For as long as I can remember, I’ve had this message within me about abandonment wounds.
I didn’t know I would end up on this spiritual path, and I didn’t know I had psychic abilities, but it showed up throughout my life.I'd hear and feel the word abandonment, thinking it was just my brain because I didn't know I could communicate spiritually.
Now I know that it was my Higher Self foreshadowing what I would go through and trying to tell me what I had already been through that I couldn’t see.
I thought abandonment looked like it did in the movies. Parents leaving. Frequent breakups. Frequent deaths. But I lived with both my parents, who are still together even now, and they were always present. Most of my relatives who passed away were older, and it was expected. I never lost anyone I depended on.
I thought you had to really lose someone to feel abandoned. But now I see how I’ve actually been abandoned my whole life. As a kid, it was emotional abandonment. It wasn’t that my parents were of the mindset that feelings were bad. Watching them now with my kids, I can see that they acknowledge feelings readily.
But for some reason, I was different. I marched to the beat of my own drum, and no one really understood. So they criticized me. They shook their head. Made jokes at my expense. And I was told I needed to be able to take a joke. That they were just lovingly teasing me (which caused another wound I’ll save for another story).
Anytime I had a big dream, I was discouraged from it because I needed to be realistic. I needed to understand that I would never be extraordinary.
This type of abandonment is sneaky because the person is right there. Talking to you. Including you. But what’s happening is that they’re abandoning the person you really are for the sake of who they want you to be.
They’re teaching you to abandon yourself.
And once you abandon yourself, you end up surrounded by people who continue to abandon you, and it becomes a pattern.
Even in trying to break this pattern, it’s showing up.
After my divorce, the abandonment started trickling in. First, my parents. Then my best friend. And lastly, my community, including more good friends. And none of these people would see this as abandonment. My parents didn’t go anywhere. My best friend didn’t see it as having made a choice of him over me. But it’s the lack of support and understanding for what I went through. It’s my friend making me feel secondary to my emotionally abusive ex-husband. It’s my parents making it about their grief over mine and accusing me of not trying hard enough, saying things no one should have to listen to their parents say while in the middle of their life collapsing.
It’s the good friend who swore your friendship was forever, only to abandon you when the rest of the community did.
It’s looking around when something new happens, when he hurts you again, and realizing you have no one to really be there for you. Even if it’s not truly their fault. The ones who are still around just don’t understand how the things he says are meant to destroy you, and while they don’t have the same effect as they used to, it still fucking hurts because it reminds you of how it almost did destroy you once upon a time.
It’s the text messages that go all day unanswered while your heart is on fire with anger, fear, and sadness.
I know there are people who think I expect too much. That everyone has lives, and I can’t expect them to drop everything when my feelings get hurt. That’s not what I expect, and the people who think that have never truly been alone, or they're not facing the fact that they're alone too.
But I have been alone my whole life, even when surrounded by those I thought were my community.
It’s not the loneliness that hurts most. It’s the abandonment.
It’s the knowing I haven’t yet found my soul family. My soul tribe. The ones who see me and my special drumbeat, and know when I need to feel understood.
If this is where you are, I want you to know that you aren’t the only one. This has become a norm for a lot of us, but it shouldn’t be.
I want you to know that the abandonment is not your fault. You are not unlovable. There is nothing wrong with you. They’re just not your true people. You’ve found yourself in a pattern of abandonment because you were taught to abandon yourself.
But it’s a pattern that can be broken. We just have to release fear. Fear of being alone. Fear of being judged. Fear of being misunderstood.
We might have to be physically alone for a while as our lives realign, but we’re already alone anyway.
Let yourself grieve what you thought you had or what you wanted with the people around you.
Pull inward and find the person you abandoned inside of you.
And who knows? Maybe one day, when all of us with those special drumbeats stop abandoning ourselves, we’ll all find each other.