10/31/2026
A MESSAGE TO THE MOTHERLESS
The Little Child Within
By Kenneth Fuller
A Personal Testimony of Abandonment, Childhood Trauma, Faith, and the Discovery of a Mother’s Love
For those who grew up without the nurturing, protection, and unconditional love every child deserves.
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PART ONE
The Childhood We Survive
A personal testimony in four parts | Approximately 15–20 minutes of reading
This is a longer, deeply personal reflection on childhood abandonment, emotional healing, faith, and the enduring need for a mother’s love.
The story unfolds in four parts. I invite you to make some hot tea, take your time, and read it in its entirety, allow yourself to reflect along the way.
Some stories deserve more than a passing glance. This is one of them.
There are wounds we carry from childhood that time does not necessarily heal.
Some become so deeply embedded in our emotional lives that we learn to live around them. We grow older, establish families, build careers, develop our spirituality, and become productive members of society. We learn to function, adapt, and, in many instances, excel.
But somewhere inside, there may still be a little child waiting.
Waiting to be held.
Waiting to be reassured.
Waiting for someone to say, “Everything is going to be okay.”
This is a message for that child.
It is a message for those who grew up without a mother’s embrace, without a father’s guidance, and without the reassuring presence of someone who made them feel safe in the world.
It is also my story.
I was born in the 1950s and raised in the American South. I grew up motherless and fatherless. Like many Black children of that generation, I was raised hard. We learned early that life was not necessarily going to accommodate our vulnerabilities. We were expected to endure, persevere, and keep moving.
For some of us, childhood was less about being nurtured and more about learning how to survive.
My circumstances were complicated further by childhood polio. My early years included molestation, parental physical abuse, hospitalization, corrective surgery, and seven operations over approximately nine years.
I would eventually become a survivor of Post-Polio Syndrome, carrying the physical consequences of that childhood illness into adulthood.
But physical disability was only one part of my experience.
There was also the emotional experience of growing up without the maternal and paternal nurturing that helps a child develop a sense of security, belonging, and trust.
For a long time, I understood the physical challenges of my childhood more readily than I understood the emotional ones.
I knew what it meant to have a body that had been through considerable adversity. I understood rehabilitation, perseverance, and the necessity of adapting to circumstances beyond my control.
What I did not fully understand was what happens to a child’s emotional development when the nurturing presence of parents is missing.
That understanding would take much longer.
And, as I would discover, some of the deepest questions about our childhood can remain unanswered for decades.
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PART TWO
A Lifetime of Seeking Understanding
My spiritual journey began when I was very young.
I was raised in the Missionary Baptist tradition. At six years old, I became a disciple of Christ. I participated in my first Communion and asked Jesus to come into my heart. I experienced something profound in that moment, something that has remained with me throughout my life.
It became a spiritual foundation that informed my understanding of faith, purpose, and my relationship with God.
By the age of fifteen, I had begun preaching as a licensed minister. I subsequently served as a pastor and evangelist.
But my spiritual curiosity extended beyond the boundaries of my religious upbringing.
Throughout my life, I have been fascinated by humanity’s relationship with the Divine. I have explored spirituality through what I regard as spiritual anthropology: examining how human beings, across cultures and civilizations, understand the sacred, express their beliefs, experience transcendence, and seek meaning.
My travels took me into centuries-old Catholic monasteries, Buddhist temples in Hong Kong, and sacred places such as Machu Picchu.
In Haiti, I spent a week observing and exploring the anthropology, cultural traditions, and spiritual practices of Haitian Vodou. During that experience, I had the privilege of spending time with Max Gesner Beauvoir, the renowned Haitian spiritual leader known as the Ati and Supreme Serviteur of Haitian Vodou. He became a spiritual mentor to me.
My journey also took me to Ile-Ife, Nigeria, the ancestral and spiritual heartland of the Yoruba people.
Under the authority of the Araba Agbaye, I underwent legitimate initiation and received recognition as a chief. I also hold the honorary distinction of Babalawo.
During that journey, my wife and I visited the palace of the Ooni of Ife and met His Imperial Majesty in person. I have photographs documenting these experiences, including moments associated with my ceremonial recognition.
