Abandonment

By now, I've shared enough about love, about loss, about grief. I've shared my own experience of discovering love, or discovering heartbreak. My 

And a lot of my writing is about fear.

Fear of life.

Fear of love.

A lot of my work has been to transcend fear when it comes to living. It's been about helping people reconnect to their innate courage, so they can use their fear as a compass, not to move away from the hard things, but to move towards and through them.

But, how do we transcend fear when it comes to love? How do tap into courage when we're grappling with the possibilities of being abandoned.

Lately, I'm being hit over and over with the idea that underneath all fear is our fear of abandonment.

Being abandoned for speaking our truth.

Being abandoned for expressing our needs.

Being abandoned for standing out.

In Attachment Styles theory, there's two prevalent styles that are talked about: Avoidant and Anxious. In moments of disconnection, the former withdraws, and the latter leans closer, which makes the avoidant pull back even more, and makes the anxious lean in even closer. Without the active awareness, they're both tangled up in a game that nets no winners, just heartbreaks.

Underneath both of these styles, the same fear rules.

The fear of abandonment.

And tracking our history, you can see why.

A lot of us, especially in the western world, have come up in broken family systems. I moved two countries and 5 homes between the ages of 11 and 17. I know friends who moved out of their homes when they were 14.

Sure, families have been broken in every generation. Sure, it's a tale as old as time. But even a few decades ago, we had communities that people belonged to. Kids would grow up playing with each other in the neighbourhoods. In case of trouble, a child would feel comfortable going to one of his or her friend's house and spending the night. The whole premise of 'Stranger Things' is of kids hanging out with each other and getting into all sorts of troubles, knowing that their families are right there with them.

Now, when our families break, so does our sense of community. There is no one to hold us. We live far from any extended family. And there's no church, temple, or mosque to hold us as we navigate through life's challenges. So, one of the most foundational principles of human beings as social animals begins to fray.

It's especially hard for people younger than 25, for whom, community means Instagram, TikTok, or Reddit. If someone's really pushing, they may find some semblance of belonging with a concept or a theme, like the LGBT community, MAGA, or College Football. Go take a look at the most popular subreddits, and a pattern will begin to emerge.

What's currently happening, and has been happening, is a total abandonment of any sense that we belong to something bigger. Loss of faith—not just in religion, but in all social bonds. There's nothing binding us anymore.

Forget loving our neighbour, we can’t even make eye contact with them.

We have become alone. And add to all that, we're forgetting what it means to practice sympathy. We are the first generation to grow up without stigma around family breakdowns. We've become accustomed to it. And when you become accustomed to something, anyone reacting differently gets stigmatized and is considered the one questioning.

"Many marriages end; what did you expect?"

"It’s just a contract anyway."

All this tells us that abandonment is trivial, and it's par for the the course. And that if you feel deeply affected by it, it's you who may be the problem.

So, we begin to develop this condition of hyper independence. The feeling of not being able to trust anyone.

The feeling that this world is terrifying and we are powerless, but if we attach to anything for support, we will be abandoned.

Ultimately, this is the crux of our generation. And it shows up in our:

• difficulty trusting people

• hypersensitivity to criticism

• low self-esteem

• constant need for external validation

All of the above are abandonment symptoms.

Beneath what looks like the age of entitlement, below the culture of narcissism, this is our age of abandonment.

And this is what creates our lack of resiliency.

We fear life because we feel alone.

That’s the thing about attachment—you need to depend to be independent.

You need a stable base to venture out.

You need to stand on something reliable in order to take risks. You need stability to cope with chaos.

Otherwise you can’t explore with courage.

If you fear abandonment, you won’t risk romance.

If you fear abandonment, you won't speak in fear of ruffling feathers.

And it's this fear that has led to the crumbling of traditional ideas, principles, and values.

We can't take out our frustrations on our divorced parents. So instead, we take it out on the institutions.

No more marriage. It's a trap.

No more kids. It's a responsibility.

Maybe, the major and only missing explanation for falling marriage and birth rates is not the selfishness or narcissism. Maybe deep down at the heart of it, we are terrified someone will walk out.

That they will decide, one day, to give up. That even if we gave it our all, it would never be good enough.

We simply don’t believe anyone will stay. So, our response is not to try.

Our response is to take family less seriously.

Our response is to put less of ourselves into relationships, to do it all half-heartedly so it hurts less in the end.

Same goes with our attraction to therapy culture. So much of modern therapy is pathologizing young people, who just desperate want to be loved. And because we don't trust anyone to hold us, we try to reparent ourselves.

We try to self-soothe.

We try to heal the inner child.

We do all the embodiment practices and relational cleanses.

And we end up just as, if not more, fucked up than before.

Our identity as a species has always been tied to our connection with each other, and now we are trying to do it all alone. And for many of us, life has become a chore of trying to heal or hide, and quiet down the intrinsic biological, basic human need to belong.

So, how do we move forward?

Like anything, the first step to solving any issue is realizing that there's an issue. So, we must acknowledge the abandonment and how alone we feel. We must acknowledge the loss of customs, of community, of tradition. Throughout history, our ancestors built customs and institutions to bind us together and then, one by one, we kicked them down.

We killed God.

We mocked marriage.

We attacked the family.

We uprooted neighbourhoods.

We debunked every myth.

We did and did, until we forgot that those structures weren’t just limits on adult freedom, but also foundations for children to stand on. We shattered them and now we wonder why a generation is falling apart. Welcome to the age of abandonment, where we have more dating apps on our phones than we have actual dates. Where we have more jobs than we have time spent at any one.

Despite our patterns, the answer is not to retreat from relationships. It has to be to take them more seriously. To kill that urge to run and avoid.

We have to realize that we have two choices:

• to crumble under the weight of this thing, or

• go all in, against the odds

Forget pretending that love and family aren’t important, that they are oppressive, that loving ourselves is enough. Forget torching the whole thing.

We have to try even harder.

Find someone and commit fully.

Learn that it’s safe to stay.

Give up some of yourself to belong to something bigger!

Ultimately, your commitment is where you find your freedom. Turn your disappointment into determination. Know that nothing’s guaranteed, but we can take the pain and make it into our art.

We don’t have to pretend there’s no fear. But we can use it to forge ahead.

And build something we can finally belong to.