clinging and pathetic?

Miranda’s husband abandoned her with a newborn baby when she was 23, telling her she was clinging and pathetic even though he knew when he married her that she had two issues – scarred lungs which made breathing difficult, and a longstanding fear of abandonment.

"In some respects my childhood fear of abandonment has been a self fulfilling prophecy," sighs Miranda. "My husband left with me with a newborn baby when I was 23, he said I was too dependent on him, too clinging and pathetic, and this hurt me terribly because up until then he had been very kind to me.”

“Actually, I think he was the pathetic one – someone who couldn’t cope with the responsibility of being a parent – and I managed to cope very well on my own with my little girl,” explains Miranda, “and here I am twenty years later bracing myself for my daughter's departure from my life."

"She, of course, won't be abandoning me in the manner my mother and husband did," says Miranda, "but it will be a separation all the same - far more for me than for her because her life has been charmed - except of course for her father abandoning her at birth."

"At 43 I feel I should have the intelligence to understand that what happened to me at the age of three – when my mother abandoned me – and at the age of 23 when my husband abandoned me – is not going to happen to me now," says Miranda, "but try telling that to my inner child!"

“I tell myself over and over again that I am going to be alright on my own after my daughter leaves home,” says Miranda. “It’s quite possible that being totally on my own is just the test I need to show me that I am much, much stronger than I ever believed I was – that I am not the clinging and pathetic woman that my ex husband said I was.”

Read more about Miranda:

childhood lung disease

babies do remember!