When Mom Leaves

Okay, before we dive into abandonment, I would like to share a tidbit from my life. My parents were married when I was only two months old but divorced shortly after. My mother was abusive as well as a cheater so my father took me and left her. The court obviously awarded custody to my father. And my mother decided that she did not want her parental rights nor did she want her visitations. In fact, she eventually signed away her parental rights. However, my mother kept visitations with her firstborn who is my older half-brother.

Needless to say, I grew up wondering where my birth mother was and wondering why I wasn't good enough for her to want to know. Inside I was confused, angry, and had low self-esteem. Years went by without a word from her. Not a birthday card or a phone call. Nothing until I was nineteen and tracked her down myself... truthfully deep inside I still think that I might have been better off not meeting her because she isn't the person I thought she was.

The most common form of maternal abandonment is physical when a mother physically leaves her child behind. This kind of abandonment is sudden and unexpected, causing the child to feel shocked that her mother has chosen to leave her. The child experiences grief and guilt over the lost mother-child bond and believing she did something that was so horrible that she is now un-lovable, which I am all too familiar with. Another form of abandonment is psychological and occurs when the mother treats her children with coldness, apathy, or indifference. Sometimes, this is unintentional. If a mother is dealing with past traumas of her own, she is often not able to make herself available to her children, says Gerlach. When a mother has an emotional illness, such as clinical depression, she is unable to meet the psychological or physical needs of her child. Because she is sunk in apathy, she unintentionally separates herself from her child. It pains me to say but that is how my mother is currently. I have tried so hard to please her and gain her approval. She is, however, a selfish person who cares only about herself, which is how I learned that you cannot please everyone.

The child who has lost her mother to abandonment experiences sadness and confusion when she hears her friends talk about their mothers. It is difficult for her to see other children experiencing a normal life with an intact family, which has been proven by multiple studies. As she gets older and she has seemingly resigned herself to the continued absence of her mother, she learns to explain to her friends that her mother is not a part of her life.

This again I am all too familiar with, although I had a step-mother. Once she had some children with my father things became different and we became no longer close. She rarely came to my school functions; everyone already knew she wasn't my real mother too because you could tell just by looking at us. So I had a story every time someone asked me where my mother was. Sometimes I said she was dead and there were other times I said she was in the military. In my mind, I fantasized about who she really was and about her coming to get me. However, it never happened so, in the end, I was only let down. Now that I have met her I am not sure that I like the person that she is.

It is my mother which makes me scared to have children of my own. No matter how much I might want some children the thought terrifies me because there is no way I want to end up like her. I even quit drinking so I do not end up with alcoholism like her. Her parents were drinkers and they gave her up so who is to say that I won't do the same if I keep drinking. It is time to break the cycle!