When My Mother & Father Forsake Me...: Five G.R.A.C.E. Steps for Healing Parental Rejection & Hurts

It is estimated that by the time we reach age 21 some 100 million Americans have to some degree experienced debilitating parental rejection, and most of us take those feelings and their life limiting consequences to the grave. Changes in family structure brought on by shifting social norms and belt tightening economic realities have made it increasingly difficult for parents to connect with and nurture their children. America stealthily has become a nation of people feeling a deeply rooted sense of loss and abandonment because we have missed and are missing our parents. The resultant pathology is sobering: according to the Centers for Disease Control and the National Principles’ Association Report 85% of all school kids exhibiting behavioral disorders and 71% of all high school dropouts are prejects. And according to the U.S. Department of Justice, so are 85% of all youth offenders. Parental rejection knows no racial, ethnic, gender, class, or sexual orientation boundaries. From Charles Manson to Oprah Winfrey, and Bill Clinton to Allen Iverson; from Beverly Hills to the South Bronx, and Manhattan, Kansas to Mogadishu, Somalia; from children born with silver spoons in their mouths and raised by nannies to children discarded in dumpsters and passed through the foster care system, parental loss, rejection, and abandonment produces the same painful soul damage and manifests in the same crippling preject syndrome, which has been shown by research to adversely affect performance in school and lead to unfavorable outcomes in every major area of life. As families become more fractured and distant, and children become more pathologically impacted by this alienation, the question begs an answer, “how do we help the millions beset by parental rejection to acquire what they have missed from their parents, heal their brokenness, and achieve their God ordained destiny?” WHEN MY MOTHER & FATHER FORSAKE ME… is one response to that question. Using many of the steps the Holy Spirit revealed to him as he sought to overcome his own feelings of rejection and alienation from his parents and build a meaningful life for himself, A. Jesus Wrighter has written a guidebook that will train parents, church leaders, and teachers to help prejects overcome the effects of parental rejection, empower prejects themselves to heal from their feelings of parental rejection and break through their inner ceilings to greater success, and equip everyone with the attitudes and skills necessary to create affirming households, fellowships, and classrooms insulated against parental rejection.