I’m struggling to find a place to feel validated, seen, or understood in my loss and grief. I came to this app in hopes to find community or people who may relate. I’m struggling with the confusion of grief from people still alive. Most of my grief is in the realms of #domesticviolence and #adoption and #abandonment The grief of being in foster care and losing my biological family. The grief from being adopted and losing my foster family. The grief of being abandoned by the family that adopted and raised me for 13 years of my life, with the three siblings I grew up with, making all of my childhood memories with. The grief of being completely black sheeped, and ostracized by that entire family system, not just my immediate family but all the aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents that I grew up with for 13 years of my childhood, ALL OF THEM. The grief of aging out of being institutionalized for two and a half years, at 18, and having nowhere to go and no family, so I move in with my birth grandmother who in a few months wants me out. The grief of her introducing me to my biological aunt and her family, and I move in with them and try to go to college, but after being institutionalized for years I’m too fucked up to function in this household and go to public school, but no empathy, they want me out too, no school no deal, more family loss The heartache from being so lost I move in with a mentally and financially abusive guy I thought I was in love with, just so I wouldn’t be alone in the world. The grief of searching for my birth family just to find my birth dad died and I never got to meet him. The grief of meeting my younger birth sister as a teenager, before I was institutionalized, and then for over a decade having the dream of us one day living together, and when she’s finally 18 she moves to the town I live in so we can finally be near each other, but that’s where she meets an abusive man and disappears from my life, not dead but also not in my life. The grief from her whiplash as she comes back when she needs to be rescued after being so cruel to push me away only to leave again The heartache of the multiple restraining orders I helped her get and support I’ve given in hopes of her getting away. The grief of her coming and going and triggering the family abandonment that’s so deeply engraved into me. The grief of the beautiful niece she brought into my life to rescue and love, just to tear her away from me when she relapses back to her abuser. So much grief and loss from abandonment and domestic violence, and even death. Grief from losing my biological grandfather that found me as a teenager and came into my life to tell me about the biological little sister I never knew I had. Grief that it was his dying wish for my sister and I to be apart of each others lives and he got into a car accident and died while my little sister was (and still is) in her abusive relationship. Grief from the best friend/roommate I made in treatment, who I graduated with in our graduation class of five people, the best friend I also lost to domestic violence, not dead but disappeared and forever changed. The loss of loved ones stuck in domestic violent relationships, on top of all the loss of abandonment is so triggering and painful. I sometimes don’t know how to keep going in life nor am I sure if I want to. This grief and these traumas have made navigating friendships almost impossible, it’s really lonely not feeling like anyone can understand why I’m the way I am, or how all this has shaped my personality and made me really guarded and scared to connect with people. My grief feels so confusing and complicated I often don’t know who or what I’m grieving other than my entire life and sometimes it feels too heavy to go on because sorting this mess is hard and lonely.

Posted by tasha at 2023-11-12 08:01:30 UTC