Dear Jennifer:

I re-read all your posts since April 5 so to understand that emptiness. I hope my developing thoughts will help. I will state some of the following as if they were facts but these are suggestions for you to evaluate. Let me know of your thoughts, if you’d like.

Yesterday you wrote about your first memory of that emptiness: “I went on vacations with her and her family and (felt I) was basically a part of their family”. May 3 you wrote about that same friend: “(She) became like my family, I spent all my time with them, including school nights as my brother had become violent at that time. I recall thinking of them as family but realizing I was not when they would have me take their family photo at Christmas or other holidays”.

Spending time with the friend and her family was where you felt the opposite of emptiness. At home you felt emptiness, that is fear and aloneness. With your friend’s family you felt safety and togetherness. I think it was an intoxicating feeling. Unfortunately you knew it was not your family because they didn’t include you in their family photos. And you had to go back home.

I think that your “runner” lifestyle (“historically been a ‘runner’. I’ve run from jobs, friendships, responsibility”, April 5) is based on that emptiness that you experienced in your home of origin, the ongoing fear you experienced there. I think that the freedom you yearn for is the freedom from that experience at home, an experience that you understandably re-live. Understandable, because we don’t get to shed our brain like we do our skin, so the experience remains

“I want to get back to where I was with a feelings my of freedom, rather than feeling trapped now…traveling nursing, free time to adventure, but with the ability to connect with people”, April 6.

You keep feeling trapped because you were, in reality, trapped inside your home of origin. You wanted out then, as a child. You found it temporarily when spending time with your family’s friend. That safety and togetherness feeling is the freedom you long for.

On April 18 you wrote: “my deepest desires are to travel and be carefree”- the deepest desire of the child that you were (and the adult that you are) is to leave home, leave that emptiness, the fears, the cares, feeling you were a burden.

On April 19 you wrote: “I’m afraid of being stuck where I am; that I’ve trapped myself”- again, feeling trapped and stuck, same thing, the little girl trapped and stuck with the two parents and a brother who you could not depend on, who did not give you that feeling of safety, but of fear and emptiness.

On May 3 you wrote about your mother: “She raised me to be independent, never needing to lean on or trust in another…During this time my mom impressed upon me the importance of taking care of myself and not looking to depend on anyone else”- unfortunately (and unintendedly, I am sure), she did not raise you to be independent.

She told you that you that you should be independent, but this is not the same as raising you to be independent. To raise a child to be emotionally and practically independent, the parent has to be that person that the child can depend on, lean on. The parent has to provide the child the feeling of safety and togetherness, a connection where the child finds comfort. This is a must. Not optional.

Before you could possibly take good care of yourself, someone else needed to take good care of you. A child cannot grow up to an adult taking good care of herself unless as a child someone else did. You had to have that safety at home so to experience the confidence that you can take care of yourself.

A child needs someone at home to depend on emotionally, in order to grow into an emotionally independent adult.

anita