Rejection is one of the most devastating and humiliating emotions humans can have. Even if it’s for surface-level reasons, like your hairstyle or your shoes, it can feel deeply personal. It’s bad enough when you feel rejected by a peer at work or by someone you thought was a friend. Imagine that one of your parents turns away and doesn’t look back.
Kids with an AWOL parent do lots of things to try to restore some sense of balance and security. They become strongly attached, sometimes fixated on objects. They may become more rigid with their routines, more insistent about what they want, more repetitive to create security.
Kids also try many different ways to fill in the void of their absent parent. Older kids may become sexual at an earlier age, or they may try to hide from their pain and anxiety by taking drugs and drinking. They may become familiar with strangers far too easily or too affectionate with people they hardly know well. They may have deep insecurities that affect friendships and dating relationships. They may become depressed because they thought they weren’t good enough to keep their missing parent around.
The other parent and extended family members may feel unsure about how to help the child or children left behind. Often children who have been abandoned have some difficulties for years. However, it doesn’t
mean they are doomed to a lonely life or years of misery. Some children are naturally more resilient than others. Some children have more support than others.
There’s no really good way to tell how a child will adapt to rejection or abandonment from their parent. Children continue to readjust to the world around them and their inner selves as they mature. What might have been very difficult as a young child may be easier to comprehend as a teen. Or something that an elementary school child was oblivious to might become painfully clear when they get to middle school.
Mental health counseling is sometimes helpful for a child in this situation. But not every child needs this much help necessarily. And even with all the love, support, help, or counseling, there is no way to truly replace the missing parent. There is no cure for the normal intense feelings of a child who knows they have been abandoned by one of the people they should have counted on the most. No matter why the parent has left, children in this situation have a hole in their heart. They have a long hill to climb, but life can still be good.
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And it doesn’t matter how old you are when a parent leaves, it still hurts and leaves a hole in your heart.
I was 19 when my parents divorced and my father married his secretary. My younger sisters acted out - drugs, alcohol, getting pregnant - but I acted as a mature adult would (life happens and people fall in and out of love, etc.) - or so I thought at the time.
Fast forward 35 years and here I am - living with major depression and in therapy. Growing up my father was more absent than present but after he remarried he became even more distant from his first family. It’s only recently that I’ve been able to acknowledge that fact and to realize that I’ve been stuffing down my anger and hurt which undoubtedly has been a major factor in my depression.
Why am I sharing this? Maybe because if even one parent reads my story they’ll take more care in how they treat their children should they go through a similar situation.
And what if this happens when you’re 55? What if your mother decides she hates the man you married 6 years ago (who is a wonderful man), and if you don’t leave him, she’ll never again speak with you. She sends hateful, cursing letters, telling me I will burn in hell forever, i’m out of her will, and I’ve turned my back on my (grown) sons (NOT true). These letters are so full of venom, they make my heart pound with fear. The strangest thing about all this is that my sisters have changed in the way they behave toward me. they’ve been in my same position (in mom’s eyes) and I’ve supported them during their hard times, but i don’t feel that same support coming from them. it’s a sad, lonely, rejected feeling.
My x-husband abandoned our 2 children ages 14 and 11 for 4 1/2 years( March 2005 ) and started finally paying child support 18 months ago and just recently came back into their lives in August 2009 and now because he has more money and a bigger house than me he thinks and is trying to get full custody of my children… They don’t even know their father… I am in fear now that he will end up getting them after I have had to deal with their abandonment issues for years and I love them so much and they are my entire life… I don’t know what to do….
My story is similar to Chrissie’s. After my father died my mother did not allow me to have contact with my dad’s family. Then when I was 11 my mom’s father disowned when she married a man he did not approve of. My grandfather was a deacon in the church and claimed that marrying a divorced man was adultery and that he would rather lose her to cancer (2 of his daughters had already died) then have her burn in hell. Ten years later her father ‘forgave’ her. I did not meet my dad’s family until I was in my 30’s, which was after my mother died from cancer. I lost a lot time with my dad’s family and they turned out to be great people. I will never forgive my mother from keeping me from family that loved me when her family turned out to worse than anything I ever expected.
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