Jackie Paulson – Chapter 3

Posted on February 13, 2017 by Jeyran Main

Jackie has honored us by sharing monthly Chapters of her thoughts that will be published here. Please show her the love and support you have given me by following her or commenting here. – Jeyran Main

Jackie Paulson is a book blogger and book reviewer. She is one of Amazon’s Top Reviewers since 2012 and is currently studying Human Resources to obtain her Master’s Degree. Jackie adores her three cats; Wiley, Andy & Barney, and their names come from her love of the television show Andy Griffith. You can visit her on https://thenuttybookblogger.wordpress.com/.

Chapter 3

All of you who have experienced a death of a parent under the age of five, experienced abandonment, know the loneliness that follows and you hear me. You can understand where I am coming from. The message I got was I must never say out loud how I feel. I must be a good girl.

Life without my mom was hard. It was filled with sleepless nights and nightmares. Dad was never around for me, creating my deep beliefs that we are responsible for other people’s feelings and ignored or silenced our own, which is known as codependency. As you grow up with no parent being around it created a belief that men are unavailable, men cannot meet my needs, and no one had time for me.

As I grew older, I realized, with mom gone that others would have to take care of me including grandma. This would lead me to believe that safety did not exist and hope was no longer a feeling but one of emptiness. Feeling alone and abandoned with mom was gone created the little girl inside me to silence all emotions. My dad made me believe silencing my feelings was my only option.

A Turning Point

My dad did not know or express his own emotions of mom’s death, no grief, no loss. Her death was the greatest loss of my entire life. My belief was that I am not good enough to be loved. This belief would play a big role in my future relationships. Dad worked hard every day running his restaurant which kept him busy as to not deal with his emotional loss of mom. At that time, I did not understand about the trauma my father had gone through during his hardship. What I do know is that he did not want me around.

The lack of closure with my mother did not come until the age of 25. I was not there at the time of my mom’s death which created a big resentment I carried with me for years. It was easier to place blame on my dad than deal with the death of mom.

Now that my mom was gone, it did not take long for him to find us a new mom. When dad announced that this would be my new mom, I thought to myself, “this is not going to happen.” Nevertheless, in March on St. Patrick’s Day when I was around seven years old, he married my step mom. Because I just lost my real mom, I had a hard time embracing her. Even though she was nice to me, we had a rough time getting along. What this did was make me believe that love does not last. I felt that if love lasted my father would not forget my birth mother by marrying my step mom. These feelings stood in the way of my relationship with her.

Over the course of two years, my life had changed so dramatically: I lost my mom, my individuality, my feelings, my expectations, my friends, my toys and my old school. I was hurt, grieving and confused and I lost parts of myself. I now had a new family as mom brought three children to the marriage making us the “Brady bunch.”

I was a master in my mind to not talk about feelings, and I went numb inside. I did not want to have to think about all that happened to me. This stage of my young childhood created a negative perception that sending them into my subconscious mind. This would only do harm later in my life as my feelings were not acknowledged ever!