There is a time for everyone, when life as we know it changes abruptly and an innocence is lost.
It can be an event, a hardship, a loss, an unrealized truth, a swift moment that shatters everything we thought we knew about life, our world at a tender age.
Once innocence is gone, one can spend the rest of their lives trying to fill that void, replace whatever was taken, at the time their world shattered by the presence of something they never thought possible.
In that passionate and determined quest, whatever we lost can be the very thing that can sabotage our efforts to obtain that which we are seeking --
The missing piece that would allow all the others to connect so that we can finally see the big picture, so that we can feel whole.
Ever felt deeply, that there is a path perhaps you should have taken, or hesitate on the potential of the journey you are about to embark on?
What have you been searching for? Or do you even know?
As a child, when you first lost your innocence, there was something you told yourself, whether you understood its implication or not, that influenced your future choices and the way you see yourself.
Whatever “It” was, it doesn't mean it was right or true. Yet at some point, one likely of vulnerability, you believed what you said to yourself, and although it got buried, it is an important clue of how you measure your value and worth.
There is something lacking. You feel it.
You feel that undercurrent of lack inside you.
Over time, you cannot quite let that void left behind go.
Something is missing. There’s a hollowness, an emptiness, and it can feel painful. So, we begin to fill that hollow with whatever can help to stop the pain, even if only temporarily, for a fleeting swift moment.
The feeling of lack and emptiness from those losses, are what drives us -- to replace or replicate what we no longer have -- what went missing, what was taken, what we needed to grow and evolve -- even driving who we were becoming into hiding.
In our pursuit of filling that void created by that loss -- the very thing that was taken or destroyed -- often sabotages us as we try.
Let’s talk about when innocence is first lost —
One of the most influential enlightenments came to me while seeking, recognizing, and identifying what was lost when my innocence was first shattered, when life as I thought it would always be and remain, abruptly changed.
When life as you believed it to be -- where you felt comfortable and safe in your surroundings, knowing that you belonged -- based on those you’d grown to be dependent upon, abruptly changes. Something you never imagined could or would happen, unfolds before your very eyes.
At first glance, one would say it was my Mother’s suicide, when I was eleven.
In the year 1969, I had no idea a person could or would harm themselves. I was too young to pay attention to Judy Garland, nor Ernst Hemingway, even though Mama kept a paperback copy of his last book “Papa”, on the headboard shelf of her bed.
Now there’s an ‘Aha’ moment I’ve never put together until now. My mother was a writer, and a writer contemplating taking her life at the time.
Upon a deeper dive, the event that initially changed my innocence was the first time my Mother lost her way, the first time my Mama left home, and in my emotional being, abandoned me.
It was shortly after my Grandpa, her ‘Daddy’, unexpectedly died, falling off a ladder and hitting his head on a rock.
A month later, Mama called us all into the aqua painted dining room with the round oak claw-foot table. With one of my fat blue crayons, Mama wrote in big letters on the wall, the word, “MONDAY.” With her left hand moving in earnest across the wall, she repeated aloud, “Monday. I do laundry on Monday.”
As a child, the shortest one in the room, I was astounded that a grown up, my Mama, would do something ‘so off the wall’ that I’d been scolded for and taught not to do.
Hold on. There’s more.
A grown-up writing on the wall with a crayon was only the prelude to the shattering of my innocence.
Immediately, my father summoned my grandmother, and together they attempted to calm Mama down and reason with her. Yet there was no reasoning with Mama. It was as if she was broken.
It was a lot -- horrifying in fact – to watch at age five.
The next thing I witnessed – Daddy and Grandma began explaining to Mama why she should sign some papers.
Now that I am a grown up, I realize, this kind of behavior from my Mama, must have been going on for a while without my discovery.
Making a sad, long story short, Mama committed herself to a hospital psychiatric ward. She was there for over 10 months.
In Gloria Steinem’s book, Revolution From Within, Gloria suggests in her Book Notes, to engage and enter into healing dialogue with the wounded child within, one should find a picture of yourself before first innocence was lost.
I found mine. In fact, she’s looking at me as I type. The person I was Born to Be.
A picture taken by a photographer in our home for the annual Christmas card, only a few weeks before the wall incident. A photo normally taken by my Grandpa.
Until what we lost is discovered, named, and acknowledged, brought out into the light to examine, understand, and nurture -- the emptiness, disappointment, the cycle and pattern of searching and feeling unsatisfied, will continue.
Something is missing. Something was taken.
The healing will only begin when we give ourselves, that which we lost.
For me, that meant unconditional love and acceptance.
That I was worth loving. That I had value. That I mattered. No matter what.
And it begins with me.
I knew this, because of a wise mentor – socio-anthropologist and author, Jennifer James, PhD, from her book, Women and the Blues – Passions That Hurt, Passions That Heal. I’ve since come to realize that her teachings about the long-term effects of childhood trauma are not gender specific. Feel free to read this as he, or they.
“The unexpressed childhood emotions are lived out endlessly as an adult. Ambivalence about trust, love, and intimacy, become the foundation on which all future relationships are built. She must love or she will not survive, yet who she is will not survive if she loves. She learns to keep people at bay, yet she holds onto them as if her life depended on it. She must face reality. Rarely, if ever, will she find unconditional love or approval, and if she does, it may make her uncomfortable. “
Frightening, isn’t it?
At first, I was stunned at the accuracy of this description.
It had me written all over it.
Pegged.
Profiled.
That is until I accepted – my true story.
Until I accepted the real me.
Short of our own parents -- maybe not even them –
unconditional love is a slippery slope.
As a child, we anticipate unconditional love, when we’ve done something wrong, something perhaps we weren’t supposed to do, Like coloring on the wall.
