It’s now been one year since I had a visit to the ER that ended up being a 5-day stay. I think of the year and all that’s happened and I’m so thankful for so much physical healing. While I started thinking about my medical progress I started to think about my heart, and it’s progress too.
When my daughter was 2 years old, we took a parenting course based on attachment theory. We learned so much in this course and it equipped us well when our little girl started to shoot “No!” bullets out of her little toddler mouth. One of the first things we learned was that the goal was to nurture independence out of dependence. We learned that, children who learn to walk early, are often the ones that are held the most. This was such a shocking thing to hear as different cultures in my background taught completely opposing theories. The security of, “I can always have this” allows for exploration, risk and growth. If a child is held often, the fear of losing a rare opportunity to be held will no longer exist.
I was raised with a strong focus on being independent. From elementary school age, I remember walking home alone afterschool to an empty basement suite. I remember wearing the key on my neck and fitting the term, “latchkey kid”, aptly. Our family moved to a new country when I was 5 years old, so there weren’t many options as my parents were in survival mode.
As a result of a number of circumstances I faced as a child, I developed a strong, strong independent spirit. But because there was not a huge nurturing of dependence preceding my independence, I developed an orphan heart. I had a physical family, but I believed I was fully alone. I assumed that I was the only one to “have my back” and there wouldn’t be anyone to take care of me. Sometimes circumstances teach our heart lessons that we are unaware of. At times, the lessons plant seeds that are rooted in truth and other times it plants seeds that are rooted in lies developed out of pain.
Through a series of circumstances and life lessons, my orphan heart ultimately, did not believe that it was loved. I wasn’t aware that this belief had taken deep roots in my heart and didn’t understand that some of my choices were based on this belief. What does an orphan heart do with this belief? Well, it makes choices and does many things to try to gain love or prove itself worthy of love.
When I was 19, I found faith. Faith was great, but without pulling out the roots attached to my orphan heart, transformation could be avoided without incident. It is completely possible to find faith and avoid deep healing for the heart. What I mean is, I wasn’t looking to fix it because I didn’t know there was a problem.
My orphan heart developed a helper/ fixer/ doer identity, and volunteered my entire life to a community, finding temporary satisfaction in the accolades, titles, and expressions of gratitude I received. All of my helping, fixing and doing lead to cyclical burn out, emotionally and physically.
It wasn’t until much later in life, when I was asked at point-blank range, by a counselor, whether I felt loved, did I know that I hadn’t. It was then I had to start to battle out these roots that were deep in my heart and find an identity outside of the orphan heart that I knew.
I’m not going to be able to explain everything that contributed to my battle with my orphan heart and the adoption that followed, but I’ll try my best to be vulnerable in subsequent posts.