These were not simply excursions or opportunities to observe unfamiliar cultures. They were meaningful encounters with living spiritual traditions and the people entrusted with preserving them.
I have never regarded my exploration of different spiritual traditions as a rejection of my spiritual beginnings. Rather, I have viewed it as an extension of a lifelong search for understanding.
Yet, for all the places I have visited, all the traditions I have encountered, and all the years I have spent exploring spirituality, something profoundly personal remained unresolved.
It concerned the little boy I once was.
And that brings me to the experience I want to share.
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PART THREE
The Little Boy in the Hospital Crib
Recently, I found myself praying the Rosary, directing my intentions toward the Blessed Virgin Mary.
My prayer was deeply personal.
I was asking for healing for my inner child. I wanted to understand and address the emotional trauma associated with abandonment, the absence of maternal affection, and the lack of nurturing during my formative years.
As I prayed, I began revisiting memories and emotions I had carried throughout my life.
Then something extraordinary happened.
I experienced a vision.
I was three years old.
I was in the hospital recovering from my first corrective operation, the first of seven surgeries I would undergo over approximately nine years.
What came back to me was an image I had carried somewhere deep within my consciousness.
I was in a hospital crib.
It had tall iron bars, and because I was so small, it looked almost like a jail cell. The bars were imposing. I was little, vulnerable, and alone.
I was uncovered.
One of my legs was encased in a cast following the operation. I had apparently awakened from the anesthesia sometime after surgery, perhaps the day before.
I was in pain.
I cried.
I called out.
I screamed.
And nobody came.
I cried throughout the night, waiting for someone to respond to the distress of a three-year-old child who did not understand what had happened to him or why he was alone.
Imagine being that small.
Imagine awakening from surgery, experiencing pain you cannot understand, surrounded by unfamiliar surroundings, and having no familiar arms to reach for.
Imagine crying until your little voice is exhausted and still having no one come.
Eventually, a nurse entered the room.
I remember her appearance.
She wore the traditional white nursing uniform of that era, a white cap, white stockings, white shoes, and a white mask.
But what I remember most vividly were her eyes.
They were kind.
She approached my crib and lifted me into her arms.
There was a rocking chair in the corner of the room, as there often was in hospital rooms of that period.
She carried me over to the chair and cradled me against her chest.
She began humming and singing softly.
She rocked me gently, rubbing my exposed leg and my little arms. She held me close and comforted me.
There was no interrogation, no expectation that I should stop crying or be brave.
She simply held me.
And something happened.
The pain began to subside.
For the first time that night, I felt safe.
As I drifted toward sleep, I remember hearing her say:
“You’re going to be okay, little one.”
She placed me gently back into the crib.
That was the image.
That was the memory.
And it would take many decades before I understood what that experience would come to mean to me.
A Story That Had Already Been Told
There is something important I want readers to understand about this experience. This is not a story I have only recently begun telling, nor is it a memory I have constructed to explain a recent spiritual experience.
Years ago, I shared my life story and spiritual experiences in considerable detail with Christine Wicker, a New York Times bestselling author and former religion reporter for The Dallas Morning News. She included my story under my spiritual and professional pseudonym, Dr. Kioni, in her 2005 HarperCollins book, Not in Kansas Anymore: A Curious Tale of How Magic Is Transforming America. As I recall, three chapters of the book were devoted to my life and experiences.
One of those chapters carries the title “What to Do When the Mother of God Comes Calling.” That title is especially meaningful in the context of this testimony. It introduces readers to my experiences as Dr. Kioni and to the spiritual encounters I had shared with Christine Wicker.
I mention this because the story I am telling today has a history. These experiences were shared and written about long before my recent Rosary prayer. The prayer did not create the story; it brought me back to it in a profoundly personal way.
What has changed is my understanding of the little boy at the center of it all.
For many years, I remembered the circumstances of that hospital room, the pain, the loneliness, and the kindness of the nurse who held me. During my recent prayer, I experienced a deeper spiritual meaning in that memory—one that I am still absorbing.
