I don’t really have a gauge for what a healthy goodbye to people I may never see again is supposed to feel like. I suspect a mixture of joy and sadness is normal, but what I do know is that this, too, has a learning curve when you’re learning how to feel emotions. I said goodbye to four people on the same day that I may never get to see in person again. I’ve had a lot of goodbyes, but most of them involved us being abandoned or my system leaving without saying a word. We would just rip the Band-Aid off and push them out of our awareness in a matter of seconds, and it was finished so that we didn’t have to feel the emotions. Once we made the decision, we did not look back. We would not think of them. It was as if we had never known them. It’s not something I’m proud of, and it’s taken a lot to learn how to do life differently. I used to think it was a coping skill I learned when I was three years old and unable to tolerate being ripped away from my only attachment figures. That was the truth for my cover story. They did break those attachments, and that would have been enough to cause all kinds of issues on its own. However, as I continue to get more memories, I am realizing that the root of that behavior goes much farther back.

There are a lot of emotions that come with realizing the root of a lifelong behavior that has cost you so much through losses of your own doing. Recognizing it is the only way to heal it, but then you have to process both the necessary and unnecessary losses, the choices you made, and the people who chose to abandon you. There are so many big feelings and it can get messy. 

There was only one person that my little parts attached to enough that I wasn’t able to push it completely out of my awareness, and that was the beginning of growing in this area. There was nothing for me to do but feel the feelings because they were bleeding through onto everything. That was the season when all I could do was repeatedly say, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.” I was not able to push it away no matter how much I tried. So I repeatedly prayed, “I choose to forgive as an act of my will, and I ask You to bless them with a double-portion blessing, and I release them to You.” If I prayed it once, I prayed it 200 times a day, and I had to do that for months because I did not know what else to do. All I knew was that I loved the Lord and I wanted to be obedient no matter what it cost me. I didn’t get it all right, and there were times that I wasn’t sure I wanted to keep going at all, but saying those things out loud and listening to healing scriptures is what got me through that season.

Looking back, I learned so much. Now I know that He removed me to protect me, and He really does surround us with His family. Sometimes there are lessons to be learned before that can completely unfold, but He’s so faithful to give us what we need. I don’t know all the answers for the best way to process and grow through abandonment and attachment issues, but I do know that choosing to serve Him no matter what, because He was enough when nobody else was there, was the start of healing that area for me.

Fast forward to this weekend, and I’ve felt a wide range of emotions. I’ve had waves of sadness and some tears, but it no longer feels like it’s going to swallow me up. I no longer panic when my throat starts to burn and my body gets tense. It has somehow become safe to sit with those feelings and think about the gift of having someone in my life worth feeling sad about. It’s beautiful new territory to hug someone and feel a sadness birthed out of love and distance instead of pain. There were some similar goodbyes at the conference where I hugged someone and felt so much love and joy for them and for their breakthroughs. It was so worth sitting with the attachment pain and taking the opportunities to build new neuropathways that don’t scream at me every time something comes to an end.

I was at a friend’s house today, and I can remember a time when I didn’t want to go because it wasn’t worth having to feel the pain of leaving and going home to a lonely house. I remember the seasons where I planned everything I did around the possibility of obtaining a split second of healthy physical touch and the unbearable, gaping wounds every time it didn’t happen. It’s been a process of letting some of my youngest parts go through object permanence and learn that just because someone isn’t in the same physical proximity doesn’t mean they aren’t there for us, and that it’s safe to let someone have space without worrying that they will forget us. That was one of the hardest lessons out of everything I’ve walked through with my system, but the healing on the other side is so worth it.

When I visit people today, I don’t need that same level of reassurance. I operate from an adult knowing and sometimes even from a learned secure attachment. So, when I said goodbye today, I left with the same completeness and wholeness that I had before I arrived. There was no loss, and there was no loneliness bubbling up when I pulled into my driveway. I sat on my couch with my feet up and thought how lovely it was that the house was quiet and I was the only one home right then.

I did not get here overnight. It took grieving all the holidays, birthdays, vacations, and family celebrations we missed out on to walk my parts through knowing that worldly things do not dictate our belonging or our value to others. It is sad that we never had any of those things, but now we get to make our own memories and celebrate in new ways. When we learn our identity in Christ and start to walk in sonship, everything changes. We start to value people differently. We appreciate opportunities even when we know they will hurt at times. We love without weighing out the loss it might cost us. Because love is the Father’s currency, and He gives a never-ending supply. When we love with His love, it’s different. It’s kind of like how He is outside of time. His love is like that, too. There is no beginning or end. It just is.

I’m so grateful for all the people who are in my life today in all the different ways. Even the people who came up to me at the conference just to say they read my blog. That was so healing for me. Thank you for allowing Him to use you in those moments. It showed me another way that He is expanding my ability to love others and how He really does have a heart for community and fellowship. It’s such a better way of doing life to not have to be someone I’m not, to not need to plan an escape, and to be able to say what’s on my heart without fear of what people might think.

Sometimes, laying something on the altar does mean we lose it, but sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes, the Lord just wants us to get to a place where we trust Him with it, and then He can make the bond even stronger because we finally let Him be the center of it all.