Session 156  ·  26 April 2026  ·  Abandonment  ·  Rejection  ·  Inner child

When Someone You Love Abandons You -
Healing the Rejection Wound

Some wounds don't announce themselves. They arrive as a tightening in the chest when a message goes unanswered. A sudden stillness when someone becomes distant. A familiar sense — quiet but insistent — that you may have done something wrong, or simply that you are not quite enough to make someone stay.

This session turned toward two words that most of us carry but rarely name directly: abandonment and rejection. Not the dramatic kind that appears in obvious stories, but the slower, quieter kind. The parent who was physically present and emotionally somewhere else entirely. The home full of people that somehow felt profoundly lonely. The long habit of making yourself smaller, easier, less demanding — not because you wanted to, but because some part of you learned that this was the safest way to keep people close.

We also named the form of abandonment we speak about least: the slow abandonment of ourselves. The moments we go quiet about what we actually feel. The times we say yes when everything in us is saying no.

Part 1

Teaching & opening meditation
•      Welcome and grounding
•      Opening meditation
•      Psychoeducation
Starts at 00:00 28 Min

Mid-Week Check-In

Three things from this session worth sitting with

1. The wound of abandonment rarely shows up directly

It disguises itself as personality — as simply the way I am. The person who never quite lets anyone fully in. The one who gives endlessly but refuses to receive. The one who monitors the temperature of every relationship, who notices the slightest shift in someone's attention and immediately wonders what they did wrong. These are not personality flaws. They are very old, very intelligent responses to a very real pain — still running in a life that looks completely different from the one they were designed for.

2. The deepest abandonment is often invisible
When we hear the word abandonment, we tend to think of obvious events — someone who left, a relationship that ended, a parent who was not there. But some of the most enduring wounds come from situations where no one left at all. The parent who was in the room every day and emotionally absent. The home that was full and somehow lonely. The child who was never left and yet never felt truly seen. This kind of wound is the hardest to name because there is no clear event to point to — only a persistent, quiet sense of not quite being enough to hold someone's full presence.

3. The wound doesn't need the past to have been different
What the younger part of you is carrying does not need the story to be rewritten. What it needs is presence — someone who finally came back. Someone who can sit beside it and say: I see you. I understand why you felt that way. You were not too much. You were simply a child in a situation no child should have had to navigate alone. And I am not leaving. This is what the inner work offers — not healing through understanding, but healing through contact.

A short audio reflection to support what moved in this session. Listen when you have twenty quiet minutes — not to analyse, simply to let it settle a little further.

Your practice this fortnight

Working with the session recording

The recording from this session is available through the community group. Twenty Five minutes, once a day if possible, or a few times across the fortnight.
Sit somewhere quiet. Hold something small and solid in your hand — the same object you used in the session, or anything that fits in your palm. Let it ground you before you begin. 
When you press play, you do not need to try to feel anything. You do not need to do it right. The only intention is to be present with whatever arises, and to meet it with a little more patience and compassion than usual.