally couldn't get lost.

Sometimes the parts of us we have pushed away do not need to be forced into the light.

Sometimes they emerge when there is finally enough room to meet them.

“Oh, you feel like that too?”

David spent years trying to find his way through addiction, trauma, and codependent relationships.

Traditional talk therapy, he says, was not particularly helpful for him. But connecting with other people who had lived through similar experiences was.

There was something powerful in realizing:

“Oh, I’m not alone. Oh, you feel like that too? Oh, my God.”

That part of our conversation stayed with me because healing does not always happen in isolation.

Sometimes we need another human being who can sit beside an experience long enough for us to realize that what we have spent years carrying privately is part of a much larger human story.

We need language.

We need understanding.

And sometimes, we simply need to be witnessed.

Healing wasn't a single breakthrough

When I asked David when everything began to change, he didn't give me a dramatic turning point.

“There wasn’t any singular moment. It’s been a years-long process.”

That matters.

We hear so many stories about transformation that compress years of painful, complicated growth into one breakthrough.

David's story doesn't do that.

He talks openly about how long it took to recognize his codependency, how difficult it was to leave relationships that were familiar even when they were no longer healthy, and how slowly his relationship with himself began to change.

When someone once told him that he might begin feeling better after a year of working on his codependency, his immediate reaction was essentially: A year?

But eventually, he did.

And years later, he can look back and say:

“It does get better. But slowly. And it is beautiful in its own way, but that doesn’t make the pain any less painful.”

From escaping himself to coming home to himself

David's healing has included recovery from drugs and alcohol, examining codependent relationships, inner child work, community, creativity, meditation, spirituality, and learning to care for himself in ways that once felt foreign.

In 2020, while sitting near the ocean in Japan, he had a spiritual experience that changed his relationship with being alive.

Looking toward the horizon, he became aware of how vast the world around him was—and how easily his own life might have ended years earlier.

He remembers realizing:

“I’m here. I’m alive, and I’m glad I’m alive.”

Today, David says he is no longer lonely in the way he once was.

When I asked what changed, his answer was simple:

“Getting well.”

Addressing the addiction. The codependency. The trauma. The inner child wounds.

Not perfectly.

Not all at once.

But little by little.

Maybe healing is learning not to abandon ourselves

Near the end of our conversation, David returns again and again to something deceptively simple: self-care.

A walk.

Fresh air.

Rest.

Breathing.

Talking to someone you trust.

Small acts that can feel almost meaningless when you're deep inside depression, grief, or shame.

David acknowledges that, too.

When you're struggling, he says, caring for yourself may feel “stupid” or like a waste of time.

But sometimes we begin by going through the motions.

Not because one walk will heal decades of pain.

But because every time we choose to care for ourselves, perhaps we are practicing a different relationship with the person we once learned to abandon.

David's story doesn't promise that healing will happen overnight.

It offers something quieter:

Evidence that a life can change.

That the parts of ourselves we buried can be met differently.

That community can remind us we aren't alone.

And that even after years of believing there was something fundamentally wrong with us, we may eventually discover another possibility.

Perhaps the question was never simply:

“What’s wrong with me?”

Perhaps there was always another question waiting underneath it:

What happened—and what becomes possible when those parts of me finally feel understood?