I am sharing this history so readers can understand that this testimony is part of a much longer journey. It is a story of a childhood experience, a lifetime of spiritual searching, and a moment of prayer that brought me face to face with the little child within me.
The Revelation
As I sat in prayer, revisiting that experience, I felt something profound in my heart.
In the stillness of that moment, the Blessed Virgin Mary spoke to me inwardly.
The message I received was this:
“I was that woman. And I am your mother.
Though you were raised in an environment without motherly love or nurturing, I made sure that my fingerprint was placed upon your soul.
You felt my touch. You felt my love.
And that is why you are the man you are today.
Because only a mother’s love can make a heart like yours.”
I cannot adequately describe what that moment meant to me.
It was not an intellectual explanation or a theological argument. It was deeply personal, spiritual, and emotional.
Something that had remained unexplained for most of my life had suddenly been given a different meaning.
I had spent so many years understanding my childhood through the circumstances of abandonment and deprivation.
I knew what was missing.
I knew what I had not received.
I knew the consequences of growing up without the guidance and affection that a mother and father can provide.
But perhaps there was another dimension to my story.
Perhaps the love I had missed in the ordinary circumstances of childhood had nevertheless found a way to touch me.
And perhaps that little boy had not been entirely alone.
I want to be careful about how I express this.
I am not sharing this experience to aggrandize myself or suggest that I am somehow more spiritually enlightened than someone else.
I am sharing it because the revelation spoke directly to something I had struggled to understand about myself.
How does a person who experienced so much deprivation retain the capacity to love?
How does someone who was not adequately nurtured develop such a deep longing to nurture others?
How does someone who spent so much of childhood needing comfort become someone who wants to comfort others?
I do not claim to have all the answers.
But that night, I experienced an understanding that brought me a measure of peace.
And perhaps that is where healing sometimes begins: not necessarily with an explanation of everything that happened, but with a new understanding of the person we became despite it.
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PART FOUR
The Wounds We Carry and the Healing We Deserve
There is something I want those who have experienced childhood abandonment or emotional neglect to understand.
The effects of growing up without nurturing do not necessarily disappear when we become adults.
We may become accomplished, educated, responsible, independent, and successful.
We may raise families.
We may become caregivers to others.
We may become ministers, teachers, leaders, and people upon whom others depend.
But our emotional development does not always keep pace with our chronological age.
Some of us struggle to trust.
Some have difficulty receiving affection.
Some become uncomfortable when someone gets too close.
Some are easily triggered by circumstances that seem insignificant to others but awaken something painful within us.
Some have spent a lifetime trying to understand why relationships are difficult, why we sometimes withdraw, why vulnerability feels threatening, or why the smallest expressions of rejection can feel disproportionately painful.
We may have developed extraordinary independence because depending on someone once meant being disappointed.
We may have learned to become caregivers to everyone else because we understand what it means to need care and not receive it.
And sometimes, despite our accomplishments, our education, our families, and our years of experience, there remains a little child inside us who is still waiting.
These are not character defects.
Childhood abandonment and emotional neglect can influence attachment, trust, emotional regulation, and our ability to experience emotional security.
When nurturing is absent, we may grow into adulthood without having experienced the consistent reassurance that helps a child develop a secure sense of belonging.
We learn to protect ourselves.
We learn to anticipate disappointment.
We learn to read the emotional temperature of a room.
We learn to be self-sufficient, sometimes to a degree that makes it difficult to accept help even when it is offered sincerely.
And sometimes we mistake those survival strategies for our personalities.
We say, “That’s just the way I am.”
But perhaps some of those behaviors are not simply who we are.
Perhaps they are adaptations to what we experienced.
Understanding does not mean excusing every behavior. It means recognizing our patterns, taking responsibility for our present relationships, and giving ourselves the opportunity to make different choices.
We are not broken because we were not adequately loved.
We are not unworthy because someone failed to nurture us.
We are not incapable of loving because we did not receive the love we needed.
And we do not have to remain imprisoned in the emotional circumstances of our childhood.
An Invitation to Be Still
I shared aspects of my experiences with a Catholic priest back in the 1990s. As I have explained, I also shared my story in considerable detail with Christine Wicker, whose book provides an earlier published account of my life and spiritual experiences.
