How to Tend Your Own Wound

Susan,

thanks for the words of wisdom. I have recently gone through a situation where all these words resonate truth.

I met someone who ignited the red, dangerous signal in me...danger, danger, danger. I knew that I could not resist and I started to see this person. Even in the beginning, I started to cry as I knew deep inside me that this was no different from the others and that this going to be another story of being abondended again. Yet I could not resist.

I allowed myself to be hurt and gave the power to the other person. I cried yet at the same time, I knew that by being in touch with my inner self that crying and getting in touch with the painful childhood memories was the path to being healed.

I no longer see this person whom I am not compitable with and there are very difficult moments where I want to call and...

I also talk to myself everyday and try to be kind to the hurt part of myself and allow myself to be...a part of me is sad but that is alright. In allowing it to be, I am finding strength in the truth. And so they say, the truth shall set you free and this is my chosen path.

I wish those who visit this website the best. We are not alone nor do we have to hurt alone.

I have just in the last week discovered that I have a Borderline Personality Disorder, the abandoner was my father who made/ makes me feel that it was/ is barely worth me existing, I am married now to someone similar to my father and who sometimes loses focus and destroys my self esteem as it feeds him a sense of power - he too has issues as he was badly abused as a child. My question is, inspite of all this we genuinely love each other but is it inevitable that we will split up, or can we make it through all this?

Having been in a similiar situation, more than once, I am able to recognize it (the break-up) as a huge opportunity for growth. I know that I could not have learned the lessons in any other way. It also forces me to dig deeply into my spiritual path. I do this through meditation, chanting, listening to tapes and reading. At the present time I am finding the books and tapes of Eckhart Tolle very valuable.
The process is extremely painful but in time you will heal. Reach out to family and friends. Do not give up! I wish you well. Donna

Lara, I was abandoned, too. Twenty-three years ago, my husband left me for another woman. A young woman that I hired to work for us in a fast food place. The affair went on for eight of the eleven years we were married. I didn't have a clue. I'll give you the short version:

About a year after she started working for us, she got pregnant at the same time I did; told me her husband was a lawyer (I never met him). While she gave birth, I was in another hospital having a miscarriage. Two years after that, she gave birth to a second son (we were still married at that time and I still didn't have a clue).

The divorce was difficult enough. I did feel abandoned and for a year, I didn't leave my house. Three years after that, my ex told me that he met her before I hired her. He made it look like she was just someone looking for a job. Then he told me about their children. The abandonment I felt after the divorce was nothing compared to his deceit.

There's always something worse than abandonment. You can get over that, pick yourself up and go on. I'm not trivializing that at all. But when a divorce happens, know that something good was left behind. You are still the person you always were and you have worth. Fretting over the lost one is just not worth it.

After all this happened, I still had memories of the good times we shared and those memories will be with me forever. They are part of who I am today. However, I don't wish to see him again. My abandoner feels guilty over what he did and the last thing I need is for him to be sitting across the table from me, crying on my shoulder. Abandoners always feel guilty and you don't need to hear that story. I hope you, too, can sort through your feelings.

I'm still working of my self-healing, and at times I even find Big to not be strong enough to take care of Little, but I'm trying my best. I posted this elsewhere, so I'm going to ask again because I'd like others' opinions on the matter, but after having read Susan’s book I still had a question at the end. What do we do with the abandoner? Is it better to completely sever contact with them, even after you’re over them? Or is there room for them in your new life/self? And if so, what role should they take? I realize that the idea is to focus on one’s self - but this person who left formed part of it. In the process of healing and growing from the experience, what is one to do with the abandoner - from the memories to the person itself?

The phrase that adults can only abandon themselves struck a very LOUD chord in my soul. I abandoned myself in a 27 year marriage. I loved with all my heart and soul ... I still do. But I did not love properly, I unconsiously tried to maipulate my husband through my emotions because it worked when we were young and did not realize how much he despised it until we were married over 25 years. Out of the blue is also a phrase I recognize. He voiced his unhappiness with me and our marriage and tried to make it work for 18 month longer. He said he loved me on Christmas Day both verbally and written but just 5 short days later confessed he no longer loved me a wanted a divorce. The past six months have been a living Hell. I adored my marriage, my husband and my life.

I can now see that I over-merged to such a degree that not only did I lose myself, I lost all vision of what was the reality of my marriage. I made so many excuses for his behavior over the years that I should have known what was coming. But, hey, love is blind and if anything I love too deeply. I told him his happiness was the most important thing in the world - JUST LAST WEEK! I will now strive to find me again and make her happy, self sufficient and whole. I will heal.

Thank you for this article, Susan. I now know I can be the only one to abandon myself and if truth be told ... I did one helluva job of self abandonment. No more. I am me with all my faults and wonderful qualities. As someone said if I didn't have faults ... I would have married someone better in the first place!

I am going through a similiar experience. My Fiancee, who has lived with me for 3 years, just left about 5 weeks ago on a trip. To make a long story short, he moved several states away and got married. It appears he was going to try and maintain the charade of both relationships. He still contacted me by phone several times a week and concocted this huge lie to cover up what was going on. All his belongings are still here and his new Wife is getting an annullment. They knew each other 6 weeks.
I am a self reliant woman but I think I have always missed the piece of being good to myself. I'm not sure I know how to.

All my illusions were shattered when I discovered my husband cheating on me for the second time. After the first time I was able to forgive and try again, but this time I couldn't recover. We've been divorced almost five years now and I am still struggling with how to make life make sense again. It doesn't make sense with or without him. Our relationship wasn't entirely functional, it continued wounds from the past. And yet there was something there that is just missing now. I know I'm ok and can manage my life, but the point of it all is love, and without it everything is pretty empty.

Carnival of Healing #49: Healing vs. Allowing

Welcome to the 49th Carnival of Healing. I hope you enjoy it.  
The Abraham-Hicks monster bus came to town recently and I had the pleasure of learning about the Law of Attraction from the Source at one of their Art of Allowing seminars. If you have...