I feel like I missed out on alot

[KylalaKitty]

I been thinking about my love ones who have passed away and I realized that I dont really remember them much. My mom and dad had me kinda late (my mom was 31 when she gave birth to me) and before she married my dad, she had a child with another man (my brother, whos 10 years older than I am). Anyway, yeah, so my grandpa on my dads side passed away 4 years ago (my parents divorced when I was 10, after that I never really was taken to see my dads folks very often), my great-grandma, my dad's mom's mom, passed away when I was 7 or so, and my grandma on my mom's side passed away when I was 13. Since I was pretty young when all this happened, I dont remember much about them and I feel like I really missed out on a lot. :(

Anyone else in the same boat?

[BlueEyedWolf]

:hugz: :hugz: :hugz:

[pluralone]

Oh boy yeah. Not the same boat but a similar skiff, riding the breakers off a rocky shore....

I spent more than a few years of my adult life looking for 'parents'. It's not that I missed out on having a family - I had a mom and dad (divorced when I was seven, but still both in my life), a grandma, several aunts and uncles, cousins, etc, but these folks were REALLY abusive, and I was the youngest so most of it trickled (or flooded) down to me.

So as a young adult there were quite a few years when I would have given anything to find a woman I could think of (at least secretly) as my mother and a man I could think of (again, at least in secret) as my father.

I think that actually hurt some of the friendships I could have developed at the time; I met some very good people then, but rejected the ones who didn't fit my 'surrogate family' plan.

Now, I'm pretty sure you're not out making these same mistakes; I'm just sharing that yes I understand how that feels to need a certain type of relationship and not find it.

There is a term I learned eventually: It's "family of choice". Although I never found anyone to stand in and take the role of mom or dad, I found that the quality of my chosen friendships went beyond anything I'd ever experienced from my biological family - even those few family members with whom I am still in contact. My relationships with my chosen friends far exceed the quailty of any contact I have with my biological family.

And so I would encourage you to seek quality frienships, fill some of those gaps left by missing family. I've found, personally, that doing volunteer work provides a beautiful medium for finding people who are like-minded. Choose a cause for which you can form an emotional attachment (there are even organizations in most larger metro areas that link volunteers with organizations who need them) and just commit even as little as once a month to working for them. You'll no doubt find people there who will appreciate you as much as you appreciate them, and that hole can be filled nicely, sweetly, with some quality frienships.

Deep Peace to you,
plur