How To Overcome Your Rejection Issue

Here I Am acrylic on linen, 61 x 61cm.

I have always known that I was adopted. While my parents were great people and I knew they loved me, I still felt a deep sense of rejection. This affected my self-worth and the way I viewed the world. I never really believed that I was enough. I felt I had been thrown away, unwanted and this feeling of abandonment crippled my ability to sustain lasting relationships.

At the age of 49, I began the journey of finding my birth parents. It was my friend Alison, who insisted that it was vital for my life. I was apprehensive and sceptical, she was insistent and determined. It was only through her perseverance that we found the people we were looking for. Actually, the process was much easier than I thought it would be. But instead of relieving my fears through a loving reunion, what I found only served to increase my lack of self-worth.

My birth mother had never told anyone that I existed. When she found out she was pregnant, she went away up north and gave birth at Auckland hospital. She adopted me out at 9 days old and then went on with her life, as though she had been on vacation. She didn’t tell her family or her friends, she didn't even tell my father and to add insult to injury, she is still keeping this secret, now 50 years later.

I was faced with my worst fear.

This made me sad, then mad. How could she not acknowledge my life? Did I have no value? The fear of what I would find was one of the reasons I hadn’t initiated a search any earlier. It was terrifying knocking on the door of someone’s life, especially the person who had given you away originally. I was faced with my worst scenario, she hadn’t told anyone about me. No one knew I existed. I still felt unwanted. This feeling of rejection consumed my thoughts. It affected my sense of self-worth and totally corrupted my worldview, but did I want to live like this? I had to decide what my response would be.

I’m a visual artist and I have been painting and exhibiting for nearly 30 years. My response to all the important events in my life, is to paint. It has always been the vehicle for my emotional expression and often the outworking for my own art therapy. I created my original painting, Here I Am.

When Prince Albert, Duke of York, visited New Zealand in 1901, a Māori women took the tail feather of the huia bird from her hair and placed it into the hatband on the Duke’s head. Upon returning to London, this stunning looking representation of social status became a fashion icon that helped to hunt the native bird to extinction. Everybody wants social status, even at the price of destroying someone else.

For me, the huia feather represented my own non-existence, I felt extinct. My birth mother would not tell her family that I existed and my father had died without ever knowing about me. Why was I a secret? Was it the social pressure of unwed pregnancy, or was it because I was a mixed-race baby? My father was Māori and my birth mother Pākehā (European New Zealander), it was the late 6o’s and these were issues. Whatever the reason, I was outraged and the title of my painting, Here I Am, demanded she acknowledges me.

The painting was almost a knee jerk reaction, in defiance, how dare you not appreciate or even accept that I exist. I am here, my life matters. But then a year later, when I exhibited the painting again in a different gallery, my interpretation of the art had changed.

Make a choice to see things differently.

I looked at the painting and the meaning was now different for me. I had changed, grown, I had moved on. I saw the huia feather as a symbol of importance and in Māori culture, it was traditionally given to prominent high ranking people of the tribe. I no longer wanted to be controlled by anyone else’s opinion. I didn’t want to feel unwanted and I had the power to decide what I was going to believe. I could determine my own reality. Instead of viewing the feather as a symbol of rejection or abandonment, I could give this gift to myself, as a token of honour.

I could choose to see myself as important, someone of value and this changed everything for me.

Only you can give you the gift of self-acceptance. Only you can say I am enough. I am valuable because Here I am, I exist and my life is worth something. My birth mother still hasn’t revealed me to her family, she told me that she never will. It’s my choice how I value myself and I say I am worth the huia feather, I am the queen of my own life.

When we know who we really are, we can then be who we were created to be. This strength will give us the courage to embrace life and to overcome all the obstacles.

We all have the desire to be known and to find where we belong. My journey in finding my way home to New Zealand is not just a tale about discovering family and place of origin, but it is about the discovery of self.

If you would like to read more about how I found my birth parents, you can read, ‘What it feels like to find my birth family’ and ‘How finding my birth father has changed my life.’

It has been an empowering journey and I am forever changed for travelling the path. I wish you every success on your journey of life.

Froyle Davies
I’ve been a visual artist for over 25 years and now I tell my stories.
Let me inspire you with this beautiful free print, ‘Above the Stormy Waters.’

Cheers Froyle