Historically, many of us have experienced abandonment and rejection. It maybe that our parents or our parent's parents have recounted stories of how bad their rejection was. I know abandonment was part of the landscape for both my husband and I.
I did retell the story to my own children to explain the absence of grandparents. My own father died at 42 years old and my mother moved on to a neighbour, 8 weeks later. She was too narcissitic to care for children who gave her no return. My brother and I were left alone.
My husband had a very different but equally negligent parenting. His father descended into alcoholism and his mother was too war torn to emotionally connect. As a very beautiful, blonde haired, Polish 18 year old, her time through the war was spent nightly above a cafe. I don't think anyone can expect to come out of that still feeling emotion. She had just shut down in order to cope. My husband bonded to the cot space he was left in.
Many of us carry this history of abandonment and rejection. Perhaps it makes our children more sensitive to it as well. In our life journey we have to acknowledge the legacy from our ancestors.
But we too may be guilty of abandoning and rejecting our own selves. Making that judgement that we are not good enough to care for our own selves well must be felt as a terrible wounding to our psychic. We look for our own true adult to tell us we are acceptable just the way we are. Marg