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“You can not go back to change the beginning, but you can start from where you are and change the ending.” ~ CS Lewis
I started my life in a poor family with one parent who left when I was a child, never saw or heard from them again, and another who clung to me but made it clear that I did not want to and that I was ruining their life by now.
For some reason, I never had any contact with my parents, grandparents, and very few who had any contact with their extended family.
So as a child I realized that I had no practical help or feelings. No one has to go back, no one softens the influence if something goes wrong. I had to stand on my two feet to survive.
As an abandoned and deceived child, I was independent and patient, and I was driven by the goal of leaving and creating a life for myself. But I can not risk or focus on studying because I do not have a safety net.
During school exams, I would work full time during pre-vacation and part-time during school hours. At that time, I was tired of exams and had little time to edit. At some point in my bachelor’s degree, I was working almost full-time to keep a roof over my head, always living without my excess money.
I kept what had happened and was happening at home inside. I never talked about it. No one knows. All of my friends have two parents and they can not understand my life or provide support. Back then, teachers and other adults were not as knowledgeable as they are now, and I was never asked about my home life or provided support. So there is no mental safety net.
Because I was financially responsible for myself, I really learned about budgeting. This means that when I started my career in my 20s, I excelled faster than my peers. They learned the world of work after university; I have been into it for many years.
Does not fit the profile
Coming to my adulthood, when I found myself in a professional world, my friends would assume I was like them. They will talk about people from single-family homes and broken homes who could not be reached.
I never talked about my situation. It is not something that happens naturally in conversation, and as with many difficult family situations, people are generally awkward in responding and can say things that make you feel worse without realizing it. (I even heard, “My dad will never leave me!”, As if they did not believe or focus on me at all.)
There is no common toolkit for supporting someone who has been abused or abandoned by their family, and it is a topic that is just beginning to be spoken openly in recent social speeches. So I do not know how to talk about myself in a real way when it comes to family.
Every day at work or on social occasions, Christmas or on Mother’s Day, people talk about their native families and assume that others are the same. It is the norm for most people and they struggle to support someone with a different reality.
I realized a few years ago that many of my friends were unaware of my condition, so I felt misunderstood and that the core of my body was invisible.
Filling gaps… Or learning to live with it.
As a child, I decided to start a family, make friends, or choose a family with people I met while studying or at work because I needed people around me. Years later I realized that all my relationships were affected by growing up feeling unwanted and unloved. So I do not understand who I am in my life and I do not understand that I have personal needs in a relationship. If they want to spend time with me, do I have to say no?
This leads to friendships and romantic relationships that at best do not match without a real relationship and at worst are abusive. On the other hand, when the festival comes, my friends’ family will be gone with the real family. So I did not fill the void in my life despite my strength and effort.
I am trying to distract myself from the pain of not having a family by forming new relationships. However, through therapy, I learned that the key is to learn to live with the emptiness of what I am not doing, face it, and really feel the pain.
Reconnecting with myself, especially my children, is the key. I need to take some of the energy I exert to please others and turn it inward to learn to cope with the loss of healing and improve my choices.
A great healer helped me understand that I was living with a form of grief. “Grief is attached to something that is not there,” she explained. I now live with emptiness and pain, sadness, feelings of loss and abandonment, rather than distracting myself from it. Not trying to fix it or complement it, but learning to recognize it is part of my story.
While the pain will not go away completely, I now make choices from where I relate to myself, which leads to more fulfilling relationships and more energy to put into meaningful activities.
Survival and even growth
Growing up without a safety net means focusing on survival. Throughout my childhood I struggled to get somewhere safe and secure with my independence. Between these efforts and what I was enduring, I was exhausted. As an adult, I continued to work towards building my own secure life.
In my mid-thirties, I had some basics: home, security, financial security, and some good people in my life. That’s when it comes to me – I’m imagining and planning for the worst, I’m always on the lookout for normal situations, and I’re tired of myself with endless things.
I still run in survival mode when I do not need to. My body and mind are not yet aware of the fact that I am finally safe. I have to learn to live, not just live.
Some people talk about healing from injury as a return to self, but when you endure it as a child, you are not given the opportunity to know who you are. Who would I be if I were not in survival mode? I need to find out who my core is and learn how to live.
Knowing that this is the first step. I was fortunate to have a great healer, a full course of EMDR to operate and reinstall a new path in my mind, group therapy where I learned from others and other therapies.
There was a time during the installation of EMDR (a process that helps replace negative beliefs with positive ones) when I was asked to imagine what could have helped me as a child during the difficult experiences I had.
The first thing I could think of was to change what was happening to me and have someone there to intervene. But then I dreamed of my son hugging himself. That was what she needed at the time and in many others.
Since then, I have tried to focus on my needs and feed myself, which has helped transform me from practical survival to prosperity.
It was not easy or instantaneous, but after a while of post-mortem treatment, I noticed that I had a lot of energy. It felt like I was carrying a dead weight around me for the rest of my life, lifting and suddenly I felt lighter in my daily activities.
I was able to identify and move away from unhealthy relationships that reduced my negative relationships and increased my positive interactions.
I incorporate this energy into activities that are nutritious and meaningful in my time outside of work, namely volunteering, researching, engaging in active hobbies. In turn, I get the energy from doing it and reach my potential. I became myself. Beyond being a victim of my circumstances, I can grow.
If you are also exploring life without a native family, know that you are living with a form of grief that is less understood and that can not leave you, a life of love, safety and fulfillment is still possible.
The first step is to understand and process what happened to you so you can give yourself the care and nurturing you need. That is what will give you strength, endurance and empathy to grow.
About Nisa Wilkinson
Nisha Wilkinson holds a PhD in War Studies and has worked on international conflict and security for over fifteen years. She is interested in human attitudes that incite violence and insecurity and is an advocate for the socio-economic diversity of voices in state institutions.
