Fear of abandonment didn’t stem from one traumatic event in my life. It grew from a string of experiences that, when stacked together, created a quiet ache in my heart—one I believed wasn’t mendable. I have carried this belief that people leave, and they don’t come back.

Looking back, I see a pattern of people who, once part of my daily life, eventually moved on, leaving a void behind. Whether it was the natural course of growing up, relationships evolving, or life pulling them in a different direction, the impression was the same. I absorbed those changes as loss, as proof that nothing stays the same, and that once someone goes, they’re gone for good. That belief followed me into adulthood, shaping how I approached relationships and how I braced myself for the inevitable goodbyes, even with my kids going off to college. I didn’t know how to navigate staying connected when I knew what the end result would be.

For so much of my life, I assumed that when someone walked out the door, that was it. But through work with a psychiatrist and addiction therapist, I’m realizing that abandonment is often just my mindset. Lately, I’ve felt a deep pull to reconnect with people from my past, and I’m seeing that connection takes effort.

Sometimes abandonment is just isolation I’ve unconsciously chosen. I’m starting to fill in those empty spaces with what was here all along—connection.

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