Today’s cocktail: Jamaican me crazy.
Part 2: The Mother Wound When Love Isn’t Enough: Growing Up Rejected
Part of why The Hole 🕳️ exists the emptiness I’ve carried all my life comes from my earliest relationships. Most of all, my relationship with my mother.
Because of her rejection and lack of acceptance for who I am, I internalized a long list of negative messages about myself. Growing up, it often felt like nothing else mattered once she discovered my sexuality. Intelligence and achievements mattered, but I didn’t.
I believed, or was made to feel, that I was a burden. That I was annoying. That I was inherently wrong. I absorbed shame, disgust, self-hatred, self-loathing, and unworthiness like life lessons I could never forget.
The impact was deep:
- Anxiety
- Depression
- Trauma
- Identity confusion
- Memory gaps
- Chronic guilt and shame
- BPD traits
- Imposter syndrome
- Perpetual feelings of being too much and never enough
Her stonewalling and disapproval created wounds that I still feel today. They shaped how I see myself, how I operate in the world, and how I respond to love, rejection, and conflict.
Even now, decades later, remnants of that rejection show up in me. I feel guilt, shame, loss, insecurity, emptiness, sadness, loneliness, anxiety. I feel unattractive, unliked, hopeless, and sometimes like I’m emotionally immature.
Recovering from this wound isn’t about blaming her. It’s about recognizing the truth: the messages I internalized are not facts about me. They are echoes of someone else’s inability to love fully or accept me completely.
Healing will take compassion, patience, and practice. I need to learn:
- How to be kind to myself
- How to stop seeking validation from someone who cannot give it
- How to honor the child I once was without letting that pain define me today
I can’t erase the past, but I can stop letting it dictate the present. The child inside me who felt unworthy, unseen, and unloved deserves acknowledgment, care, and protection not rejection from myself.
It’s also the beginning of something new: a path toward reclaiming my identity, filling the emptiness inside, and learning to love myself without needing permission or approval from anyone else.
Cocktail please?
Gia Beasley,