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Sunday 17 January 2016

A former foster child asks "Am I doomed to always feeling slightly cheated?"

Am I doomed to always feeling slightly cheated?

My Dad died when I was too young to remember him.
My Mother had mental health issue and so from 14-16 I was in foster care.
My foster parents were never abusive but never showed me a scrap of affection.
My dear wife and I were never able to have children.
She then died while still quite young. She was 54 and died from heart disease.

I posted, for a reason I still don't really understand, this question to a well known website recommended to me by a young friend. I didn't get as many replies as some of the other threads seem to get but those I did get were very helpful.

"I think the circumstances of your parents would be very difficult for anyone to deal with & can see how you would feel cheated. But its not something you can do anything about so maybe try to reconcile it for your own peace of mind."

"You're not doomed to anything ,how you see your life is a choice. Sadness is normal, but feeling cheated...well that's a perspective that causes bitterness, and that only hurts you. I lost my parents young, I've had other troubles. I've never felt cheated. Life is random and fickle and things happen. How you deal with those things is entirely up to you."

"I suppose it depends on whether you wish to actively deal with it through counselling or some sort of therapy. Or if you prefer to try to live with it then regard it as part of life's journey, that good things happen & shit things happen but at the end of it you are still alive & look at what you do have instead of what you don't have? A sort of counting your blessings type thing, although it sounds unbelievably trite!"

I think the third one of these felt best for me. I suppose everybody has good and parts of their lives and I till just have to accept that some of the time I spent living in St Albans will have to be put on the bad part pile. When I was working in schools in St Albans and Wolverhampton I sometime heard such terrible stories about young people who had been abused for years. I never had anything like that happen to me so perhaps I have no reason to feel cheated after all? 

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