The Ambiguous Grief of Losing Relationships With Family You Never Had Due to Your Abusive Parents’ Actions

Some people have a family tree. Strong, sturdy, and integrated. When I’ve described my own lineage to my therapist, I have referred to it as a family of weeds. They show up out of nowhere, they are invasive, and they penetrate into regions we cannot predict. Some are beautiful and we want to keep them. Others, we wish would go away or never have surfaced. I suppose that this is common in families that are rife with divorce and infidelity, but for me, it has occurred so many times that I’m beginning to feel untethered to anything resembling a sense of belonging. 

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It’s not uncommon for unknown relatives to surface on social media or through DNA test results like 23 and Me. But I’d argue that having virtually the same thing happen three times is kind of an outlier. First, it was my dad’s half-sister; they shared a mother. I was aware that she was out there somewhere and that she had two adult children who I had met once as a teenager, but my father has been in and out of my life since my parents got divorced when I was 3 years old so I never had much contact with any of his family. I was somewhat surprised at what seemed like a random time to finally want to connect with me, in my 30s, but I welcomed it. I figured I had nothing to lose and everything to gain.  

The second time this occurred was about 3 years ago. This time, completely out of the blue, I got a letter from a woman living in Italy who was younger than me, who claimed that my paternal grandfather was her dad, meaning yet again my dad’s half-sister. My paternal grandfather and her mother had apparently had an affair a few months prior to my grandfather passing away. The weird part of this — well, weirder because the whole experience was weird — was that she mailed me a bunch of photos of myself as a baby that she somehow got a hold of from great aunts and uncles I had never met, that were sent to them by my mother who never mentioned any of this to me. It felt like a violation in a way I can hardly explain. Having a total stranger send you photos of yourself has a bit of a “stalkerish” vibe to it, even if that wasn’t her intent. Knowing that your mother was involved and never bothered to tell you about it felt… well, like I was being intentionally set up. 

The third time this happened, a month or so ago, I got a close relative alert on 23 and Me. A woman with the same last name as my maternal grandfather. My curiosity got the better of me so I messaged her wondering what her connection to me was. It turns out we shared a grandfather and her dad is my mother’s half-brother. I had some knowledge of a half-brother that my mother had but knew that they were estranged. I knew nothing about him other than that, so I was slightly shocked to find yet another cousin I had never heard of.  

The common denominator in all of these cases for me was a feeling that my extended family on both sides thrived in secrecy, lies, and pretending that they were “normal.” I understand now that there was a lot of anger, strife, and betrayal that led to fractures between parents and siblings. I also understand that various unresolved mental health issues created dangerous boundaries that made continued engagement between parties incongruous with individual sanity. Having made my own difficult decisions to choose some degree of estrangement between myself and both of my parents, I can’t even say I blame anyone for keeping their distance. 

And yet, what I was unprepared for each and every time was the degree to which I felt abandoned. The primary thought I kept wrestling with was “why didn’t they care about me?” Maybe it’s selfish, but a part of me wonders if any of these relatives had made a conscious effort to try to be a part of my life as a child if maybe things would have turned out differently for me in terms of my feeling alone, unprotected, or ashamed that I was somehow flawed and at fault for not just my abuse but for somehow pushing people away with my perceived “badness.”  

Then, there is an even more insidious thought that afflicts me and that is the fear that I was somehow perceived of as an extension of and thereby exactly like either of my parents. I’d be willing to wager that many of those in therapy for trauma involving their parents have said to their therapists: “I’m afraid of being anything like my mother or father.” I know I have. So the idea that as a child I was lumped together with them, while logical, strikes me as terrifying. 

But most of all there’s ambiguous grief that I feel tinged with the tiniest modicum of resentment. Anger and resentment are often secondary emotions stemming from something much more challenging to feel, like sadness. For those of us who have experienced complex trauma, there’s an underlying current of deep grief over the loss of what we never had or can have. Depending upon where our trauma originated, there can be multiple aspects of our lives that have been irreparably altered, down to the cellular level. The idea of having had close loving relationships with any of these relatives leaves a gaping wound inside of me. I can’t recreate my childhood with them in it, so I have to mourn the childhood I had with them absent from it. 

So what happened with these relatives? Well, it has been a mixed bag. Some of the relationships started off promising but there was too much to repair to build on. Others have become some of the most meaningful connections I have because they have been by choice. And still others I opted not to explore much further, feeling a bit wary to throw my heart into the proverbial relationship arena just to be broken again. 

If you have discovered relatives you didn’t know about or had lost contact with on social media or via some kind of ancestry or DNA testing, I recommend proceeding with caution. While you may discover incredibly meaningful connections, it will inevitably stir up a lot of fragments of broken pieces within yourself that you didn’t know were loose. Hopefully, some of those relationships flourish and help to give you a sense of belonging, as they have for me, but if they do not, remember that blood isn’t always thicker than water. Being connected is an active decision every day. It takes both parties to want the connection and sometimes, things that none of us can predict will interfere with those desires to stay connected. Either way, it helps us learn more about ourselves and that can be invaluable to our healing journey.