Day forty seven

I said I would write about attachment. No one ever asks me why my website and my book are called "Accepted at last". That is partly 2 Bible phrases and partly a hint at my problem with attachments.

People who haven't been adopted don't understand the issues that come with being adopted. I have had it said to me that it is better than being raised in a children's home, better than being in an abusive family, better than.... But the people who say this don't know what they are talking about. It's not about comparisons. I imagine that someone raised in a children's home has issues with attachment, but that doesn't mean adopted people don't. And I imagine anyone brought up in an abusive family has issues with trust, But how do you define abuse? Neglect is abuse and emotional abuse is bad.

I read a report from one psychologist (who had been adopted) who wrote about the "body trauma" of adopted people. I wrote an assignment for my psychology degree on adopted adults who adopt children. It's a complex issue.

So as I sit here in my house missing Christmas I am thinking about what I'm not really missing.

I don't really miss anything. That always puzzles me, but that's because I don't get attached to things, or events. I used to like Christmas as a child. We had a very materialistic Christmas with way too many presents. But we were also brought up to be selfish and to not share anything we had with anyone else. I remember the year my brother and I had bikes for Christmas. I think it was Boxing Day when my dad saw one of the other kids on our road riding my brother's bike. He was really angry (my dad that is). Sharing was a punishable offence.

But when I was a teenager and my depression was starting I got to hate Christmas. I remember each year hearing the Salvation Army playing Christmas carols in town and the sound made me feel worse.. There was rarely a Christmas when I was a teenager when I didn't seriously consider suicide. It was that bad. My first Christmas as a Christian was completely different.

But I'm not missing Carol Services and Nativities. For 35 Christmases I have done these, but I am not missing it this year. I may go to church on Christmas Day, but that will depend on how I feel.

Then there's attachment to people. Growing up I had a fear of being abandoned. I always expected my parents to take me somewhere and just leave me there. I never felt close to them. I was 15 when my dad told me I wasn't part of his family. He didn't need to tell me that, but it wasn't nice to have it affirmed. It was a few years later when he told me that the only reason they had adopted us was so they would have someone to look after them in their old age. They both lived to be 90+.

And when they died I felt nothing - no sadness, no regret, no relief. It's coming up to 6 years since my dad died and I don't miss either of them, neither the bad relationship nor the troubles they caused me. In the summer we discovered that my (I hate this term) birth mother had died 13 years ago. Again I felt nothing. I met her when I was 40. It was like meeting a stranger, because that is what she was. She had me in "Saint Monica's Home for Unmarried Mothers" in Kendal and I was with her for 8 weeks before she gave me away. But there was no attachment. Before I was born she was planning how to dispose of me. Again I have been reading how psychologists believe now that a lot of our characteristics and personality are developed in the womb. This in a day when the government is legalising abortion later and later. The psychologists know we are alive.

I am aware how this sounds from a Christian and a Christian minister, so read on.

After my severe depression, which came 18 months after I became a Christian, a friend who knew me said it had changed me. She said I was now not the only person in my world. This was when God gave me the calling to be a counsellor. I had been to the edge and not jumped off, so now I wanted to help other people to get back from the edge. I devoted my life to it. And I was good! I could get inside people's heads; I was helping people. I became a full-time minister which gave me access to a lot of people. And I trained as a counsellor and was accredited. And that's where the problem came. For accreditation I had to write up a case study (no problem) and then write about how it affected me. That was the difficult bit, because it didn't. I could sympathise and empathise, and give them all the time they needed, but I couldn't get attached to them.

This is taking too long, so I'll continue tomorrow, but in the meantime examine yourself!