Abandonment: the wound that keeps on weeping

We feel the pain to heal it

‘In sickness and in health’

I chose my husband wisely.

He’s kind, loyal, supportive and I know he loves the bones of me and accepts me as I am.

My logical brain tells me he won’t desert me, that he’ll always be by my side (for as long as humanly possible).

Yet deep in my subconscious, there’s a fear that he’ll leave if I show up as anything less than perfect.

That he’ll throw in the towel if I’m not the best version of myself all the time.

That he’ll walk away if he discovers the extent of the mess that lies within.

My fear defies all logic, because the facts are as follows:

My husband read my blog, From Forty With Love, before we got together.

He read about the tears and the mood swings.

The existential crises.

The questions I had about being single and childless at forty.

He knew I was an emotional rollercoaster, a woman who felt things deeply, wore her heart on her sleeve and struggled at times with her mental health.

He knew what he was getting himself into when he got down on one knee.

Now, the truth is the last few years have been tough.

The emotional rollercoaster has had more troughs than peaks.

Covid triggered some health issues in me and peri-menopause has been no walk in the park.

I haven’t felt anything like the best version of myself.

But I know that when my husband vowed on our wedding day to be with me “in sickness and in health”, he meant it with all his heart, because that’s the kind of man he is.

So, what’s with this fear that he’ll abandon me?

What’s with this underlying dread that he’ll take a hike?

Based on today’s reality and what I know of his character, it doesn’t make sense.

And that tells me something.

That tells me that the fear that he’ll leave is rooted in my past, that it’s a present-day manifestation of my childhood abandonment wound.

A wound that keeps on weeping, despite many years of healing.

An onion that has many layers.

Historical wounds

There’s a phrase that’s helped me a lot over the years and that I often pass on to my coaching clients.

When it’s hysterical, it’s historical.

Before I elaborate, I invite you to put to one side the negative connotations of hysterical and its association with the repression of women in the nineteenth century.

We could replace hysterical with a kinder word but we’d lose the rhyme, which is helpful to remember the phrase.

What we’re referring to here is the idea that when we feel extreme emotions that are disproportionate to the circumstances or that seem exaggerated in relation to reality, something else is going on.

Our past has infiltrated our present.

We are feeling unresolved distress or anger or anxiety or grief or other emotions from our early life.

In short, we are triggered, and we are feeling the feelings we felt back then, or we’re feeling the feelings that we couldn’t feel back then and that got trapped inside.

So, my fears that my husband will leave me, which are ungrounded, come from my early life abandonment wounds, the pain of which I have largely processed, although some of it lingers.

What were these abandonment wounds?

Like the onion, they have many layers.

There was my parents’ separation and subsequent divorce, in particular the moment my dad sat me on his knee and told me he was moving out and I assumed it was all my fault, that there was something wrong with me (because that’s what kids do if nobody tells them any different).

There was the moment he surprised us with the news that he was in a relationship with another woman, and that he would be marrying this woman we had barely met.

There was the belief I held, from a very early age, that it was my job to keep my mother happy (an impossible task due to her own mental health struggles); that it was my responsibility to keep her alive.

Beneath these wounds, there are the deeper emotional needs that went unmet from the moment I emerged from the womb and struggled to connect with my mum or dad, because they struggled to connect with me.

This is the core abandonment - the feeling that I shouldn’t be here and that I don’t belong and that I’m not safe and that there must be something very wrong with me if nobody is connecting with me emotionally, if nobody is seeing me, soothing me and helping me to feel safe.

It was nobody’s fault. The abandonment wounds are generational. My parents did the best they could with what they had been given, with the wounds they carried.

But this doesn’t take away from the fact that I felt bereft as a child, until I found some unhealthy but effective coping mechanisms to push the feelings down (overeating, overworking and people-pleasing).

Your abandonment wounds

I share my abandonment journey with you for a few reasons:

1. I’m a writer and I feel compelled to share my experience through words, as a form of catharsis and as an act of service

2. I know some of you will have your own abandonment wounds, perhaps buried beneath the surface, and I’d like to support you to understand how they might show up in your life and your relationships.

Our abandonment wounds often conceal themselves in our subconscious.

We have no idea that they are there.

They then pop up in strange ways in our relationships, sometimes imperceptibly, sometimes dramatically.

Your abandonment wounds may lead you to abandon yourself - to neglect yourself, to mistreat yourself. You may struggle to nourish yourself with food, or drink enough water, or set boundaries with family members, at work or on dates.

Or

Your abandonment wounds may lead you into relationships with emotionally unavailable people because there is no chance of these people truly loving you or of forming a truly intimate relationship with you, which suits your subconscious just fine because it reduces the chances of you getting seriously hurt.

Or

They keep you in unsatisfactory relationships - romantically or platonically, in your life or career - because your fear of abandonment and your hunger for attachment are so strong they override the intuitive voice that tells you to get out of the relationship because it’s not good for you.

Or

They silence you and censor you when you have something important to say, because you’re afraid you’ll be abandoned if you show up as your true self and have a voice.

Or

They keep you small when you deserve to be bigger, to be seen and to be heard.

Healing can happen

If you can relate to having an abandonment wound or to the behaviours I outline above, please know that there is hope.

This stuff goes deep, but it can be healed.

You will likely have to look within, identify the wounds, talk about the wounds, dismantle the old foundations and faulty core beliefs, lay new foundations, help yourself to feel safe, and learn to show up for yourself every day rather than abandon yourself. And you will likely need support to do this.

But transformation is possible.

I know this from experience, despite what I’ve written above about the fear of abandonment still showing up now and then, especially when I’m feeling vulnerable or unwell.

The truth is I healed my abandonment wound enough to break the hold of a decades-long chronic eating disorder and to learn to love, nourish and care for myself.

I healed my abandonment wound enough to break the pattern of falling for emotionally unavailable men who wouldn’t commit to me or who would get close and then walk away.

I healed my abandonment wound enough to find and fall in love with a loyal, supportive, emotionally available man who shows no signs of leaving.

I healed my abandonment wound enough to be able to stand in my kitchen the other night and tell my lovely husband that I’m writing this blog and that I have a deep abandonment wound and a voice that still creeps in, despite years of healing, growth and recovery, and warns me that he’ll leave if I’m not perfect.

And I healed my abandonment wound enough to choose a man who is capable of having this conversation, of hearing me and of smiling and joking that I’d have to do something a lot worse for him to leave me - his way of saying that he’s not going anywhere, that he’s here to stay.

All while we’re washing the dishes.

Taking risks

There are no guarantees in life and zero guarantees in love.

If we have an abandonment wound, we will naturally be scared to take risks with our hearts.

Yet, without risk, we won’t experience true love. We won’t find true connection.

We’ll hover on the periphery, sit on the sidelines, arms folded over our chest, refusing to participate in this risky business of life and love.

But the more we process and heal our abandonment wounds and peel off those layers of the onion, the more willing we will be to step off the bench, leave the sidelines and open our heart and our arms to the gift of human connection and intimate relationships, despite the absence of guarantees.

I share this with you to encourage you to open your eyes, if they need opening, so that you can see the forces at play beneath your relationship dynamics, so that you can see the abandonment wounds that are pulling your strings and so that you can heal them and keep moving forwards.

As ever, the journey starts with learning to be there for yourself, to be by your side and to be on your side.

How will you do this today?

Upcoming Workshops

I have two online workshops coming up in April and it would be lovely to see you and support you: ‘How to Stop Emotional Overeating’ and ‘Stop People-Pleasing & Be True to Yourself’. You can explore the workshops via the button below.