As I had mentioned in my previous post I had attended a Boot Camp for Men a week ago. One of the things I observed in many of the men during the ministry time for the father wound teaching was this despair as they faced the depth of the wound. Many of the men expressed to me afterwards their feelings related to the emotional and physical abandonment of their childhood. It was gut wrenching to see how much pain some of these men were dealing with in the present.

I think about my own abandonment and how for years it fed this inner critic within me that no one would ever love me. It seems as if I was conditioned by my stepfather’s harsh treatment to believe that I was unworthy and unacceptable. Where do you even begin to change that which was wired into you at an early age? Add to that my own inner voice that goaded me with messages that “you must be perfect if you want to be accepted.”

The inadequate physical and emotional care of my childhood birthed within me those deep fears that the significant people in my life would abandon me. Not knowing how to quiet those fears I believe I attempted to win the love and affection that went unmet as a child through my performance of many tasks for others. Surely that would gain me the love I so hungered for and free me from my deep sense of abandonment.

The other gift of my abandonment was low self-esteem. As I look back and try to identify where my self-esteem was developed I realize it was not. My issues of trusting others is connected to this along with my feelings of worth and struggles to be intimate with others.

Does it give you pause as you think about the generational abandonment of father’s to bless, affirm and love their sons and daughters?

Writing this has shown me the lack of shelter I had as a child growing up.