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“You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the end.” ~CS Lewis
I started life in a poor family, with one parent who left when I was very young and was never seen or heard from again, and another who stayed but made it very clear that I was not wanted and that I was ruining their lives by existing.
For some reason, I never had any contact with either of their parents, my grandparents, and very little to no contact from their extended family.
So I knew as a young child that I had no practical or emotional safety net. There was no one to fall back on, no one to cushion the impact when things went wrong. I had to stand on my own two feet to survive.
As an abandoned and scapegoated child, I was very independent and grounded, driven by the goal of breaking free and making a life for myself. But I couldn’t take risks or focus on studying because I didn’t have a safety net.
Before that, during my school exams, I worked full-time during the holidays and part-time during half-time. Then I was exhausted when it came to exams and had little time for revision. At certain points in my university degree, I worked almost full-time to keep a roof over my head and always lived off my overdraft.
I kept at home what happened and happened. I never talked about it. Nobody knew. All my peers had two parents and they couldn’t understand my life and couldn’t provide support. Back then, teachers and other adults weren’t as knowledgeable as they are now, and they never asked about my home life or offered support. So there was no emotional safety net either.
Because I was financially responsible for myself, I really learned how to budget. This meant that when I started my career in my twenties, I progressed much faster than my peers. After university, they learned about the world of work; I’ve been in it for years.
Doesn’t fit the mold
Growing up, when I found myself in the professional world, my friends thought I was just like them. People from single-parent families and broken homes are talked about as out of reach.
I don’t usually talk about my situation. It’s not something that comes naturally in conversations, and as with many difficult family situations, people tend to react awkwardly and unintentionally say things that make you feel worse. (I’ve even heard “My dad would never leave me!” as if they don’t believe me or focus on me at all.)
There is no common toolkit to support someone who has been abused or abandoned by their family, and this is a topic that is only recently becoming more openly discussed in social discourse. So I didn’t know how to speak authentically about myself when it came to family.
Every day, whether at work or socializing, at Christmas, Mother’s Day or Father’s Day, people talk about their family of origin and assume that others do too. For most people, this is the norm and they struggle to support someone whose reality is different.
A few years ago, I realized that many of my friends had no idea about my circumstances, so I felt misunderstood and like a fundamental part of me was invisible.
Filling the void…or learning to live with it
As a young adult, I chose to build a family of friends or chosen family with people I met through my studies or work because I needed people. Years later, I came to understand that all my relationships were affected by growing up feeling unwanted and unloved. So I wasn’t aware of who was in my life and I didn’t understand that I had my own needs in relationships. If someone wanted to spend time with me, who was I to say no?!
This led to friendships and romantic relationships that were at best mismatched without a real connection and at worst abusive. Also, when the holidays came around, my friends’ families disappeared to be with their real families. So I didn’t fill the void in my life, despite my energy and effort.
I tried to distract myself from the pain of missing my family by forming new relationships. But through therapy, I realized that the key was to learn to live with the emptiness I didn’t have—to process it, face it, and actually feel that pain.
Reconnecting with myself, especially my child, was key. I had to take some of my displaced energy to please others and turn it inward to learn to cope with my loss, heal, and improve my choices.
A wonderful therapist helped me understand that I was living with a form of grief. He explained, “Grief is attached to something that is not there.” Now I live with the emptiness and pain, mourning the sense of loss and abandonment rather than distracting myself from it. I’m not trying to fix it or fill it in, I’m learning to acknowledge it as part of my story.
Although the pain will never completely go away, I now make decisions from a place of connection with myself, which has led to fuller relationships and much more energy to devote to meaningful activities.
Survive and even thrive
Growing up without a safety net means focusing on survival. Throughout my childhood, I worked hard to get somewhere safe and secure with my own independence. Between all these efforts and endurance, I was exhausted. Growing up, I constantly worked to build a secure life.
In my mid-30s, I had a few basics: a safe home, financial security, and some good people in my life. That’s when it dawned on me—that I was constantly imagining and planning horrible things that never happened, that I was always alert in normal situations, and that I was exhausting myself with my incessant ruminating.
I was still in survival mode when I didn’t need to be. My body and mind couldn’t grasp the reality that I was finally safe. I had to learn to live, not just survive.
Some people talk about recovering from trauma as coming back to who you are, but when you went through that as a child, you didn’t have a chance to know who that self was. Who would I be if not in survival mode? I had to discover my essence and learn how to live simply.
Recognizing this was the first step. I was lucky to have great therapists, a full EMDR course to process and reset new pathways in my mind, group therapy where I learned from others, and other treatments.
There was a moment during the installation of EMDR (a process that helps to replace negative beliefs with positive ones) when I was asked to imagine what would have helped me as a child during a difficult experience.
At first all I could think about was changing what was happening to me and having someone there to intervene. But then I imagined hugging my child. It was what he needed in that moment, and in many others.
Since then, I’ve tried to focus on my needs and take care of myself, which has helped me shift from practical survival to thriving.
It wasn’t easy or immediate, but after being in the post-therapy world for a while, I noticed that I had tons of energy. It felt like I had been carrying around a dead weight all my life that lifted and I suddenly felt lighter in my daily activities.
I was able to identify and move away from unhealthy relationships, which reduced my negative, draining interactions and increased my positive interactions.
I invest this energy in nourishing and meaningful activities in my time outside of work – volunteering, research, active hobbies. However, I got energy from doing them and reached my potential. I became myself. Beyond being a victim of my circumstances, I can thrive.
If you too are navigating life without a traditional family of origin, know that you are living with a little-understood form of grief, and while it may never leave you, a loving, safe, and fulfilling life is still possible.
The first step is to understand and process what happened to you so that you can give yourself the care and attention you need. It is what gives you the strength, resilience and empathy to thrive.
About Nisha Wilkinson
Nisha Wilkinson holds a PhD in War Studies and has worked on international conflict and security for over fifteen years. He is interested in the human behavior that leads to violence and insecurity, and supports socio-economic diversity in public institutions.
