For a long time, I had a sensitivity toward orphans. I always thought about how terrible it must be not to have a home and not to have parents to go to. Not to have a place you call home. My heart was aching just thinking about it.
I let this feeling sink in, and I let it sink for a few years, until it hit me!
I was an orphan without even realising it.

My father left for work in another country when I was 6 or 7 years old. I knew it was a good thing because now he had work. That was my child’s understanding at that time. I never predicted he would never come back. It had been around 15 years since he was back in Romania for good, but in another form and shape—he was dead. He wanted to be buried in the place he called home.

We had our mum, whom I loved dearly, but because of financial circumstances, she had to leave too. She left for work in the same country as my dad. When she left, I was only 11 or 12. I never knew at that time that she would never come back either. I still have the image of my inner child in my mind, waiting for her outside the gate. Fortunately, my mum is still alive, but by the time she returned to Romania, I had moved countries.

You see, I never realised I was an orphan because I still had a home, but it wasn’t mine. I still had someone to take care of me, but it wasn’t my parents.
Just now, I understand why the word “orphan” carried such weight for me, and why I felt such pain. It described my own experience.

The reason I never saw myself as different from others is that this was a trend; 6 out of 10 children around me had one or both parents leave for another country to work. It was a “normal” reality. Now, looking back, I can consider myself lucky, as I had my grandparents who loved us dearly and took good care of us. But there are so many children left at home alone, in the care of a neighbour or an older sibling who wasn’t even old enough to take care of themselves.

I am not writing this article to blame our parents, because I wouldn’t have been here today without them deciding to leave. I wouldn’t be in the position to have finished university, to travel, and to see that there is more to the world than I could see in my small country village.
I am writing this article to give voice to the pain of children left behind and to bring some light to this generational trauma.

Being a therapist, I have heard so many stories where parents, once they left—like mine—never returned. My mum returned, but I was already an adult. For my inner child, she never returned; she is still waiting. For others, things looked worse. Parents remarried in other countries and “forgot” about the children left at home. So, they are officially orphans.

The tragedy of my generation is a silent wound that still lingers in our unconscious minds.
To tell you the truth, this wound of abandonment is nothing more than a generational trauma that plays its part from past generations to generations to come.
It started before my mum and dad left the country. It started before my grandparents were starving during communism. Who knows exactly when it started?

That made our parents victims themselves. They did what they thought at the time was best for us and for them. I know, at least in the case of my parents, how much they suffered by leaving us behind. The amount of guilt they have to endure now is unbearable. So how can we blame them when they are in as much pain as we are?

The emotional awareness also started with recent generations, when information and free will became accessible. And because of that, we—this generation that hit the bottom—are the generation to reach the skies too.
The number of people reaching out to heal and restore balance is far greater than the number of people who remain stuck in the pain of being left behind. Yes, that is true!

If we went through great pain, we are now going through great healing. Therefore, what we can see in the world is chaos!
Those who have gone through healing know that healing means chaos, unsettling feelings, and awakened dormant fear and anger.
But once this chaos passes—because everything is temporary—the amount of love and peace that flows in, like a fresh river finding its way, can be quite overwhelming.

It might be chaos now, but what will follow is far greater: integration, love, and peace.