I am sharing this testimony publicly because I believe there are people who need to hear this message.
I am not suggesting that everyone must interpret their experiences as I have interpreted mine.
I am not suggesting that spirituality replaces the important work of emotional healing.
And I am certainly not suggesting that one religious tradition has a monopoly on compassion, understanding, or the experience of the sacred.
My spiritual background and exploration have taught me that the human longing for love, meaning, and connection crosses religious and cultural boundaries.
The experience of being motherless is not denominational.
The experience of being fatherless is not denominational.
Abandonment does not recognize religious boundaries.
And the human longing to be held, protected, nurtured, and loved is universal.
So I invite you to do something.
Find a quiet place.
Be still.
Sit with the child you once were.
If you believe in God, speak to the God of your heart.
If prayer is part of your life, pray honestly.
Do not be afraid to bring your pain, your anger, your unanswered questions, and your memories into that sacred silence.
Ask for the spiritual readjustment and realignment that you may not have received during your formative years.
Allow yourself to acknowledge what happened without allowing what happened to become the final definition of who you are.
And if you need professional help navigating those wounds, allow yourself to receive that help, too. There is no shame in seeking support.
Healing does not require us to pretend the past was different.
It requires us to recognize the past without surrendering the remainder of our lives to it.
You deserved nurturing then.
You deserve tenderness now.
The Mystery Finally Explained
For much of my life, I understood that I had grown up without the maternal and paternal guidance and affection that so many children take for granted.
I understood the circumstances.
I understood the abandonment.
I understood the absence.
But I did not fully understand how deeply those experiences had shaped me.
I had spent years becoming strong, becoming independent, becoming the person life demanded that I become.
Yet I had not necessarily understood the little boy who was still somewhere inside me.
In prayer, I experienced something that changed the way I look at that little boy and the life he has lived.
I remembered the crib.
I remembered the pain.
I remembered the crying.
But I also remembered the nurse.
I remembered her arms, her gentle touch, her humming, and those kind eyes looking down at me.
And most importantly, I remembered the words:
“You’re going to be okay, little one.”
Perhaps that was the reassurance I had been waiting a lifetime to hear.
I cannot go back and change what happened to that three-year-old child.
I cannot recreate the childhood I did not have.
I cannot rewrite the circumstances that shaped my early years.
But I can finally look upon that little boy with compassion rather than simply examining the wounds he carried into adulthood.
I can acknowledge what he endured.
I can recognize what he needed.
And I can stop expecting him to have been stronger than a three-year-old child should ever have had to be.
I can tell him that he made it.
He survived.
He grew up.
He learned to love.
And he is still here.
A Final Message to the Motherless
To the motherless, the fatherless, the abandoned, and those who grew up longing for an embrace that never came:
YOUR STORY IS NOT OVER.
You may have been deprived of a mother’s arms, a father’s guidance, or the security of a nurturing home, but you are not beyond the reach of love.
You are not defined exclusively by what happened to you.
You are not required to spend the remainder of your life proving that you can survive without the love you once needed.
There is still healing available to you.
There is still tenderness waiting to be experienced.
There is still a life beyond the pain of what you did not receive.
Perhaps we must begin by acknowledging something we have spent a lifetime avoiding:
We were children.
We needed protection.
We needed affection.
We needed reassurance.
We needed someone to come when we cried.
And there was nothing unreasonable about those needs.
We cannot change the childhood we experienced. But we can change the way we understand it, the way we respond to its wounds, and the way we move forward.
Perhaps the first step is to stop abandoning the little child inside us.
Go back for that child.
Hold that child.
Listen to that child.
Give that child permission to grieve what was missing.
And then tell that child what someone should have told you all those years ago:
“You’re going to be okay, little one.”
With love, faith, and the hope that every motherless heart may find the way home.
— A personal testimony shared in the hope of understanding, compassion, and healing.
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Publication Reference
Wicker, Christine. Not in Kansas Anymore: A Curious Tale of How Magic Is Transforming America. HarperCollins, 2005.
Wicker’s book includes my experiences shared under the pseudonym Dr. Kioni. Three chapters were devoted to my life and experiences.
