My entry into the world differs from the status quo. Most people are privileged enough to be brought into the world by a loving mum, if not two loving parents who dots upon them and their existence.
For me, this was a stark contrast, although I have no recollection at all of this. This is from heresy and information gathered from my case study.
My birth mum, a mere 15 year old, was adopted as a child. Her adoptive father who loved her, passed away. Her adoptive mother decided she no longer wanted her and at age 15, she was given up for adoption AGAIN. She was located on the streets of main land Hong Kong and upon admission, it was identified that she was pregnant with me. As such, I too was birthed into an orphanage. We were privileged enough to meet, but because my birth mum was underage and also a ward of the state, I was taken away from her at 1 month of age and I too, became a ward of the state. I too was just another baby, institutionalised, residing with many other orphan babies around me. There were rows and rows of cots that housed us. This was my living arrangement for the first 4.95 years of my life, until I was lucky enough to be chosen.
My story is different from the sense that as a newborn, I craved love. I wanted it more than anything.
For these first 5 years, I didn’t get a privileged upbringing. I was lucky enough to get fed and watered, let alone be given love and comfort. Love, safety and security weren’t a thing for me, all the things we take for granted and the majority of us have as children.
Because of this, I craved it deeply.
At 4 years and 11 months, I was adopted alongside my half sister. I would sit on my mums lap and stroke her chest and place my head near her heart, desperate to feel human connection, desperate to experience a mothers love, desperate to be loved and held. I craved human affection and touch. The loss and grief, the fear and the panic, the trauma all embedded so deep within me. I didn’t know a life without it. I tried so hard to have a normal childhood and to be loved by those around me.
At 8 years of age, I told my mum I felt like I had a big black hole inside of me. I felt such a huge emptiness within me.
I looked everywhere to fill that void, through food, hugs, words of affirmation, through people pleasing, and later in life, sex, alcohol, work, etc. I became a chameleon. I morphed into different people as my situation required. By society’s terms, I was successful, but the deep emptiness still resided within me.
At 14 years of age, I remember smoking endlessly to punish myself for who I was. The self loathing was deep because the developmental trauma was embedded so deep within.
As a teenager, I without a doubt had body dysmorphia. I hated and loathed who I saw in the mirror. I was teased by those closest around me, mocked for being so skinny, having small boobs yet unbeknownst to them, this was a byproduct of not really being fed for the first 5 years of my life.
I yearned for the deepest expression of love, but I held such an intense pain within me, from that of my birth mum to being sexually abused, to the shame that was projected onto me, with society lack of ability to deal with it back then. All of it was simply to much and then after time, I disconnect and disassociated. The shame and heartache was intertwined and infiltrated every single aspect of my body, bone deep.
The brokenness was so deep within me that I felt it within my bones. This appeared as osteopenia, crack fractures, early degeneration of the disc and facets and fibromyalgia. For years I had been trying to fix these aspects of me that I deemed broken and unacceptable. For years, I had been so focussed on my limitations and this reflected in my body. For years, I searched and searched to fill that void, but never did I realise that I was the catalyst to that void and the I needed to stop rejecting the parts of me that I grew up to believe were unworthy, the part that I thought was rejected and unloved by my birth mother, the part of me that I felt society had because of the our patriarchal society and how men believe that they own and treat women. I had to stop falling prey to this and rise above it. I needed to be the person to create change. And this was the missing piece of the puzzle.
Nothing external could ever fill it.
Over the last 5 years, I’ve had to learn to give myself everything I wasn’t, not for any reason by the fact that I simply didn’t receive it. It’s taken me a lot to stop projecting blame and wanting someone to hurt in lieu of my pain, for someone to be vindicated and to feel what I felt (a byproduct of trauma). This isn’t how the world operates and chasing this only keeps us trapped in this vicious cycle of trauma and shame and blame.
I no longer wanted to be defined by this, nor trapped by the cycle of trauma, self pity and playing the victim. My body and my soul needed me to rise above this.
When I learnt to love myself in the capacity I had been craving for years, when I learnt to crack my heart open despite it wanting to remain closed out of fear, when I stopped hiding in shame, when I let go of my stories, my limitations… It was only then my own love flowed to me.
Over the years, I have chosen not to only accept my story, but to accept myself as I am, with my battle scars and wounds. I’m proud of these as they represent who I am. They don’t define me any longer. They have no power over me. I chose to no
longer be limited by my past, nor my current existence.
I fully choose and accept who I am and this has been the most fundamental aspect to my healing.
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© Amie Rule ~ Inner Work Outer Living, 2022