Abandonment

Abandonment....a universal human condition that happens to everyone at some time or another in their lives. I used to think in terms of the abandonment of a Mother and Child; when a Mother gives her child up for adoption. In writing my book and doing a great deal of research, it occurred to me that abandonment is truly a human condition that affects everyone. Fathers leave Mothers and in turn leave their children behind and move on to create new families and have more children. Mothers leave children with Fathers to raise and move on to someone else as well. The point is, people who love each other leave each other all the time. And all of these people have valid reasons of their own for doing so. Fathers often leave their children and sever contact of any kind in avoidance of paying child support. Women give up their babies because they are under-age, have no money or means of support and their parents do not wish to raise another child. Women get pregnant by people they want nothing to do with and therefore want nothing to do with the child. There are literally thousands of case scenarios for children being abandoned by a Primary Caretaker; and therein is the issue. A child who has, in no way, the capacity to understand the complexities of the human mind and spirit; much less the adult world, is incabable of knowing what happened to their life. A child only knows this; someone who loved them, whom they loved; is gone. As a parent we all know what it is to have to teach our baby that when we walk around a corner in our home, that we are not gone, and that we are coming right back. We spend a great deal of time teaching our kids this lesson. It is something all babies must learn. We gradually move it up to perhaps going to a movie for a couple of hours and leaving the child with a sitter, and we return and the child learns; oh, yes, they do Come Back! And then one day, one of them doesn’t. A child cannot understand that. They don’t know where you went or why you did not come back. The child can be a small baby and they will still know you left. Even they don’t remember, it will be obvious as they grow up, that this parent is missing. Even if that parent has been "replaced" with a Step-Parent, even a great Step-Parent. Somewhere in the back of the childs mind they are thinking...and thinking...and wondering....why?
And worse. Sometimes, and often, that the reason that parent left was because it was their fault. That they were flawed or broken in some way and that is why their parent left. Because they weren’t good enough or lovable enough for that person to Stay. Children are incapable of anything else and unless adults are aware of what happens in a childs mind, they are apt to say simple truths such as Daddy went away and he has a new home now. Rarely is a child told Why Daddy or Mommy went away, or that it is in no way that childs fault.
The child may spend years living a kind of dual life and being perfectly happy on the outside and feeling flawed and broken in their moments alone. They long and wait for the parent to return. They make up stories about the parents new life and how they will come for them someday and somehow validate the love they feel they feel they deserve. And sometimes that parent returns; but without explanation or the grand gesture the child expects, and they are disappointed once again. Or, they never come back at all.
The truth is that people are selfish, it is, another human condition that we all share in some degree or another. It’s iresponsibility to the children they have created, and sometimes...they just don’t care. It is the Adults responsibility to care for the child and it is the Adults failure when it does not happen. It has NOTHING to DO with the child AT ALL. It is truly a failure on the adults part and the child cannot see that, cannot fathom the possibility...it MUST be something THEY did. But it isn’t. These are lovely, loving little children. Perfect in their own right, and innocent of the world they came into. Their love is bright and pure, valid and forthright. And had not one thing to do with the failures abundant in the adult world. Adults are subject every human condition and possibility imaginable and this is simply a child cannot understand or comprehend.