Healing Abandonment Experiences

I was reading a WordPress blog that I stumbled into the other day and it really hit home.  It is a topic that I normally don't hear people talk that much about, let alone share it from their personal experience.  I've went through abandonment, maybe not like some people, but in a more covert way.  I'm not sure it makes any difference how it happened, as the effects are all the same.

Another story I remember beside my own was a roommate I had in college.  He was a very nice guy and seemed to get along great with people.  He had a great personality and was fun loving in nature.  I still remember the day when he and I were talking and he shared something very personal.  He told me that a social services worker had found him in a garbage can.  His own mother for reasons he did not know, left him in a garbage can.  He could have died.  I don't remember how young he was, but I think he was just a baby.

My story is not that dramatic as this roommate story is on abandonment.  However, what I went through was more covert and more subtle.  Yes, there was the time in the hospital when I was just a baby that my mom had to choose between being close to my father who had hepatitis or stay with me.  I'm sure it wasn't that she didn't want to be with me, but he had much more control over her and he was extremely insecure.  Of course, there is no way I can recollect this in my memory, but my body still feels it.


There were other moments that I went through from being locked in a closet by a babysitter all day long, to having family members stop talking to you for days and weeks because you did something they deemed to be wrong or sinful.  Keep in mind, that the act of wrong or sin might have been as benign as letting a door slam shut by mistake or putting the silverware away wrong in a drawer.  The silent treatment was one of the ways we were taught that if you did not do what the family wanted and do it when they wanted, you were going to be abandoned.

We were taught as children that we had a family of love and that God loved us.  We were taught that if we strived to be perfect and Christ-like that there would be plenty of love to go around.  Only if we made a mistake or screwed up or sinned, would that love vanish for an unknown amount of time.  This was taught to us every day of our life and especially on Sunday by the minister, Sunday school teacher, and all those that were supposedly looking out for our common good and welfare.  The thing is, we were taught that it was up to us whether others (Jesus included) showed us love or it was withheld and we were abandoned.

I was also abandoned when the sexual abuse and rape started in at an early age.  Just to have my little powerless body taken over by people that I trusted, was one of the greatest forms of abandonment.  Not only did I feel abandoned by the evil monsters that did this to me, but I had to disconnect from my own physical, mental, and emotional body in order to survive.  I had to do the same thing to myself that was being done to me.  Unfortunately these events happened multiple times by different people.

Please click on "Healing Abandonment Issues" for the continuation of this blog post.

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Blog Post And Images (c) 4/11/13 by Don Shetterly

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