Grieving a Lost Childhood

[tweeter]

(10-19-2012, 10:34 AM)tweeter Wrote:

(10-11-2012, 11:33 AM)MakersDozn Wrote: Hi TW and anyone else reading,

It's not the children who feel the loss. It's me and the other adults inside.

We're the ones with the problem. Not them.

I can't nurture myself if I was never nurtured. There's a giant abyss within me, a giant hole where all the received nurturing, the bonding, the feeling of safety and security and inner strength ought to be. How can we give ourselves something that we never received?

We're sad and angry and lost.

Thank you,

Charity

I don't claim to share the totality of experiences covered in this fine thread. I have some input and encouragement to give.
The expression of nurturing is dependent on both the nature of the person and the care, or lack thereof, received as a child. I wasn't loved or nurtured by anyone, except for my grandfather who passed when I was 4. I don't know what would have happened to me without his gentleness, but even he folded in f**r of my mother, who was cr*zy.

I had to learn how to nurture myself. I think I did a decent job. However, her vicious hypercritical influence has been hard to displace, as this was what replaced nurturing in her nature. I not only have acted that way against myself, but with people I care about. I finally reached a point where I had to stop it, because I loved someone that much (who won't talk to me for any one of number of reasons I've given up counting).

I replaced this acidic trait with "Be Kind." I got that from a movie, "Holy Smoke," which launched my late-life transformation.

Before then, I saw examples of good parenting in a friend and tried to internalize what was going on. It didn't work. As I discovered years later, what I got out of it was that I felt almost jealous that I hadn't been treated well as a child. That feeling completely surfaced much later in life.

I can love, but nurturing and comforting are kind of foreign to me, and take immense effort. It's hard for me to connect that way. Everything we do is to some degree driven by a feedback mechanism.

I have something else to say, but want to post this now because I lose posts easily. If my email didn't have a save feature, I'd be out of luck. It's like I'm typing, the letters can move to different lines or I lose the page altogether.
be right back,
tweeter

Hi Charity. Part two of my post comes as a surprise to me. As you know, I moved back to the apt. building where I spent the bulk of my miserable childhood. I feel ill much all of the time, and the building has slid in quality. But, I'm glad I came here. It's filled with immigrants, many Russians, Poles and others. Sometimes I feel like I'm living in Little Russia. I'm part Russian, but don't know the language.

The quality of parenting here runs the gamut. Two kids have gotten thru to me. One is a highly intelligent and sensitive boy of about 10 or 11; the other is a little girl, around 2, who tears down the hall happily babbling in a combination of Russian and English that even her mother can't fathom. I know the girl has wonderful parents whom I hope to befriend. I think I've seen the boy's grandmother. I don't know his parents. I would say he comes from good household where respect and heart are valued.

It's hard for me to express and I know I haven't finished processing. A work in progress. Two things are happening. The nurturing the children are receiving is getting thru to me via how they treat me. Also, the joy, the seriousness (in the case of the boy) and almost wise friendliness of these youngsters has brought me back to how I was as a very young child. I was like them. Every time I see them, this is reinforced.

My relationship with them is adult - child. How they treat me makes me wish to relate to them as a loving older female person, rather than as a pal (which in the past, was the only bond I could feel with a child). It's kind of backwards, but I'm learning what I can of the nurturing nature in myself thru very much loved children, in housing where things didn't go too well for me, where I took cover to survive.

I'm not saying I'm becoming an earth mother type, cause that isn't my nature, but I am becoming what I should have been. That lacking you speak of, which I didn't feel equivalently to what you express, well, that uneasiness is going away. I have a happiness inside of me instead. I can't wait to see the kids and the dogs and whatever.

This is happening even as I can't seem to end the cycle of lack of respect, abuse or indifference I continue to receive in this world, which has escalated in recent years.
In terms of my reaction to that, I'd say I tend to think more before delivering a verbal barb. I'm not just curbing myself though. I don't want to do that, even if they hurt me. I'll stand up for myself and shut the other person down if I'm tread upon, but it's different in practice and emotion from before. I did it on Wed. with a doc because she was out of line. (I guess I'll have more bad press.) I feel better, experiencing a degree of emotional self-nurturing, which is beginning to extend outward as well (including a certain aggressiveness that I gratefully accept in myself). I delete the imprinted hypercritical element, which was of no constructive use, and made me miserable).

hope this makes sense,
tweeter