Sickness overwhelms the body as temperatures drop below freezing, the body is alone, and with no help and no knowledge of how to recover, suddenly the death of a three-year-old occurs. This death is not a physical death, but rather one that is emotional resulting in a crushing sense of diplomacy and betrayal. Emotional deaths like this occur each day as parents abandon their children leaving them in a state of emotional despair and loss of trust. Too often parents forsake their children, leaving them with a sense of self-hatred, as well as leaving them with emotional burdens such as loneliness and an inability to entirely trust or connect with others. How does living as an abandoned child 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 fragmented emotions and disfigured relationships. This is important because this emotional burden, a symptom of childhood abandonment, illustrates the way childhood abandonment and orphanage negatively impact Lila’s ability to trust and connect with other people. 

Childhood abandonment and orphanage, observed throughout Lila, illustrate Lila’s fragmented emotions and her inability to trust and connect with other people. Lila lives as if she is an orphan, neglected since the age of three, and never received the real parental guidance every child truly needs. Doll was her closest substitute to a parent she has ever had and Reverend Ames is the closest relationship she has ever maintained. A primary cultural connection we can make throughout this novel is clearly childhood abandonment. This cultural connection encourages readers to think about how Lila 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’ neglect left her angry and unwilling to trust again. The emotional burdens inflicted upon her since a very young age has severely impacted her ability to trust, limiting her chances at ever sustaining a functioning relationship. The quotation above occurred during a conversation between Lila and Reverend Ames, showing her inability and refusal to trust even the person she is closest to in life. Consequently, we are forced to believe she will never be able to trust due to the emotional pain of abandonment she still endures. 

Trust is something that needs to be earned, and clearly for Lila, accomplishing this feat is nearly impossible due to her childhood abandonment, but this state of loneliness and fear also left Lila unable to connect with others. This inability to connect 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 envision, 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 make here is that Lila is the one who cannot be comforted in part due to her rejection as a child. Lila likes to “imagine” she could be comforted; however, she knows that she cannot. Her inability to be comforted stems from her childhood abandonment and her distrust for others, including the one closest to her, John Ames. This is an extremely important part in the novel because being an orphan is clearly shown to be the principal factor producing Lila’s distrust and inability to be comforted by even those who know her the best. 

There are thousands of experts on being an orphan and the toll 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 a writer on 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 by describing the effect 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 fragile emotions, which creates an absence of self-worth and her belief 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 fails to connect with others because she cannot bring herself to trust them to take care for her and does not feel she is worthy of their care. In addition to this, Howe goes on to state “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 throughout 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 entire life and according to David Howe, an expert on childhood abuse and neglect, it is because of 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 experience. 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 [her] and think [she’s] like an orphan left on the church steps, waiting for someone to show kindness, so they let [her] in” (86). Lila noticeably cannot accept the opinions others have of her and it is this insecurity that pushes Lila farther and farther away from moving in with John Ames. Lila does not think about the Reverend or the possibility of loving him and moving in with him because she has developed a defense mechanism, a trait common to those 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 has experienced is abandonment and pain, she struggles trusting or connecting with anyone. She pushes people away, like most orphans, to avoid feeling that pain of abandonment yet again. 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 throughout 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, illustrating her disfigured relationships and mangled emotions.  

Although Lila has trouble sincerely connecting with the reverend she does eventually marry him, showing that abandonment may limit one’s ability to trust but does not eliminate the chance at ever developing a relationship. Marilynne Robinson’s novel appears to have multiple messages and patterns, one being Lila’s constant abandonment and struggle for recovery from desertion. Lila’s parents leave her on the steps outside of her home and later on Doane and friends leave her on the church steps in Gilead. Coincidentally, both of these times Lila finds herself rejected by the people she thought she could trust and later comforted by people she may actually be able to trust. As we have witnessed, Lila cannot possibly trust these saviors completely, nor be comforted to the extent she would like, however, there is a possibility of a relationship with them. After being left for a second time in her life, Lila thinks that “maybe [she] can teach [the reverend] a new kind of sadness. Maybe he really does care whether [she] stays or goes” (56). Evidently, the display of affection shown by the reverend in Lila’s time of need severely touches Lila and breaks some of the emotional barriers Lila has set for herself. For only the second time in her life, the first being Doll’s display of affection, Lila sees another who may be able to comfort her. Lila lowers her defenses and makes a relationship with Ames possible. “Whether they left her on the church steps because that’s where you ended up if you were an orphan” (52), or not, Lila has only seen affection after abandonment twice and the first time turned into the only relationship she ever maintained. Therefore, she was not going to completely block Ames out of her life since he showed such adoration for her like Doll did when she was only an infant. This is how the relationship with Ames and Lila is made possible, even if Lila may never truly trust or faithfully connect with him due to the horrific rejection she has faced. 

A recent study showed that one out of every eight children is abandoned by their parents. This is something most of us are unaware of because we are either simply uninformed on this matter, or perhaps we feel more comfortable avoiding this topic. While society does play a role in assisting children, no matter how much help is provided, the emotional burdens left on a child from abandonment and neglect will always be present. These affects of neglect are shown through Lila’s story and help demonstrate the need for concern. Children may seem fine on the outside to the casual observer but inside they are continually and invariably in a state of pain and distress. Most abandoned children, like Lila, cannot trust nor connect with others making it almost impossible to sustain a positive relationship or find true happiness. Marilynne Robinson proficiently portrays through Lila the crucial detrimental effects of abandonment and the help that is constantly being needed in our society today. 
