Being rejected by another person can feel like the ultimate heartbreak. Why don’t they want me? Why don’t they love me? Why don’t they approve of me? I can’t answer those questions for you. Each of us needs to do the work of understanding why we so desperately need that person’s approval. Oprah Winfrey said it best, “If you don’t want me, I’m not going to let myself want you to want me.” I know that is easier said than done; however, I have learned from personal experience that wanting someone to approve of me or love me was really about me judging myself. If they don’t love me or approve of me, then I must be unworthy, right? Wrong!
When a loved one dies, this too, can feel like rejection and abandonment. I realized nearly a year after my husband's death that my grief was laced with a heavy dose of rejection and abandonment. Logically, I understood that his death was not within his control. Nonetheless, the feeling that he rejected me was a real wound. It took a lot of soul searching, countless tears, and endless talking to God, to the angels, to my deceased spouse and to anyone else who would listen, but I eventually came to face that wound head-on and released it. It was not easy.
In doing the work to let go of that sense of rejection and abandonment, I came to see that I had carried that theme into many life experiences. My husband’s death was another experience that I interpreted to be about rejecting me. Of course, that had nothing to do with it. His death helped to reveal that flaw in my thinking.
Have you ever interpreted a loss as being rejected or abandoned by another?
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