Do You Ever Get Over Feeling Lonely For a Family ?

[Ami]

 I always have a motherless feeling (fatherless too)
 Do those of you who have had N parents have an ache in your heart that always seems to be there, a lonliness that always hurts?
                                                                                        Ami

[Dawning]

Oh, gosh yes, Ami! 

I've made it go away at times, mostly by giving myself permission to have a good time.  It's just that I feel so needy for that union-type family feeling that I jump into things way too quickly, it seems to scare people away and then I'm right back where I started from.

At some point in the very near future, I am going to write a novel about a heroine that goes through life like this.  She runs away from her family at age 14 (something I did not do) and starts off on a lonely journey.  I'm not sure how it will end yet.  Somehow, I think by giving life to this heroine (i.e. being creative) will take the edge off of my loneliness.  Sometimes I feel that my loneliness just bleeds from my pores. 

All I can really think of to do, as a lifestyle, is to lighten-up.  I don't want to die with a heavy heart.

Thanks for asking this question and for starting this thread.  It's such a simple, yet profound question.  I wish I knew a way to overcome this loneliness.  Maybe others can offer a solution.

Right now, take my hand in understanding and love.  We can be a "family" for each other.

Love,
Dawning.

[Ami]

Oh Dawning
 You are so sweet. Thank you.                Love to you,  Ami

[Gaining Strength]

Right along side of that profound ache is the pain that noone else will acknowledge the suffering - none other than those with the same experience. 

The pain of that loneliness for family is so deep and so extreme that I find I must simply repress it.  When it was active it lead me in so many destructive paths - searching for family, for belonging. - not good.

[Ami]

(((((GS)))))     

[Hopalong]

I don't long for it any more.

I know who I love (my D and church family) and who loves me (ditto).

Events with my mother and brother in the last year have completely cured me of any yearning based on DNA.

And honestly, it is liberating. A sweet relief.

I don't yearn for some mysterious connectedness based on biology and habit and tradition.

My mother and brother have showed me it was a fantasy that we, as a family unit, were never constructed to be able to nurture or maintain.

But it's not a tragedy anymore. I can't miss something they actually didn't have to give me in the first place. My mother and brother are genetically the same...

My father did love me, was a good kind man, and I have his memory. That's not tragic either.

I just don't have "family" in the present, other than my child. And that's OKAY.

I feel freer, calmer, to have let go of the wish.

I feel the same about Christmas.

hugs,
Hops

[Lupita]

Bravo for Hopalong.

I feel the same way. Just recently started to feel indifferent. Like I do not need anything.

It was a sensation of abandonment.

But I do not feel it anymore.

[Gaining Strength]

I was thinking this morning about my loyalty to my family as a kind of a tether, my loyalty, my longing for family, longing for love - a tether that allowed me to be pummelled on the right, so that I would swing aroung to be pummelled on the left and on and on.  Had I not had loyalty, not longed for family, not believed that that was love I could have untethered myself and had a very different life.

I paid a terrible price for longing for family and being loyal to them - a terrible, terrible price.

[Hopalong]

You did, GS. You truly paid it.

That consideration's no longer due...discharged...spent.

What's next is...the rest of your different life.

Different. Changing. New. Experiences.

Not
the
same

love,
Hops

[Dawning]

I love how this thread has evolved and how it has developed into almost a muse-like message.

(((((hugs))))))

p.s.  Hopalang, Lupita...did a light go off in your head that said, "i don't long for it anymore."  "i feel indifferent."  or was it a slower process? 

I paid a terrible price for longing for family and being loyal to them - a terrible, terrible price.

GS,
so did i.  i gave up having a family of my own to be loyal to the FOO.  it's hard for me to live with that.

[Hopalong]

No lightbulb, Dawning....

Just so much stress and exhaustion and pain (TOO much, I let it go too far, out of my obedient codependent dutiful-daughter training)...

I began to feel my own life and health slipping away.

I finally got angry and took back my responsibility for my life.

I began to see that even though there are a zillion things to "blame" -- it had to stop.

I realized she'd taken too much but only because I kept giving it.

I had the information about narcissism. It was obvious my brother was a monster.

I was living out a vow, sort of, that I'd made to my father to take care of her.

What I had to do was recognize that I was not supported, by family, even enough by friends, by culture. Our culture does not give daughters permission to care about themselves. (Some do, some are Ns, of course--but in general, I believe I was programmed to be Mother Teresa, Florence Nightingale, and Cinderella.)

At some point my own stubborn pysche yelled at me loudly enough that I realized how deeply I was taken for granted and how minimally my mother was concerned about how I would live once she was gone.

It wasn't instant, but one day I got very very angry with her. I blew up (which I regret, but that's the result of playing "good" for so many years that you stuff your own vital self into a cage).

After that, it was never the same. I still was compassionate, did my duty, and even loved her. But I never again felt I OWED this to family.

The rest, I just endured. I was too far into my commitment and I would see it through.

But the shape of it changed. The guilt was gone. The sense that I was never servant enough.

I was, and then some. I gave more than I should have, were I being responsible for my own precious life.

I still have trouble taking my own life seriously enough to take care of myself and my future.

I am still healing.

I am so glad that my family is over, except for my daughter.

I do NOT miss it.

There is nothing there to yearn for. My chosen family, the UU church, is the safe place where I will grow old and be cared about.

love
Hops