Abandonment: A Common Past-Life Theme

Abandonment: A Common Past-Life Theme

Roberta's Story

Roberta, a 60-year-old psychologist, revisited a life in 1821 New Mexico where she saw herself as a very sad ten-year-old boy named Henry. 

The significant event revolved around Henry’s feelings that his parents abandoned him.  He was afraid they had been taken by Indians. “As I approach the house, I got very sad, very upset, with tears in my eyes. I’m alone. I don’t know where my parents are. I’m not supposed to cry. Boys don’t cry.” Henry wandered in search of his parents, to no avail. Trappers found him and took him to the nearest town where no one wanted him. Eventually, he was taken in by a man who worked in the stables. 

As an adult, he became a drifter, aimlessly doing odd jobs in small towns. It was hard for him to get close to people. He ended up gambling in bars. For a while, he stayed with a woman who was part Indian and had a child. When he left for a few days, members of her tribe, thinking Henry fathered that child, burned down the house and killed the mother and the child. 

Reflecting on how Henry’s life was impacting hers, Roberta said, “I have had lots of losses. I have learned to be strong and not give up. I struggle against wanting to be alone more than I should. Sometimes I feel aimless even though I have plenty to do.” Roberta sensed the woman Henry stayed with might be her ex-husband in this life, who left her. 

She wondered if karma was the reason her husband abandoned her in this life as she had abandoned him in the last life. “He’s [she’s] letting me feel what it’s like to be abandoned.” 

As to the issue of guilt, she said, “I spent a lifetime wondering what I had done wrong. It still bothers me when someone thinks I’ve done something wrong.” 

Roberta has been back to New Mexico in this life and said when she heard a Native American playing the flute, she had an overwhelming desire to cry, a deep sadness that she could not understand. 

For Roberta, regression work was one way to go back and complete the unfinished grief whose fragments resurface in subsequent lifetimes. “I am constantly thinking about that lifetime in an effort to better understand myself. The impact of this western lifetime is unmistakable.”

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