When the Abandonment Comes From Parents

Some abandonment wounds come from relationships that end later in life. But some of the deepest ones begin with the people who were supposed to be our foundation. The people who gave us life. The people who were meant to protect us. The people who said they would always be there.

My abandonment wound is rooted in four people. Two people chose to have me. They gave me my blood, my body, my beauty, my existence in this world. And two other people chose to adopt me. They chose me. They told me they wanted me. They told me I belonged with them. I remember one thing very clearly from that time. When they adopted me, I asked them one question. I asked them to promise me they would never abandon me. That was the one thing I needed to hear. And they promised they wouldn’t. But they did. One day they left me a voicemail telling me I was no longer welcome. Not face to face. Not sitting together. Not with the dignity of a real conversation. A voicemail. That moment broke something inside of me. It was heartbreaking. It was devastating. And wounds like that don’t just disappear. They live in the body. They live in the nervous system. They live in the heart. They shape the way you move through the world.

Healing from something like that doesn’t happen overnight. In many ways I’m still walking through it. I’m learning how to heal that wound even without those people in my life. I’m slowly allowing my birth father to be part of my life again. I’m slowly looking at the deeper mother wounds that exist inside of me. These are not easy places to go. They are hard. They are uncomfortable. They are deeply emotional. But they are also part of my growth.

The more I heal, the more something else in my life begins to grow. What I am creating is not really a business. It feels more like a garden. A garden of healing. The more I work through my own pain, the more Ladybug Magic begins to come alive. I start to understand why I’m on the journey that I’m on. The deeper reason behind my healing is not just for me. It’s so I can see others more clearly. It’s so I can sit with people where they are in their own pain and say, “You’re not alone. I know what this feels like.” I don’t sit above anyone. I don’t pretend I have everything figured out. I sit beside people and reflect back their beauty. I can say honestly, I have walked through abandonment. I have walked through trauma. I have walked through chaos. I live with PTSD. Post-traumatic stress disorder is not just a phrase for me. It’s something I live with in my body every single day.

Sometimes a smell can trigger a memory so intense that my whole body reacts. My mind goes back into a moment that I wish I could forget. Sometimes it makes me want to curl up in a ball and scream just to make the feeling stop. Trauma lives in the nervous system. It shows up in ways people don’t always see from the outside. And one of the things I am learning is that people don’t have to live my life. They don’t carry the memories I carry. They didn’t live the war that my body experienced. And that’s something I’m slowly making peace with.

Every day I’m learning that I don’t have to live as the frightened version of myself forever. I don’t have to wake up each day trapped inside the past. I don’t have to stay in survival mode. I am allowed to feel alive. I am allowed to feel excited about life again. Other people’s behavior may affect me. The way someone carries themselves, the way someone handles conflict, the way someone treats me — those things can still hurt. I feel deeply. I experience things deeply. But I am learning that I also have power. I have the power to strengthen myself. I have the power to build safety inside of my own body so the past doesn’t control me forever.

My life has been complicated. I grew up in a large family with many siblings. I had one set of parents, and then another set of parents through adoption. When you experience something like that in the middle of your childhood, the relationships are layered and complex. Each parent carries a different place in your heart. Each relationship means something different. The love feels different. The expectations feel different. The memories feel different. If you have ever been adopted during childhood, you understand this in a way that is hard to explain to someone who hasn’t lived it. That experience shapes you. It changes the way you see family, belonging, loyalty, and identity.

But through all of it, I am still here. I am still growing. I am still healing. And that healing is becoming something bigger than my pain. It is becoming a place where others can sit and feel seen. A place where people can come as they are — with their wounds, their stories, their confusion, their grief — and realize they are not broken. They are human. And healing is possible. Just like a garden, healing takes time. It takes patience. It takes care. But when you keep tending the soil, something beautiful eventually begins to grow. And that is what Ladybug Magic is becoming for me. A living garden where pain transforms into wisdom, and where the things that once broke us can slowly become the things that help us heal. 🌿