Sickness overwhelms the body as temperatures drop below freezing, the body is alone, and with no help and no knowledge, suddenly the death of a three-year-old occurs. This death is not one that is physical, but one that is emotional. Emotional deaths like this occur everyday as parents abandon their children and leave them in a state of emotional despair and loss of trust. Too often do parents leave their children, giving them a sense of self-hatred, as well as leaving them with emotional burdens such as loneliness and an inability to trust or connect with others. How does abandonment and orphanage truly affect an individual? Is it possible for abandoned children to ever recover from the emotional burdens of being deserted? Can orphans and abandoned children ever truly trust again? Marilynne Robinson addresses these questions in her novel, Lila. By looking at Lila’s close relationship with the Reverend, John Ames, we can see Lila’s mutilated emotions and disfigured relationships. This is important because this emotional burden, a symptom of childhood abandonment, illustrates the way childhood abandonment and orphanage impact Lila’s ability to trust and connect with other people. 

Childhood abandonment and orphanage, observed throughout Lila, illustrate Lila’s mutilated emotions and her inability to trust and connect with other people. Lila is an orphan, left at the age of three, and never received the real parental guidance every child truly needs. Doll was the closest to a parent she has ever had and Reverend Ames is the closest relationship she has ever maintained. The main cultural connection we can make throughout this novel is clearly childhood abandonment. This cultural connection depicts Lila’s struggles with trust. Lila even says herself, “That’s a fact. I don’t trust nobody. I can’t stay nowhere. I can’t get a minute of rest” (89). Evidently, Lila’s parents’ departure left her angry and unwilling to trust again. The emotional burdens implemented on her since a very young age has severely impacted her ability to trust; limiting her chances at ever maintaining a functioning relationship. The quotation above is during a conversation with her and Reverend Ames, showing her neglect to trust even the closest person in her life and forcing us to believe she will never be able to trust, all due to her abandonment early on in life. Another example of this comes on page 178 where Lila describes, “a way of speaking she had picked up from the old man. It let you imagine you could comfort someone you couldn’t comfort at all, a child that never even had an existence to begin with” (178). The important part to take away from this is not the “way of speaking” that Lila had picked up from the old man, but rather her explanation of how the speech forces one to imagine. To imagine, or to think of or create something that is not real, that one could comfort someone that can’t be comforted at all. The argument that Marilynne Robinson is trying to point at here is that Lila is the one who cannot be comforted, and never had an existence at all. Lila likes to “imagine” she could be comforted, however, knows that she cannot. Her inability to be comforted stems right back to her childhood abandonment and her distrust for others, including John Ames. This is an extremely important part in the novel because orphanage is clearly shown as the factor producing Lila’s distrust and inability to be comforted, or connect with others (John Ames). 

There are thousands of experts on orphanage and the tolls it takes on kids and these experts help explain exactly why children, like Lila, have an inability to trust and connect with others due to their abandonment at such a young age. David Howe is an intelligent and experienced writer in the subject of childhood abuse, abandonment, and neglect. Howe’s excerpt, Childhood Abuse and Neglect and Loss of Self Regulation, in the bulletin of the Menninger clinic clarifies Lila’s situation and describes the affect abandonment has on children. “Children who experience particularly traumatic parenting, including abuse, abandonment and loss through death, are faced with trying to process extremely painful and psychologically difficult information about the self (not worth protecting), and the attachment figure (unavailable, unprotective, and hostile)” (Howe 57). Howe provides evidence here that children who experience abandonment have difficulty finding any self-worth. This relates directly to Lila’s self-hatred and mutilated emotions, which force her to feel no self-worth and believe that she is not worth protecting. This feeling that she is not worth protecting originates from her abandonment at age three and sheds light on why she cannot connect with others. She cannot connect with others because she can’t trust them to take care of her and does not feel as though she is even worth taking care of. In addition to this, Howe goes onto state that, “the self would be left in a constant state of fear and distress” (Howe 57). This “constant state of fear and distress” is something we can recognize through Lila and Reverend Ames’s relationship. Lila is constantly questioning his loyalty to her and fears that she will eventually be left and abandoned. Lila has been living with this fear her whole life and according to David Howe, an expert on childhood abuse and neglect, it is due to early childhood abandonment and the emotional burdens placed on the orphans. 

Marilynne Robinson’s creation of the character Lila is a perfect illustration of the emotional, painful life of an abandoned child and the loss of trust and true connection that these children encompass. Through Lila’s relationship with Reverend Ames this illustration comes to life, exemplifying the trust and connection lost from Lila’s life. For instance, Lila doesn’t “want to live in some town where people know about me and think I’m like an orphan left on the church steps, waiting for someone to show kindness, so they let me in” (86). If Lila cannot accept what others may think about her moving in with someone then how will she ever accept moving in for herself? Lila does not think about the Reverend or the possibility of loving him and moving in with him because she has a defense mechanism like most people who were abandoned at a young age. This defense mechanism kicks in whenever Lila starts to trust or connect with others. Since the only outcome of trust and connection she knows is abandonment and pain, she struggles trusting or connecting with anyone. She pushes people away, like most orphans, to avoid feeling that pain or being abandoned once more. Rita E. Fisler, an expert on childhood abandonment and neglect, describes; “It has been shown that most abused and neglected children develop disorganized attachment patterns. The inability to modulate emotions gives rise to a range of behaviors that are best understood as attempts at self-regulation” (Fisler 145). These “disorganized attachment patterns” are visible through Lila and Reverend Ames’s relationship and it is clear that Lila has an “inability to modulate emotions”, as she cannot force herself to ever truly trust the Reverend or connect with him.  This is how Lila’s emotional burden from being abandoned as a child forces her to have disfigured relationships and an inability to trust or connect with others ever again. 

A recent study showed that one out of every 8 children is abandoned by their parents. This is something most of us don’t know because we really are not informed on that matter. Society tries to help orphaned and abandoned children but no matter how much help you give, the emotional burdens left on a child from abandonment and neglect will always be present. This emotional burden is shown through Lila’s narration and the effects the abandonment had on Lila help demonstrate the need for concern. These children may seem fine but inside they are constantly hurt. Most, like Lila, cannot trust or connect with others making it almost impossible to sustain a relationship or find happiness. Marilynne Robinson did an excellent job of portraying a child left at a young age and the crucial effects this abandonment had on the child. 
