We have all had people who have walked away from us. Sometimes the leaving was painful, sometimes it was a relief, and sometimes it was both. How we digest that Outer World experience into our Inner World experience can be the difference between growth and stagnation.
The Greater Something, ultimately, always works towards our greater good. Sometimes it is only through the fire of our painful experiences that the husks of our lesser selves can be burned away, so that the beautiful essence of our Deeper Selves may live more fully.
That sentence gets handed to people far too early. If someone walked out of your life last week, “it was for your greater good” is not medicine. It is salt in the wound. There are times to be angry and times to weep, and the meaning, if it comes at all, arrives on its own schedule. It is yours to find, not anyone else’s to give you.
If you have a childhood history of abandonment, it is likely that you will have more experiences of abandonment in adulthood. Each time, that abandonment wound gets reactivated anew, so that the person who has just walked away carries the flavor of your mother or father, or whoever it was that created the original injury. Like having a wound that is scabbed over but still festering inside, the new experience removes that scab so that the wound has an opportunity to release the infection underneath.
A wound reopening is not the same as a wound healing. It took me years to see it. While the scab comes off in both instances, what makes the difference is whether anyone is with you while it is open. Alone, the reactivation simply re-teaches the old lesson: people leave, and it is because of me. When it is witnessed, by a friend, by a good therapist, by the Greater Something, all of whom know how to stay, the same event gets a different ending. That is what I mean by never alone. Not that the leaving did not happen. That you are not required to digest it by yourself. While yes, someone left, but also, someone stayed.
If there is a part of you that believes you are unlovable, it is not lying to you on purpose. It is holding the oldest evidence it has, and it has been holding it a very long time. And there is often a second part standing in front of that one: the part that leaves first, or scans a new relationship for the exits, or decides at week three that this person was never that interesting anyway. That part is not cold. It is a bodyguard. It learned that being left without warning nearly finished you, and it has arranged for you never to be caught off guard again. When someone walks away, both parts are in the room. It helps to know which one is talking.
What gets touched when someone leaves is rarely only this leaving. It is attachment, the earliest arrangement you made with the people who were meant to stay. If staying was reliable, someone walking away is painful and survivable. If it was not, the same event lands on older architecture, and leaving can register as danger rather than as loss. The reaction arrives at a size the current situation does not explain. That size is not an overreaction. It is accurate to the original. It is simply arriving late.
I have my own attachment wounding, so I know this from the inside. What I feel when someone leaves is a feeling of being untethered. Some part of me forgets, in that moment, that I have roots elsewhere. What helps me is to remember to whom I belong: friends, family, ancestors, the animate world, the puppy at my feet. I encourage you to try it on. Your body is the authority on your body; if this is not how yours works, put it down.
When people leave us – when we digest that Outer World experience and feel the Inner World experience of ‘I’m not enough’ or ‘something is wrong with me’ or any version of ‘I’m bad’ – we can begin to shift the translation from Outer World to Inner World, reminding ourselves of those people who do love us and know how to stay. We can remember that a person who leaves and who doesn’t hold loyalty as a character trait, might not be the person we want in our lives. Holding compassion towards our own suffering, we become tender with the part of us that believes that we are somehow unlovable.
We can draw on the Metaphysical World to sustain us: releasing the ties we have into the person who walked away, handing them back to the Something Greater, while also reconnecting to the Something Greater ourselves. Remembering that we are born of GodSpirit, we let them choose the fork in the road, and we choose ours, and know with certainty that God always walks our path with us. Deciding is real. The decision does not finish the grief. It opens the door, and the next thing walks through it.
“When people walk away from you, let them go. Your destiny is never tied to anyone who leaves you, and it doesn’t mean they are bad people. It just means that their part in your story is over.”
T.D. Jakes, The Gift of Goodbye
We are not alone. We are not abandoned, for the Great Spirit is always with us. That is not always a feeling. Some days it is a fact I hold on to rather than something I sense. But it has outlasted every person who has walked away from me, and at 48 that is not a short list. Let them go. And then remember to whom you belong.