If you were unable to join our 2nd Global Webinar last week, you can share in the insightful discussion on issues of identity, raised by adult replacement children. Watch it here.
Accompanying Slides for the Webinar
Identity-Issues-webinar-24.-4.-2021-With over thirty participants from around the world, this second meeting was a deep dive into issues faced by many who were born in the wake of a lost sibling or other family member, or who were assigned a role to replace someone or to meet expectations not in keeping with their true selves.
Facilitated by our own co-founder Kristina Schellinski, we were honored to also have opening remarks from renowned psychoanalyst Dr. Andrea Sabadini. Participants were adult replacement children and therapists (and sometimes they were both) who shared openly, honestly and in the spirit of exchanging experience and knowledge with our growing community. They spoke of feeling invisible. How impossible it was to compete with an absent often idealized child. How difficult it felt growing up in the presence of an ‘angel’ or ghost, and the challenge of feeling not oneself, even split or as if one were someone else. Many replacement children feel ‘not good enough,’ not seen nor loved; ‘the heart is just not there’, as one participant said.
Some may feel like an imposter in their lives, their jobs, and even when entering a shop, as one person said. Or like a grief depository: “I felt like I was the prescription for my mother’s depression,” said another, “I thought I had to do something to be someone.”
How can one get out of the suffering of the replacement child condition?
Listen to some of the answers in this zoom recording of the 2nd Global Webinar offered to you by participants in the Replacement Child Forum.
Let us know your thoughts about the webinar when you have a chance to view it here, and send us your ideas or questions for our next meeting. Write to us at letters@replacementchildforum.com.