What Reconnecting With My Uncle After 20 Years Taught Me About Making Assumptions
A story about grief, foster care, and choosing to be brave.
My mom died recently—unexpectedly, though the truth is, a part of me has been anticipating this day for a long time. I lost both of my parents to addiction at a very young age and started grieving them both when I entered the foster care system at 12 years old.
When a child is left to fend for themselves (practically, physically, emotionally, mentally), their little brains do a brilliant job at filling in the gaps. If mom or dad were not there in the way we needed them to be, we often conclude that "I am not loved and no one cares". We then go on to adapt to this new reality by developing protective parts of us that do everything they can to prevent this hurt from happening again.
There are many ways we do this—some of us block ourselves off from love, some of us throw ourselves into any situation that resembles the kind of love we're familiar with... However we tend to protect ourselves, we often make assumptions about another's experience of us. We project the pain of our past onto any situation that even remotely resembles the hurt we previously experienced... in order to protect ourselves from experiencing it again.
Growing up, my childhood was far from perfect, quite the opposite in fact. There was violence, crime, neglect and abuse, and I was severely affected by it. I was an only child and spent much of my time alone... and even though my parents were often lost in their own pain, I knew deep down that they loved me. I looked up to my parents and adored them, as all children do.
When I went into the foster care system, I was incredibly confused, as any child would be... And what confused me the most was that I had other family... So why did no one come for me? I went on to go through foster home after foster home, with each move signifying that my assumptions (proved through very real lived experience) were correct:
No one cares, and I am on my own, just as I always have been.
I don't have blood relatives that want a relationship with me.
Those assumptions became deeply engrained beliefs that would be carried with me subconsciously into adulthood, only to eventually find out that they weren't true. Luckily, I've had many people over the years prove #1 wrong repeatedly... Though that doesn't change the neuroplasticity of a young brain that learned what it learned for survival. And in turn, a whole lot of life missed out on because of these deeply engrained beliefs.
When my mom died, I reached out to her two brothers on Facebook — men whose voices I hadn't heard since I was a child. I avoided it for an entire month, my gut sinking and my heart racing every time I thought about sending that message. One of them, whom I'd assumed didn't care to know me, took me up on a phone call once he received the news.
In that hour-long conversation, I learned that when my mom first dropped me off at foster care, he'd wanted me to come live with him and his family in Alberta — and that no one in my extended family had ever been told I was in the system, getting passed from home to home for years. "I had no idea," he told me, "we would have never abandoned you."
That single sentence upended everything I'd believed about my life. I realized I had spent twenty years convinced I had no blood family and never would... not just because they weren't there when I was young, but because I had, without knowing it, assumed they wouldn't want to be there now.
See, it doesn't always matter what the "truth" is... What effects the outcome of our lives is our perception of the truth.
"All truths are half-truths." - Alfred North Whitehead
When we're young, our brains aren't developed enough to understand this differentiation, and this development (or lack thereof) follows us into adulthood until we learn how to discern truth from projection. And the paradox is that, when there is so much unmetabolized emotion behind our perception... It FEELS like truth, and so therefor, technically it is.
So, what I've been sitting with out of all of this is:
How much of life and love do we miss out on, because of an assumption we've made based on a past perception rooted in pain. And,
What becomes possible when we open our hearts to forgiveness, and ask the hard questions, say the hard thing... Put our hearts on the line, with the 50/50 chance that our love, or whatever it is were seeking, is in fact requited?
I know we all make assumptions rooted in pain, for very valid reason... and perhaps have even missed out on the potential of something beautiful and healing as a result.
A few weeks after reconnecting, my uncle and aunt drove all the way from Alberta to meet me. When they arrived, I was in awe of how much he reminded me of my mom. What unfolded over those days was profoundly beautiful and incredibly healing indeed — but that's a story for another time.
For now, my invitation to you (and future me) is this:
Check your assumptions. Say the hard thing—you never know what will come of it. Say what you really feel deep down, ask for what you truly want. What do you really have to lose?
There is nothing like death to remind us how precious this life can be... and nothing like regret to remind us of what could have been possible if we were brave enough.
So, let us be brave.
From the deepest place in my heart to yours,
Victoria Mercedes Rose 🌹♥️