It gets more complicated when the one we seek unconditional love from withholds that love from us -- an act of abandonment, the painful hurt of emotional disconnection, unrecognized psychological, emotional, or physical abuse, directed at us, or even at themselves.
As we grow up, indeed there is ambivalence, conflicting emotions, about trust, acceptance, and love. We want to be wanted, accepted, even needed.
Perhaps unconditional love only exists within us, through our awareness and acceptance of our own experiences -- what we’ve been through, how we got here, our vulnerabilities, missteps, flaws, and our strengths.
Even that takes time and effort to mitigate, to resolve in our hearts and minds, to gain total acceptance in loving ourselves, no matter what.
Perhaps the closest relationship where we can find this elusive unconditional love outside ourselves, is with our own children -- knowing they’ll make mistakes -- sometimes big ones. Just like us.
We have compassion and understanding when they fall, when they fail, or make wrong choices. There’s a learning curve we allow them. We trust that with our unconditional love and support, they’ll find their way. Just like us.
Yet, I’ve considered – perhaps there is no such thing as unconditional, in romantic love. There are always conditions.
Wounds get bumped, past pain and fear gets triggered, there are promises to keep, and boundaries that need maintained –– parts within each person yet to be mended and fully healed.
There are ways we need others to behave towards us to feel safe, comfortable, and secure. Habits and quirks. Pre-existing conditions. Triggers. Invisible scars that never go away. Everybody has something.
Somehow, these ‘conditions’, the parts of us that need to be mended and fully healed, only reveal themselves when we are in the throes of a budding partnership, as we jockey for position, in an attempt to mesh our lives. When the wooing stops and things get real.
Even as we attain unconditional love and acceptance for ourselves, it doesn’t necessarily mean we will find the same from another person. Especially if that other person lacks self-awareness, or the desire to look within -- to discover their own unrecognized wounds and name their loss -- neither of which can be forced by you, upon them.
They may lack the ability for empathy and compassion. They may have protective walls built from previous pain and loss. Or they may have similar wounds and childhood pain that resembles yours. They are not for you to fix, nor will they fix you.
Pleasers become enablers and conformists, trying to become what others need them to be, even if it is toxic.
Those who grew up around addiction, find themselves addicted to something.
Often it turns out -- it’s not you.
Strangers brought into homes to live, who don’t give a hoot about your emotional well-being, and “rob” you of the one parent you have left.
Perhaps like me, you grew up feeling invisible, not knowing if or where you belong.
You seek out powerful personalities, only to discover that this persona that was once so attractive in another person, is actually a protective device created, just so they can avoid looking closer at the places they were broken as a child.
Bullied, neglected, abused, absence, and abandonment.
There’s no doubt. Someone like me can be a handful, especially when invisible scars get bumped, or I sense a trigger.
I need to be heard, considered, seen, wanted and needed – preferably near the top of someone’s list. Not an add on at the bottom.
I’ve spent too many years not being loved properly. By others and myself.
I come to a relationship with certain conditions, for me and the relationship.
Meet me where I am – with acceptance, honesty, transparency, loyalty, trust, and faithfulness. I require physical touch, vulnerability, communication, intimate meaningful connection, both giving and receiving, a sense of belonging, equitable value, partnership, and humor. Those are my conditions for a mutual relationship.
Yet what about the love?
You see, that’s where I stumbled upon ‘there is no such thing as unconditional love in a romantic relationship.’
There are always conditions on both sides.
And there is compromise.
As in life, so it is with love.
One must decide what they are willing to give up, in order to have what they desire. That’s the contract of the partnership agreement – conditions and compromise.
Negotiated boundaries -- what we are willing to compromise, not surrender-- where are we willing to bend without force.
Where do you end, and I begin.
“She must love or she will not survive, yet who she is will not survive if she loves.”
This one still stops me in my tracks.
Interesting discovery I recently stumbled upon --
For me, the definition of unconditional love is not based upon my behavior nor choices.
Am I only loveable without conditions?
Instead, I view unconditional love in relation to others – do they have a capacity to love -- are they capable of loving me.
Do they know compassion, empathy, and respect for what I need.
Were they taught how to love, and accept love from another person.
Does their love bring out the best in me.
What did I lose when my five-year-old faith and beliefs were shattered? Or even more so, at age eleven, when my mother took her own life in the room next to mine?
That loss, the emptiness, and the void I would search my whole life to replace and fill.
It was Real love.
Accepting Love.
Love that would accept me with my condition.
Here’s the thing --
It’s not only books you write that can evolve into something else.
It can be essays. Newsletters. Even the story of your life.
How young were you when innocence was first lost?
That moment when your carefree, unencumbered life, suddenly took on a new meaning, and likely one you found hard to grasp at that age.
That place in time when your family dynamics abruptly changed, as did the foundation of everything you trusted to be true.
From that day forward, you began to realize life was fleeting, could change in an instant, that people did things you never believed were possible, that those you assumed you could trust, were no longer there for you.
That people’s behavior and reactions around you were so out of character, that you no longer felt safe or secure, about who you were, or where you belonged.
Can you recall this definitive point in time for you?
It’s one of the most valuable points of entry on your journey, when you do.
What did you lose when innocence was lost?
How did this loss playout through your life?
Did you ever find it again?
And if so, did you learn to give to yourself, that which was taken from you?
This week’s memoir excerpt is a reader favorite and one of mine, too. So, I’ve made it accessible to all. You’ll find it in the “Braver Than My Heart” section
Chapter 3 – Compromised -- from my unpublished memoir, The Undercurrent. Please enjoy.
Thank you for Showing Up with me!
Bonnie