I think your right. The place to start to move forwarded may be with forgiveness and doing so perhaps refrain your story

Forgiveness is an Art – especially when it comes to forgiving ourselves, which is always entangled with our ability to forgive others.  We forgive others as we forgive ourselves.

Very much recommend the book ‘The Art of Forgiving’ by Lewis B. Smedes

Also Clarissa Pinkola Estes tells a story ‘the Crescent Moon Bear’ which is about forgiveness and can be found in her book, ‘Women Who Run with the Wolves’ Or in audio CD “Theater of the Imagination”.  (Yes, the book intended target is women but men can learn a great deal from it as well. Especially when one embraces symbolic language and doing so realize that the symbolic words masculine and feminine are not about gender. The symbols are informed by gender but do not represent a gender)

According to Clarissa there are Four Stages to Forgiveness:

to forgo – move forward, don’t let what happened stop you from living your truth

to forbear – to abstain from punishing – holding yourself and others accountable but as punishment.

to forget –  and in do not dwell – We don’t forget what happened to us instead we do not dwell

to forgive – finding a place of being able to say yes to the experience As It Was without attachment.

Hi Michael,

My story is very similar to yours,different in my early childhood, but the same as far as moving from country to country, state to state. I had six siblings. Our mother was an Alcoholic. We had a very traumatic, abusive, and severely neglectful early childhood. She would go on drinking binges, leaving us alone for days. We had a nanny who my Father hired, who we loved very much, and we loved in return. My earliest experience of loss began with my mother who was unable to give us the love, nurturing and care we needed. All she cared about was getting her next drink. My father would put her in rehab and hospitals but back in the 60’s not much was done with the help of Alcololism and awareness. She would just run away and to the nearest bar.

My Dad was a Harvard Graduate, a very succesful man, but he had to travel extensively for business as he was CEO for a huge paper company. I was born in Miami, Florida, two years later, moved to Boston, one year later, moved to Alicante, Spain. At this time..my Dad came home very upset to see that my Mother had fired the nanny, and we were all left alone. No food, nothing. We were taken away from the courts.

My father’s sister and her husband came to love me, and became my foster parents. But I missed Annabelle terribly. (The nanny). We then moved to Kingston, Jamaica where I had to learn to speak English to get into first grade. My older brother lived with us, whom I was very close to, my Aunt and Uncle loved him very much too, but one day, my mother flew to Jamaica drunk, accusing them of kidnapping right before the adoption of him went through and she lied and said she met a rich man with a huge house and he would be taken care of. She told them she did not want me. They became my Foster parents. That was my other loss, I did not speak to anyone for months after David left. My other siblings went to live with their real fathers. David had it not so good. He got put in a foster home. There was no “rich man” no “big house” the foster home asked if he knew my Aunt and Uncle’s address and phone number in Jamaica and he did not. I never saw him again until I was 16. My great Aunt finally found him at the age of 13 at the foster home and raised him. We were transfered around after Jamaica and by the time I was 16, lived in 8 more States and 2 more countries. I had no roots, no real friends.

I became very troubled as a teen, and my Aunt and Uncle had enough and put me in a boarding school in Florida. I sat there alone on my suitcase crying. I had no one. My real father came and got me at the age of 17, and I I lived with him, but we fought, mostly because I was very troubled and unhappy.

I too have never been able to maintain a long term relationship. Do you think it is because of all the loss you had, no roots, and moving around so much? I know mine is that problem. I am in therapy for that now. I feel I have some invisible sign on me saying “I’m alone, no family, few friends, no roots”. Maybe men pick up on that, I don’t know the answer. I wish I did. I just wanted to share you are not alone. I also miss my beloved cats. I can’t have them where I live now. They were my only family.

@michael: i read your whole story. I’m sorry to hear what happened. do you mind keeping us updated about your life?