What happens when rejections pile up over a lifetime

As I write this, I’m just a day away from my first Redundiversary – a portmanteau of my own genius that only works in British English. A full 364 days of existing in the wilderness that is post-employment as a 55 year-old. At some point I’ll get around to sharing my Top Ten Lessons learned since being unceremoniously dumped by the company I’d worked for (and bled my very soul into) for the past 13 years. But not today.

Today I’m exploring the theme of rejection.

Specifically, how a thousand rejections, both big and small, experienced over many decades are all echoes of that very first rejection I must have felt subliminally as a baby in the womb. Yes, I’ve spent arguably way too long mired in self-reflection over these past several months. No, I’m no further forward with answers to the issues raised by all this navel-gazing, but at least awareness is something, right?

Rewind some 56 years; back to me as a collection of little cells gathering pace like a snowball in my 44 year-old mother’s womb. Was I planned? Fuck no. Who in their right mind actively chooses to start again when they’ve already raised two daughters to adulthood? My older sisters were 21 and 22 when I fought my way into the world; unwittingly throwing a hand grenade into the epicentre of all our lives.

Picture this: one daughter was about to get married and move (permanently) to another country. The other was living a life of freedom and discovery (and about to meet the love of her life, my future brother-in-law). No doubt my parents were pretty pleased that they’d successfully dispatched not just one, but both offspring, into the world and were planning their next adventures accordingly.

And then I turned up. A ‘gift from god’ my mum asked when I probed on the question of why I was so much younger than my siblings. Bless her. Those religious roots of hers, along with the moral societal code at the time and the very recent legalisation of abortion at the time, are probably 98% of the reason I’m actually sitting here writing this post. If that sounds harsh, it’s not meant to be. Maybe it’s just my perspective of a mother who died when I was 19 and spent a large quantity of my childhood absent for various physical and mental health reasons. I didn’t really know her, you see.

Rejection #1

It must have been a huge shock for her to find herself expecting again when she was so close to peri-menopause or even full meno. The stress she would have no doubt endured over the nine long months would have seeped into my bloodstream and done goodness knows what to my burgeoning psyche. [There is plenty of research to show that prenatal stress can alter both brain structure and function in a foetus, potentially affecting memory, learning, and focus. It may also impact the development of the amygdala, a region of the brain involved in emotional processing. Also, babies exposed to high levels of maternal stress have an increased risk for anxiety, depression, and other emotional difficulties].

No frickin’ wonder I’m neurodivergent!

Rejection #2

Only a couple of months into my babyhood, mum was diagnosed formally with a nasty, destructive, emotionally harrowing condition called post-partum psychosis (PPP); a severe but thankfully relatively rare mental health emergency that usually rears its head in the first month after childbirth. Symptoms include high mood (mania), low mood (depression), confusion, and psychotic symptoms like delusions and hallucinations. Terrifying stuff for the person affected and those around them. Dad was a full-time shift worker, and my oldest sister was about to get married, so off I went to foster care. I’m trivialising this last part of course; not because it’s not important, but because it is so pivotal, and therefore deserving of its own chapter (which I will write one day).

Why do I label this as rejection when in reality I was only ever taken into care with the very best intentions? No-one meant to reject me in the harshest sense of the word; my family loved me. And it’s because they loved me that I was sent away. To avoid the pain of being around a mother who, due to severe mental illness out of her control, couldn’t accept me.

Rejection #3

Fast-forward 27 years; I’m standing in the kitchen holding my tiny first-born, wondering why my new husband had chosen someone else when I was at my most vulnerable. What had caused him to seek out someone new when I needed him so much? We needed him. We had been together nine years; high school sweethearts. But here I was, struggling with my own post-natal depression, a newborn in my arms and a husband who had disappeared into the ether. We were young, with a social circle that was nowhere close to becoming parents with whom to share tales of poonamis and teething. And to make matters worse, I was now facing single-parenthood before I’d got anywhere close to settling into motherhood.

Rejection #4

20 years ago I met my second husband. My eldest was seven years-old at the time, and everything seemed pretty perfect. Here was a man who was, on the face of it, willing to support and raise my child alongside me (and her dad). To cut a long story short, we went on to have twins who are now 19 and ready to emotionally fly the nest, even if finances and the shitty state of the UK economy has scuppered their hopes of being able to afford to live independently for now. And it’s this coming of age for our shared brood that’s when the rot finally set in. We’re polar opposites, me and the husbeast. He’s a huge introvert to my massive extrovert. I’m the chatterbox. He uses his words sparingly. He’s always had itchy feet (over the years he’s touted the idea of moving many times; first to Spain, then up North, then to Wales, and now I swear he has Thailand in his sights after a couple of recent trips with the boys). I’m more of a home-body (and it’s not too much of a stretch to figure out why. If you need a clue, re-read Rejection #1). We’ve just become two very different, disconnected people while no one was paying attention. Recently, while being perfectly civil, there’s been a further withdrawal of emotional connection in the form of sleeping separately, zero touch, even less conversation than usual. The result is two people living in what the youngsters would call a situationship. If you count the adult children, then we’re four people in a house-share. It’s pretty rough if I’m honest. And is yet another layer of rejection on top of the other major rejections I’ve already experienced.

And we’re not done yet!

Rejection #5

The latest to be added to the pile is the redundancy which sprang from nowhere 364 days ago. I’d been working for this SME for 13 years. I was pretty comfortable in my position as a highly-respected colleague who had helped grow the business from the ashes of new-ownership to an 8-figure company that supported 25 people and their families. What could possibly go wrong? Oh wait! Apparently I’d become a bit expensive over the years. And wasn’t it about time I sought those ethereal new challenges everyone speaks of so longingly when they reach midlife? Well yes, but not when you’re the breadwinner with a humongous mortgage and a good 12 years left until pensionable age.

And so here we are, bang up to date at the tail-end of life’s major rejections (so far) which have shaped the very fabric of my being. I sincerely hope there’ll be no more of them, but somehow I doubt this because life just doesn’t work like that.

What’s really clear to me is the direct line between how I’m feeling right now, a 55 year-old woman struggling with life post-redundancy, and that small foetus in the womb. In the intervening years I’ve developed a number of beliefs, each with their own emotional consequences:

1. I have low self-esteem and very fragile self-worth
2. My neurodivergent rejection sensitivity can be all-encompassing at times.
3. I have an avoidant attachment style: I have a strong need for independence, and difficulty trusting others fully.
4. I’m hyper-vigilant to the point of anxiety at times.
5. I’m the world’s biggest people-pleaser (and yes, I’ll fight you for that title any day!)
6. Over-thinker extraordinaire: with a highly intellectual brain that needs to understand not only why I am as I am, but how I can shake off the less desirable consequences and embrace what’s good.

And yet…. I am blessed with extraordinary empathy and intuition; I can easily sense others’ moods, discomforts, and needs. This is both a strength and a burden; because it’s how I’ve survived a turbulent start in life, yet is now what’s holding me back from growing in this next phase. I just worry too much about what everyone else thinks, and I stop myself from doing things because of fear of judgment.

If I can find a way to let go of all these things that have helped me so far, but now need to be let go of, I would be fire, baby! Or at least that’s what I’m telling myself.