- Unwanted child or adult: how to heal yourself of being unwanted by Deborah Lockett
18 y
14,554 5 Messages Shown
Blog: The New Earth
I grew up in Wales in an ordinary lower middle class family. Like so many others of my age (51), I was born to parents who had met during the 1940-45 war, and married after it ended.
My parents both wanted me – my mother cried for half an hour after I was born because she wanted a girl so much after having my two brothers; and I was my father’s favourite, a real Daddy’s girl.
The only thing I would have liked different about my childhood is that I wish my parents had had the money to send me to kindergarten.
However, as I grew up I was aware of a dark shadow which had been clinging to each of my parents since childhood, and seemed to dampen down their life.
In my father’s case it was his education, or lack of it. He had been top of his grammar school class in every subject, and had been presented with books as prizes, but chose to leave school at 15 because he had five younger brothers and sisters.
He was extremely close to his mother – a sort of soul mate – and he preferred to get a full time job himself than to have his mother go out charring to keep the family fed, given that his father was unemployed and the Welfare State had not yet come into existence.
In my mother’s case, she told me she was not wanted by her parents. As she grew up, they told her she was stupid.
Her parents sent my mother’s younger sister Barbara to a Convent School, and she went on to become a Community Midwife.
But my mother was taken out of school at age 12 to care for her baby sister, the youngest of the four girls, while her mother went out to work as a typist.
Naturally I felt a lot of sympathy for both my parents and for what they perceived as their unfulfilled childhood and adolescence. However, it was only when my father died last year, that it dawned upon me that things were not as they seemed.
My father’s health was declining and my mother assured me she would telephone me straight away to let me know if he died. However, when he did die she did not telephone me until after the funeral, which was attended by my two brothers.
This was a sort of déjà-vu for me. My mother’s father, whose health had suffered after he was gassed during the 1914-18 war, had passed on while I was a teenager.
At that time, my mother was invited to the funeral, but my father was not. My mother went on the train instead of being driven by my father.
My mother was very put out at the time, and she complained about it. Why, then, did she not invite me to my father’s funeral, after complaining that my father was not invited to his father-in-law’s funeral?
I then pondered as to whether my mother was genuine about not being wanted by her family. How could she blame them for making her feel unwanted, and then do the same things to me, even though she did want me?
I thought back to my mother’s mother’s passing, which was many years after her father’s, given that she almost made it to 100 years.
My mother complained because her sister Barbara, who nursed their mother in her old age, did not inform her of their mother’s death for several days after the passing.
Why did my mother do the same to me, i.e. not inform me promptly of my father’s passing?
I had to ask myself: who does not want who? Is it true that my mother’s parents and sisters did not want her? Or is it the other way around? That my mother did not want her parents and sisters?
My mother’s behaviour pointed to only one thing. The things she did to me were the same as what she claimed her family had done to her. So it must be the other way around: My mother’s family wanted her. SHE didn’t want THEM.
One thing that had always puzzled me was that my Nan and Aunt Barbara simply did not fit the image of monsters that my mother gave them, given that with me they were always warm and kind. Now I understood that they were not monsters, just normal people.
Conclusion: if a person feels unwanted, and they don’t want to feel this way, the solution is simply to WANT others. Just to WANT anyone that will let them want them.
That way, they will never, ever suffer from being unwanted. They will create so much wantedness and be surrounded by it all the time, that they simply cannot feel anything else but wanted.
Don’t ever block anyone from wanting you, if you don’t want to feel unwanted. Open your arms to them. If they don’t respond with a smile or a hug, then find someone else to want … as many as you can … just whoever happens to be around you.
Fan out your wantingness so it goes to just everyone who surrounds you. If human beings won’t let you want them, try animals and plants. Animals and plants are so RECEPTIVE to being wanted. You’ll be able to want them all you want.
Be a big sun that radiates wantingness continuously to everything its rays hit, not knowing or caring whether it is wanted back.
