Coming Home to Yourself: An Introduction to Parts Work for Women

What Is Parts Work, Literally?

Parts work is a way of understanding our inner world as made up of many different parts—each shaped by experience and trying to play a meaningful role in our lives. Some step in to manage and protect, while others carry the feelings and memories we’ve had to tuck away to survive.

Instead of silencing or pushing these parts aside, as we’re often taught to, we learn to meet them with curiosity and compassion—to understand what they’ve been protecting and what they need to heal.

As trust grows within our system, we begin to reconnect with the parts of us that have been left behind—the tender, young selves who have selflessly carried the weight of our emotional burdens for so long.

Over time, as these relationships soften and repair, we gain fuller access to our core Self—the steady, creative, grounded presence that endures within us, even when we lose touch with it along the way.

Seeing Ourselves Differently as Women

Most women know what it’s like to live with a chorus of inner voices—the caretaker, the perfectionist, the people pleaser, the overthinker, the one who watches the room and tends to others before tending to herself.

We generally see these parts as inconvenient aspects of our personality. Evidence that we’re too much, too sensitive, too controlling, too whatever. But what if they’re not flaws at all? What if they’re protectors—fierce, loyal parts that step in whenever something feels unsafe or uncertain?

When Our History Speaks Through Us

When something in the present brushes up against something old and painful from the past, it’s rarely the adult version of us who reacts. Usually, a much younger part that is hurting and needs our attention steps forward.

Instead of turning toward these young, vulnerable parts, we push past them to cope and keep going. That’s why emotions such as anxiety, sadness, and overwhelm often grow louder: they’re trying hard to be heard.

Imagine if your child came to you absolutely shattered. You would take them in your arms and be their soft place to land. That’s what our parts need from us. They need us to go back in time and collect them. To hold them lovingly. To offer safety. To tell them we know how hard they’ve been working on our behalf, and that it’s okay to rest their heads now.

These parts don’t know time has passed. Nor that we are older and more capable now than we once were. They genuinely believe it is their duty to continue to keep us safe in the only way they’ve ever known how.

For some, safety might mean keeping the peace, taking care of everyone else, or doing everything perfectly so no one can be disappointed. For others, it might mean letting someone cross your boundaries because it feels less scary than confronting them. From the outside, that can look like anxiety, stress, burnout, or overthinking, among other things. But underneath, a frightened, young part is longing to be cared for.

Tuning In Instead of Turning Away

The work isn’t about silencing her. It’s about listening.

And, when we start meeting our parts with kindness instead of criticism, something shifts.

We realize that the very things we’ve judged or tried to “fix” are instead evidence of how hard we’ve worked to survive.

When we begin to understand our triggers as signals for unmet needs, rather than signs that we’re falling apart, we have an opportunity to take pause. To turn inward, and meet our hurt not with suppression, but with the tenderness and support we once needed but didn’t receive.

That’s a very different way of relating to ourselves and understanding our behaviours.

Returning to the Selves We Left Behind

In this way, parts work is both retrieval and reclamation––a true coming home to Self.

Because when we as women learn to meet our inner worlds with compassion—when we go back for our younger selves—not only do we reclaim personal healing, we reclaim collective sovereignty, voice, safety, and power.

When we learn to cultivate safety within our bodies, we can stop outsourcing our worth.

And when we stop treating ourselves like problems to fix, we start to recognize ourselves as sacred ground.

Healing as a Form of Resistance

Mohadesa Najumi once wrote: “The woman who does not require validation from anyone is the most feared individual on the planet.”

This is because she who governs herself by laying firm, healthy boundaries, respecting her time, protecting her energy, and perhaps most importantly, speaking into her voice, is also capable of disrupting the systems that, for generations, have conditioned women into smallness.

When you change your relationship with Self, you change the way you move through the world.

That is the true power of parts work.