How abandonment is affecting me today.

"It sounds corny, but I've promised my inner child that never again will I ever abandon myself for anything or anyone else again." 
Wynonna Judd

Here is the You Tube video link if it does not show up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OYxd4J8xco&feature=youtu.be You can also view this blog in your Browser. 

I buried years of abandonment issues, and only now as I approach my 65th Birthday am I beginning to unwrap my life's events. I enrolled in a course that I believed would help me to help others in writing, speaking, and in their businesses. I learned all of that, but I also learned a lot about myself. That was a surprise. The last three months have been a lot of work, not just class room work, but Zoom meetings, writing papers, and research, taking time to go back to the beginning of my life; and do a timeline of significant events. I've done it before. I know timeline exercises work.
But this time I didn't just do the timeline and move on, I had to share it with my classmates, and their reactions to my story took me off guard. I had just did the exercise as if it were for someone else, but when I shared it in class, out loud, their reactions and comments awakened to me, that it was my life. I had lived this timeline. I had been abandoned over and over and over again; from before conception all the way through my adult life. 

Some of their comments were, "I bet you're really clingy to your husband?" My knee jerk response was, "No, not at all." Someone else said, "So, I guess you have a really hard time trusting us?" I smiled kindly into the computer screen protecting myself from being exposed and just listened. I wanted to cry, but wasn't sure what nerve they had hit for what seemed like an eternity, as pain well up and tried to run out my eyes. As others started to share, I realized for the first time I was an adult struggling with abandonment issues from my childhood--and those issues were keeping me from being my best self, and forbidding others from seeing the real me. 

It was not easy as an adult seeing all the tragedy in my family lineage. I wondered why so many of the women had experienced abandonment. This made me study everything I could find on the subject. I continue to learn all I can, and have begun to write a book on the subject. I have learned that once you can feel it--you can heal it. I had been protecting myself for so long from feeling anything. I had guarded all my buttons, afraid of who might push them. Then, I learned it's not who or what pushes your buttons, but who programed you? If I was programed once, then I can be re-programed. I went to the word of God but, I also went to the Lord Himself; and some good people in the field that could help me. What I am learning is so much more than what I had enrolled in the class to learn. It was a set-up by God, and I am so grateful for the set-up; because only now can I share what I have learned with you.

ACTION STEP:  Do a timeline of significant events in your life. Do it in increments. Take zero to five years old, five to ten years old, and keep going on a horizontal line. Writing events down as you remember them. I have very few childhood memories, but children of trauma don't remember a lot about their early years. So, just write what you can remember, and keep going. Here are some examples to get you thinking. I will be back tomorrow to share another significant event in my life timeline.