Abandonment

Experiencing the abandonment of a parent through incarceration

Losing a parent to prison. The particular shape of that absence, which is not death but is not presence either. Visits that ended. Phone calls that cost too much. A parent who was alive but gone, and a childhood reorganized around that fact.

Losing a parent to prison is a grief with no casseroles, no cards, and often no permission to talk about it. Children of incarcerated parents learn early to manage a secret and a stigma along with an absence. That was too much to carry then. It is allowed to still be heavy now, and here it does not have to be a secret.

What can follow an experience like this

No two people carry the same experience the same way. These are some of the effects that people with this experience often describe. Having some of them, all of them, or none of them says nothing about how real what happened to you was.

Anxious attachment Holding on hard. Depression Not just sadness. Shame Not guilt about something you did. Fear of being abandoned Not just not wanting people to leave. Loneliness This is different from pulling away. Ambiguous loss Grieving someone or something without the loss ever fully resolving. Trust issues Trust that was broken, repeatedly, by people who were supposed to be safe. Anxiety The background hum of dread that is always there.

Nothing on this page is a diagnosis, and nothing here decides what is wrong with you, because nothing is wrong with you. Something happened to you. This page exists so that when you are ready, you can find people who understand it from the inside.

You do not have to carry this alone.

Bridge of Hope Recovery is a free, anonymous, peer-led fellowship for trauma survivors. Meetings run throughout the week by phone, by video, and in person. No cost, no waitlist, no one asking for your real name.

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