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Being Abandoned Hurts...

LEFT BY CHOICE
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(Based on a section in our ebook, How to Get Over a Breakup, available at http://overabreakup.com )

If any of you have seen the movie, P.S. I Love You (starring Hilary Swank as Holly) you are most likely familiar with Kathy Bates' character as Holly's mother (who had been abandoned by her own husband years earlier). In one very poignant scene Kathy Bates' character is advising a crying and grieving Hilary (whose husband, Gerry, had died a year before) that she would have to 'move on eventually'. Hysterical and inconsolable, the grieving Holly snaps to her mother that losing a loved one to death is NOT the same as her mother losing her dad, who 'left' them, and that her mother knew not the extent of her (Holly's) grief. Kathy Bates' character simply responds back to her stating something to the effect of, "Oh, because it's so much easier to deal with when the person you love leaves by choice, is it?"

It is said that the second most intense life stress is loss of love. The first is death. But I question this? Both are final. Both, in most cases, result in the physical removal of someone special from your life. Both result in the loss of a way of life we have become familiar with. Both have resulted in hanging strings of things that were never said.

However with death you have the peace of knowing that you were in your lost loved one's heart. You were not abandoned intentionally, cast aside, or rejected purposefully and by choice. With death you can take off work and get sympathy. You are given gifts of comfort, support and understanding. You can go through closing rituals and you can feel contentment that they are in a better place, and that you are still in their loving hearts and their good graces.

And you are 'allowed' to grieve.

You don't feel the need to force yourself to 'fall out of love' with them, or the need to fight loving them and missing them. You don't feel like you have to hide your love for them, or pretend like losing them doesn't matter. With death you have been given the full rights to wallow and get swallowed up in your grief and love for them, and you have a multitude of people there encouraging you to do so and giving you a shoulder to lean on and a sympathetic ear to cry to.

But with breakups, separation, or divorce, even though we have the assurance that our exes are still alive somewhere on this Earth, their love was intentionally withdrawn from us! They opted to leave us. We no longer have their presence, nor do we have their caring, love, or their desire to be with us. They no longer want us - and that was a purposeful decision on their part. They chose to leave us and to abandon their love for us.

And we are expected to just shake our heads and 'get over it'.

Either way, death or abandonment, you had little to no say or control over the situation. It makes one wonder if it is easier on one's soul to have your loved one taken away from you by God's will while they still loved you, instead of their intentional and direct withdrawal of their love for you on their own volition.

That's not to say you wish your ex dead, oh my!

That's just to say I think the personal grief experienced by losing one to death rather than abandonment (although BOTH are extremely devastating!) is somehow less self-destructive and more accepted and socially supported. I have been through both the death of a loved one, and the intentional physical and emotional withdrawal of a loved one, and I would have to say grief over breakup, separation, or divorce can be equally as devastating–if not more–than grief over the death of your loved one.

In death you lose your loved one's physical presence in both your present time and your future. But in the loss through abandonment and/or a breakup we haven't just lost one's physical presence in our lives, but also their love and desire to be with us. We experience grief over the loss of their mental, emotional, and spiritual presence, too, along with our own sense of value and self-worth, our pride, our ego, our dreams, our hopes, our security, and our feelings of being loved. They made a purposeful decision to leave us and to devalue our lovability and our worthiness.

When someone opts to leave us we end up feeling rejected, not good enough, not lovable, unwanted, and cast aside. We feel taken for granted and unappreciated for all we have done. We have gone from being everything to being nothing in a moment flat! But what kind of people would we be if we didn't grieve? Doesn't our grief stem from our having been loving, devoted, caring, committed, trusting and involved? Would we really want to be the type of person that is so cold, callous, without emotion, or self-centered that we could just easily dismiss such a loss and walk away unscathed?

However, when it comes down to either of the two losses being a personal growing experience, breakups rule! With the loss of love through breakup, separation, or divorce we cannot help but grow:

We emerge wiser, stronger, mellower, better, more compassionate, more understanding, less egotistic.

We take personal inventories and fix and mend that which we do not like about ourselves.

We see how we contributed to the breakup and we set out on this self-improvement course so we never make that mistake again!

We feel rejected and so we learn to love ourselves.

We feel wounded and alone and so we learn to embrace ourselves.

We feel scared of the future and so we learn to find a new inner strength.

We confront our fears, and quiet our childhood hurts that have been haunting us forever.

We realize that our own inner grief over the loss can sometimes be just a reflection of a deeper rooted sorrow, and so we examine our past issues and present fears–and we face them head on.

Hallelujah! We are reborn–and baby, we're better than ever!

~~~~~

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For more information on the getting over a breakup and going through changes please visit my site: http://overabreakup.com

Section 2

Today's Inspiration, Poem or Quote:

"We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering – these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love – these are what we stay alive for. "~ From the movie, The Dead Poet's Society

Today's Prayer or Thought: