The Power of Abandonment

This blog series is influenced by Alice Miller's Drama of the Gifted Child. Updated 7/7/2021.

Family History

My parents grew up in the middle of World War II. Dad was born in Taiwan but from age six until he went to college in the United States, he lived in Yokohama, Japan. Mom was born in Shanghai and her father worked for China Merchant Marine. At first they owned a house in Little Tokyo, then lived in row houses in Japanese-controlled compounds, near 76 Jessfield where suspected spies were interrogated and tortured. In December 1948 mom's family took a Merchant Marine ship to Japan. “The Last Boat Out of Shanghai” is a book containing real life stories of people in Shanghai from 1937 - 1949, caught in the mass exodus ahead of Mao’s revolution. Mom later ended up in the US where she went to college, and that’s where my parents officially met.

My little sister and I grew up in NJ in a controlled and sheltered environment. This may have been our parents’ way of attempting to gain control in adulthood over what they had no control over in their childhood. On top of that, on dad’s side of the family in Taiwan, his father came home one day with a very young, pregnant prostitute who became his second wife, which was legal in those days.

Dad had seven full siblings and three half siblings. Of his full siblings, the eldest was a brother, then two sisters, then him, two brothers, and a sister. The second wife had two daughters and a son. There was a one year tug-of-war between my grandmother and the second wife, and dad’s youngest full sibling is a year younger than the second wife’s oldest daughter.

Dad claims he was a rascal when he was young, and that he was small, weak, and often beaten up by grandfather. One time grandmother thought he was going to kill dad, he was so angry. 

Dad’s oldest brother had a diseased hip socket that no one knew about for years, and when their parents realized this, they sent him to Japan to have surgery in the middle of the war. Grandmother left the family in Taiwan and went to Japan to be with her oldest son. Her intent is unclear because she died long ago and WWII may have prevented her return. The steamer she took to Japan tried to return to Taiwan and was bombed by a U-boat, with no survivors. 

But she left in the middle of the night and took only my dad with her when he was six. She may have done this to discourage herself from committing suicide by jumping off the boat, and to save dad from being killed by grandfather. A younger brother realized she had bought dad a white coat because it was colder in Japan, and asked: where was his coat? So she bought him a coat, then abandoned him in the middle of the night. She couldn’t take care of seven children, she could only take care of two - dad and his oldest brother. I can’t imagine how the two older girls felt, since this implies gender bias as well. The siblings left in Taiwan were not wanted by the stepmother and were placed in a factory where they were abused and not given an education.

You would never know any of this happened to my dad. Sure, he’s a bit quirky (like all of us), but nothing in his behavior would indicate this kind of family history.

Abandonment is a universal, primal fear. From the Miller book and personal experiences, those who are eldest in their family have challenges compared to their younger siblings. On the surface, you would think firstborn are the strongest and most mature. They often serve as role models and look after younger siblings. And yet many firstborn suffer from a “firstborn curse”, often acting out symptoms of abandonment syndrome (dad’s oldest brother was dead by age 48 of a massive aneurysm). Why is this?

Here are some theories. Every new parent cuts their teeth on their firstborn. All of their generations of family history, all of their hopes, expectations and fears, get projected onto this infant. You would think infants don’t remember anything, but Miller’s research implies what happens before children can speak is imbued within their subconscious.

Dad was 26 and mom was 32 when I was born. When sis was born, he was 30 and mom was 36. Once parents have their first child, they can course correct the second and subsequent times. They are more mature. Later siblings won’t experience the level of abandonment syndrome that firstborn children experience because their older siblings are there when they come into the world. Under normal circumstances, they don’t know what it feels like to be truly alone.

Simple situations triggered PTSD-like symptoms until 2017, and the family history and growing up during WWII might explain a lot. After reading Drama of the Gifted Child I realized, not that I’d been suppressing these feelings (although unconsciously, yes) but that I hadn’t recognized that’s what they were. It hadn’t even occurred to me that being assaulted constantly by PTSD symptoms isn’t normal.

Because so much went wrong in my parents’ lives as children, they tried to make up for it with me. I have tons of baby pictures. My little sister has few baby pictures (she must have resented me for this), but based on Miller’s work, this may have been better for her in the long run because she was free to be who she was. First borns may have hopes, fears, and expectations projected onto them, with unrelenting criticisms (Tahani on the television series The Good Place hits a bit close to home). Per Miller, those who adapt as infants and learn survival skills often find those skills don’t serve them when they reach adulthood, and unconsciously act out the consequences of that programming.

While sis is four years younger, ever since I was a child I felt in some ways she was so much smarter than me. This triggered an insight for my dad, that part of his emotional disconnect came from fights he had with his older brother. His brother was always angry and trying to beat dad on the head to make him dumber.

Being an adult unconsciously acting out projections led to overreaching for more and better jobs, job titles, and money. I was greedy, stressed, and striving for more because of this programmed pattern: “I am unlovable unless I achieve”. I played in Carnegie Recital Hall 9 times as a child, was in National Honor Society and the Gifted and Talented program, went to Notre Dame and Juilliard, and competed mercilessly, whether a ping pong game, ballroom dancing, or card game. Everyone saw this but me, until I read the Miller book at age 52. Every time something surfaced and I talked to my dad about it, his response was “of course, didn’t you know that? I’ve been telling you that for years”. And he was, but while I heard him I wasn’t really listening.

Sis and I learned about our family history when I was 22 and she was 18. For 22 years I knew something was horribly wrong, but didn’t know what, and I was angry and scared because up was down, left was right, forward was backward. When the stories started coming out, I became calmer, realizing it wasn’t me. 

Children can be quite aware and alert, and research indicates 80% of what we communicate is non-verbal, through body language, eye contact, sweat, voice pitch, etc. My relationships were damaged. I kept learning with each new person I met, and then things wouldn’t work out because of the two sides of the abandonment coin: abandonment syndrome and unhealthy attachment syndrome. I wore thick coke bottle glasses from age 14 to 27 when I had RK surgery, then met and dated a good looking guy, but it ended up being an emotionally abusive situation. 

This was an eye opener. Prior to that, many people couldn’t get past the glasses. But after meeting this guy, I didn’t envy the jocks and cheerleaders either, and wondered if many were exposed to abusive situations. At least I knew who my friends were. Those coke bottle glasses served as an asshole filter.

After that situation I worked in Morgan Stanley in Tokyo and Hong Kong - and was completely lonely and miserable. I had run physically as far as I could on this planet and still my pain didn’t go away, and that was when I realized it had nothing to do with the external world around me, it was me. After five months I came back to the US with a whole new appreciation for the US and my parents. Prior to that trip, I wondered why I couldn’t have nice, normal parents like the rest of my American classmates. After the trip I thought what a miracle that they are what they are, given the environment where they grew up. They’re actually quite amazing.

In March 1997 I landed a contract in Devon, PA doing Java development and met Frank. Four months later we started dating (exactly 1 year after his roommate committed suicide in Miami). Four months after that, when he had been on a plane with two other coworkers and the plane went into free fall for what felt like 30 seconds (people were screaming and crying), he proposed. Two years after we met, we got married.

On his side, Frank’s parents also grew up in the middle of WWII in the Netherlands, and Frank was a premature baby because his mother had pre-eclampsia. He is also the eldest, and had a younger sister who we lost to cancer. On doctor’s orders, his mom stayed in bed in the hospital for a month, then had a C section one month before natural labor would have occurred. He fit in his dad’s hand. 

His mom would be wheeled in to see him once a day in his warm incubator. Two weeks later she went home, and two or three weeks after that he went home when he reached a normal weight. So per the Miller book Frank has even more serious abandonment issues, and the reason we became so attached to one another is because of those abandonment issues and the fact that he always made me his first priority. When dad first met Frank, he immediately groused: “great. Now you’ll never learn to compromise”.

The other reason we became attached to each other so quickly is because in previous relationships I had a lot of issues, and when someone hooked into something vulnerable it would be like a live wire, the chemistry would be through the roof. This would promptly derail because of the abandonment syndrome. Frank, on the other hand, didn’t hook into anything vulnerable and that was a huge relief. This meant we both had a stable foundation on which to build and grow. We are independent thinkers with scientific backgrounds, and this is one of our strengths.

In December 2016, a friend was having a tough year because his girlfriend had died in the middle of the night that year. I was concerned, so in January I began spending time with him to make sure he was OK, and then he hooked into something vulnerable and it turned into a roller coaster ride. We’ve known each other since we were kids, and that false security caught me off guard. I experienced a lot of PTSD triggers, and according to Miller’s book, that was when I went from being an “unconscious victim” to becoming a “conscious survivor”.