You can feel abandoned, yes.
You can feel lonely, far from love and life,
warmth and companionship.
Others can trigger powerful feelings in you, yes.
But strip away the word,
the concept,
the story,
the thoughts you have about abandonment,
and return to the actuality of the living body, Now.
What does it feel like Now, this abandonment?
How do you know you’ve been abandoned?
Where is the evidence, in the body, today?
Attend to the sensations surging now in your belly,
chest, throat.
Feel the fluttering, pulsating, stinging sensations.
Let them grow in intensity, or dissipate, and move.
Drench the tight and tender places within
with curious, loving, agenda-free attention.
Give the sensations space; soften around them.
You’ve got to breathe into yourself now, Friend,
for nobody is here to breathe into you,
and they cannot do that anyway.
The dream of love has died;
you are waking up to the reality of love.
Love does not come from without. It never did.
It was always within you. It was your power.
You only had to click your heels together.
Three times.
Click, click, click.
It was always your calling, you see,
to find a way to love yourself deeply,
to not beg for love, or seek it externally,
or wait for it, or try to hold on to it,
but to drench yourself with it, moment by precious moment.
Do not abandon yourself when you feel abandoned,
for there is a pain worse than abandonment:
The abandonment of self, the flight from where you are.
Running from yourself when you most need yourself.
Focus on “the ones who abandoned you”
and you are powerless and helpless today.
There’s nothing you can do to change the past,
or others.
The present is your only place of power,
nowhere else.
Here’s how to break the cycle of abandonment:
focus your love on the inner “abandoned one,”
this precious child within.
Invite loving attention deep within the belly, heart, head.
Breathe into the ground.
Feel your sorrow and your rage.
Feel your own aliveness.
Connect with these precious energies.
Ask a friend to help you if you’re struggling.
Or a therapist.
Or a thousand-year-old tree.
Or a mountain.
Or the sky and all the gods and angels.
Call on the Universe for support.
Weep.
Rage.
Allow yourself to feel everything.
Cry the tears you were never allowed to cry.
Scream the screams you were never permitted to scream.
Speak the words of truth you’ve stifled for decades.
The inner child is real, and longs for you.
You have not been abandoned. Life is here.
For you are here.
Do you understand?
And from here, a new life grows.
As you learn to not abandon yourself,
you will, in time, attract others
who are not abandoning themselves either;
others who will not abandon you.
Who will stay with you when you cry, when you feel lost,
and will help you stay with yourself.
When you stop abandoning yourself,
You can never be truly abandoned:
you refuse to abandon your own inner world,
Even when others leave unexpectedly.
Nobody can abandon you: they can only move
To another place, with their own pain or joy.
Abandonment is the story of lost love, an old story,
For love cannot truly be lost, only rediscovered deep within.
You are courageous enough
to be present with yourself now.
You have broken the addiction of a lifetime:
You have discovered the deep joy
of being alone.
There’s no place like Home.
Click, click, click.
— Jeff Foster, from You Were Never Broken