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Deborah Lockett
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- feeling wanted by finallyfaith
18 y
4,024
yes, family emotion dynamics can be quite complex huh? the problem is that much of what we do is motivated by subconscious emotional needs and desires, and so we say one thing but do another, because our subconscious emotional needs usually trump our spoken desires, if that makes any sense.
feeling wanted in the world is so important, and that feeling usually comes from one's mother. the extenst that you feel wanted by the world is often the extent to which you feel wanted by your own mother, just one of those things.
anyway, i wish you well and hope your daughters pregnancy goes well.
ff
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finallyfaith
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- Unwanted Child as an Adult by #69242
18 y
4,064
I have no idea why you or your mother were not invited to funerals. I do know that your solution to being unwanted is to want others is incorrect. It's like trying to force someone to fall in love with you. It CANNOT be done.
Currently, I'm doing research on the long-term psychological effects on children who were never wanted by their primary care-takers (usually a mother) and how I found your blog. I'm doing this to try and find others in the same situation as I. So far, I've not read about or know of any other "well-adjusted" humans who were never loved just because they are alive. There are many out of the norm people with that experience in prisons and/or mental institutions.
Although your "solution" to being unwanted is heartfelt, a person who truly neglects and does not want her child will not change. There is something missing in her psyche.
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- Re: Unwanted Child as an Adult by Deborah Lockett
18 y
4,160
Hi!
Your insight is most stimulating and most appreciated! I want you! (that's not just a joke - I mean it genuinely).
I appear to be a case of someone whose mother used to want them and now doesn't. But that's only appearance.
Isn't it strange? Several times on the telephone, my mother (now 80) invited me to go and see her. Finally I saw my chance to travel from my home in Tenerife to England where my mother lives. I called her to arrange the appointment. This is how it went:
"Hi Mum, I'm coming back to England and I've got a day free to visit you."
"How are you going to get here?"
"With my husband in his mate's car. They will drop me off and go off somewhere on their own while I visit you".
"Sorry Debs, you can't come because I don't want your husband's mate to drive you here."
I was flabbergasted. I know my mother doesn't like my husband but she would not even have had to set eyes on him. She was taking things to extremes.
It SEEMS my mother doesn't want me. Or is there any other way to look at the facts?
OK, it's clear, my mother doesn't want me. BUT I KNOW she DOES want me!
Why do I feel wanted even though my mother plainly doesn't want me?
Because my knowledge and the facts are incontradiction. And my knowledge wins -- because I let it win!
I will always believe my mother wants me because I KNOW IT'S TRUE.
I do have the benefit of having been brought up by her. But even if she were to live to 100 or more and reject me more and more, I don't think I could ever stop believing she wants me. I simply know she does and I can't imagine what she could do to change that.
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Deborah Lockett
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- Re: Unwanted child or adult: how to heal yourself of being unwanted by Drevik
12 y
2,529
I came here looking for "how to heal yourself of being unwanted"
I was an unwanted child. My mother admitted this to me before she died of cancer when I was 16. My father was not much in the picture after I was two years old.
Admittedly, I do have abuse issues from my mother's brief marriage to her second husband, when I was 4 to 6 yrs old.
I have felt unwanted all my life. I have been told that I am ugly, loud and fat, as well as accused of being too much like a guy.
I am extremely giving, which has led to being extremely used.
I have chased relationships with friends and family. Wanting to be wanted. Wanting to be loved. All it has led to is feeling more and more alone and isolated.
People just perceive one as "needy" or "clingy." They do not want someone on "their case load."
I have a husband and now a new son. My husband tells me that he wants me. My son also clearly demonstrates that he wants me. I still feel a huge hole in my being because I know my relatives really for the most part don't care unless they need something from me.
Maybe, I am missing your point. I want to be wanted but I feel like that need has done more to drive people away from me rather than towards me. People do not like desperation in any form.
Am I missing something?
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Drevik
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