Unwanted child or adult: how to heal yourself of being unwanted by Deborah Lockett Blog entry

Blog: The New Earth
by Deborah Lockett

Unwanted child or adult: how to heal yourself of being unwanted

This is another window into my personal life. I’ve already introduced you to my 15-year-old daughter Valentina, who is expecting a baby in June. My very dear girlfriend wrote me of her concerns, given that she knows many people who have not been fully wanted by their mother and suffer from this for all of their lifetime. This is my solution to that problem for those who are interested.

Date: 2/8/2006 10:51:22 AM ( 18 y ) ... viewed 14539 times

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.