The Lost Parents

By N. Bridges

The Lost Parents is a collection of real-life stories describing what it means to experience the loss of a close bond within a parent-child relationship. These interviews are about ordinary people revealing how an absent parent has shaped their personal journey and how these changes affected their lives as adults.

The circumstances recorded explain relationships, divorce, prison, long-term illness, bereavement, and abuse. The men and women featured come from a variety of culturally different backgrounds.

The most important aspect of these retold accounts is that there is no formula or rule to follow. The purpose they serve is to share these everyday tales, which so often hold people in a state of disappointment and unhappiness. The messages these stories have in common is that each one tells of how these individuals have found courage to move their lives forward from a place of abandonment and loss.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Dec 26, 2012
• ISBN: 9781452563626

N. Bridges

N. Bridges works as a person-centred counsellor, supporting families. Her experience includes complimentary practise and as a psychic medium. As a daughter of lost parents, her spiritual life helped her navigate an emotional release of her past. Married with two sons, she lives in London, England

Book preview

The Lost Parents

We only have one mother and father and whichever way we incarnate into our families to experience our relationship with them, they are a crucial and central role to our lives. Sometimes life presents us with a series of challenging and even tragic circumstances that takes us away from our mothers and fathers who often sadly become lost to us along the way.

This collection of stories is about those of us who grew up with or knew our parents and were possibly living as a family, where circumstances such as divorce abandonment, rejection or loss became the story of our lives. Perhaps you will recognise part of your own narrative in them, touching a cord in your heart that seems to stretch out to others and beyond.

It takes courage to leave behind a painful, upsetting chapter in our personal journey, but it helps to allow our self-healing to take place. I felt it was time to tell some of these stories to allow us the adults we are now, to share let go of the past and move forward and to know we are not the only ones.

Early Days

M y life started out in a very ordinary way. I was born in a small terraced house, Hayes in Middlesex England to be exact, with just a solitary midwife in attendance, a quick and easy birth my mother later recalled to me. If I close my eyes, I can see my internal film rolling a picture of my sister standing by my cot inspecting me carefully. Thank goodness, we always liked each other, as we were later to need and rely on each other. Those early days of my childhood seem so long ago. It has taken a certain passage of time and heartache to reach the age of my forties, to let go of my past and feel the relief of peaceful understanding, which had so often eluded my adult life. Here is my story.

My parents met each other as teenagers through high school. This was post war Britain the early 1950s, when people led more traditional lives and the working culture for most, was one of apprenticeships and hard graft manual labour jobs. They spent time together hanging out with their fellow students, but upon leaving school, they were to take different pathways and so contact was lost for a while between them.

My father, was married three times and met his first wife at a young age , they went to live and work in Canada for six years, but this first marriage was not meant to last longer than a couple of years and an inevitable divorce was to follow. Dads return to single life, made possible a determined steady climb up his career ladder, driven forward by his lust to make money and a good life for himself. My mother stayed close by her own parents, married and had her first child, a daughter, my older half sister. Unfortunately, my mother was to encounter a similar parallel to my fathers of her own marriage. As time went by, she became increasingly aware that certain aspects of her marriage were not working well enough to stay, divorcing her first spouse she went back to live with her parents with her young daughter in tow. I consider that they both made bold steps in their younger adult lives because at the time divorce was much less common than it is now. My father in particular was never one to follow rules and regulations of how to live his life, a trait of his I carry with me throughout my own.

I guess fate played its part, as when my dad returned from his Canadian adventures to London on a few weeks holiday, he bumped into my mother. Their relationship flourished quickly and Dad encouraged mum to leave her older daughter behind with her parents and return to Canada with him. They were not away very long when my mother discovered she was pregnant, a decision to return to live full time in England resulted in my older sister being born and then myself eighteen months later. The year I appeared into this world was in 1963 and one of those intense iconic moments of history. The Beatles ruled the music world and across the Atlantic Ocean President Kennedy became an assassin’s victim.

During those early years of the sixties, we were a family of five, with the inclusion of my mother’s first child our older half sister living with us. We plodded along as families do and during that time, I remember little else. I can recollect my two older sisters starting school, whilst I was still at home with mum enjoying having her much appreciated undivided attention. My mother was my whole world, life and shining light, she could do no wrong in my eyes and being just four years old she was the very centre of my existence.

My father worked as an engineering manager for a large company and he bought mum a newsagents shop to keep her busy. I can clearly call to mind, standing behind the penny sweet counter sneaking and scoffing lots of goodies and helping to serve the Harrow school boys who came in for their daily sweetie fix. My sister and I used to go with our father early on a Sunday morning to the bread factory and collect hot fresh bread to sell in the shop. I still love that freshly baked smell.

I do not remember a particular day or moment when my parent’s marriage collapsed it all seemed to happen very fast, I was only five years old. I can only dredge up in my mind the shattered fragments of the breakup but one day my mother and eldest half sister were gone. My little world fell apart and I clung to my sister in a desperate hope that she too would not suddenly disappear.

In those days, most parents did not feel the need to involve children with adult decisions, so my father never really explained at the time what was going on, which affected us greatly. My sister shut down emotionally, she became a quiet child, almost silent perhaps not wanting to disturb the adult chaos and its rumblings of thunder. My own world was in turmoil I became hysterical crying all the time for my mother, I felt lost, abandoned and very bewildered.

More than a year passed since my mother left, until my sister and I saw her again and by this time, my parents were divorced and our father had gained custody of my sister and I. The court arrangement was of a contact order, with provision made for regular visits to see our mother. It always felt so hard to visit and see her, because leaving again was extremely upsetting and I would cling to my mummy, sobbing, distressed and shocked. Dad continued for a while to take us on our monthly visits; however, mother for whatever reason would often not show up. My dad was not the sort of person to put up with our mothers behaviour, in his eyes she did not seem able to be there for us. He grew increasingly angry towards mum and in his wisdom took action to stop all contact.

Looking back as an adult, this abrupt halt in my opinion was never the best option, or way to move forward. I feel it would have been better for my sister and I to have some consistency throughout the years, to remain in some form of communication with her. However, my father being the strong fiery person he could be was not about to settle for the emotional disruption he felt was entering our lives.

It took a long time for me to settle down into a new life without mum. It felt like there was always a large crack that never filled, and my mother’s name was unspoken. My paternal grandmother came to live with us, as my grandfather had died a couple of years before. My grandmother relished her new role of caring for my sister and I and we called her Nan, she was our saviour. Always warm and cuddly she provided much care and stability for us. I enjoyed her collecting my sister and me from school. She always had a happy hug and a very welcome bag of sweets. Nan was a truly wonderful kind loving person and without her, I do not know how we would have emotionally survived.

A year or so had passed when without warning my father had a new woman in his life, whom he met through work. Suddenly this unfamiliar person became a regular visitor to our lives and a short while later they hooked up and were married. My new stepmother, previously a divorcee with three children of her own and looking for stability, well quite simply a man... had become a central player to our new family group. Dad felt some guilt over the fact he had removed mum from our lives, so to provide us with a missing maternal figure was the path he took. As a parent myself I can see his dilemma and today in hindsight maybe, it would have been better to leave us in the loving care of our grandmother. Life is full of what ifs and buts and to remain in that state is not constructive or helpful. Dad took a risk; he was good at those and chose to move forward in his life. Gradually my wonderful grandmother moved away to live with her sister but she always remained a constant figure and regular visitor.

How life changes sometimes so quickly it feels like the blink of an eye. My family constellation changed with what felt like, not a backward glance. A new set up plonked into my daily orbit. We were such a squelchy mess of age’s characters and energies, each