When You’ve Been Abandoned

 Dominique Mack
Dominique Mack

Pain is something we never get use to and none of us are immune. Either unknowingly or deliberately along life’s journey we’ve all encountered circumstances that have left us bruised. We’ve learned to familiarize ourselves with trauma and how to operate accordingly. Some of us abandoned long before we knew how to decipher the course, survival became our focus, instead of repairing the damage that made us ill equipped to begin.

Maybe your father walked out on you when you were two or twenty-two. Your mother died before you learned the lessons of womanhood, forced to become an adult before your time. Maybe they never physically left, but somehow you felt alone. Maybe your silent tears went unheard. No one listened. No one watched. No one asked you.

Maybe it was a divorce. Someone gave up too quickly. Told a lie too many times or just once. Broke a simple promise. Maybe they were uninterested. Made you feel unimportant or wrong.

Maybe you were controlled, criticized into submission. Misunderstood or devalued. Maybe they never accepted you just as you are: your sexuality, your choices, your beliefs, your attitude.

Maybe all you ever wanted was to gain their attention, acknowledgment, love. Someone to catch you when you were falling.

When you’ve been abandoned…

It unsettles your faith and fear often consumes you. It’s difficult to distinguish the past from the present. And living in a habitual state of emergency is normalcy. Abandonment sets the course of every relationship we will have. Some of us, never quite feel safe in our own shoes or even in the arms of God. We tend to fear that everyone will leave us. We devise lies to cover the truth, inherently plan escape routes to leave them before they leave us, alienate people with our behavior, and/or become easily codependent in relationships.

The only way to break the cycle of abandonment is forgiveness. Accepting people for who they are and loving them for who they aren’t. Identify the mistakes and not repeating them. Investigating what made the abandonment occur in the first place. Asking the question: What happened to them that made them this way? Being okay with never having the answer and there being no resolve.

Abandonment is an issue that stops with me.

I promise you my daughter that I will never abandon you in your pain. I will see you for you and not through the eyes, I’ve formed for myself. I won’t ever punish you for being who you are. But, sometimes I’ll mess up and Mommy is not perfect. I can’t live my life for you and I can’t promise I will give you the world. I do promise to be your teacher, confidant, prayer warrior, source of comfort, imperfectly push you towards greatness, and to love you and your Dad with all that I am.

It is my prayer for us that anytime we feel abandoned we seek freedom in our hearts, peace in our God, faith in the possibilities, and resolution in the change agent that is the generation that lies ahead of us.

Dominique Mack is a writer, counselor, and advocate whose vision is to help people heal through their own stories. She hails from Brunswick, GA and regularly blogs for those finding their way at: http://aregulargirlthatlovesthelord.tumblr.com/

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