The Lost Boys …. Recovered

I think a Lost Boy is a man or youth, who has lost or never had a good, positive, emotional connection with their father. Leaving a deep wound of pain. Pain of an absence of what should have been given. The feeling of a hole, a gap, a void, something missing. A deep loss. An unattended grief. A vulnerability they had to protect and defend and armour up, because it was too painful. A deep sense of shame that there was something wrong with them. They were not good enough. They never felt man-enough for The Man. They spent their life trying to fill the hole, heal the wound, by being ‘enough’ to be seen as good enough.

“Look at me now. Is this enough? Am I enough now, for you to see me?”

The Lost Boys need elders.

Men who see them.

Men who will walk with them.

Who will see both their genius and their wound.

Who will put courage and wisdom into them to help them process their wound, so that they don’t need to use their genius to mend the wound and so alienate themselves even more from themselves.

And Lost Boys are good at alienating themselves from themselves.

They protect themselves from this stabbing-like pain they live with every day;

By striving

Being driven

Proving themselves

Through anger

Defensiveness

Oversensitivity

Through their addiction to work, sex, drugs, food, drink, self-loathing …whatever they can find to numb the pain.

They are hungry

They are in pain

They are vulnerable to grooming by older men and the seduction of the older men of the gang.

They become great dads or they don’t know how to be dads – both are trying to find a way back to their lost father.

The father who walked out of the family leaving the boy feeling like he wasn’t worth hanging around for.

The father who was present, but absent.

“I’m just the lodger around here”, my father used to say.

The father who beat them with their angry fist, or violent words, sometimes twisting their little boy brain by telling them, “It’s because I love you”.

Sometimes simply physically absent from them,

                       But always disconnected from them.

Not seeing them

Not enjoying them

Not engaging with them at any level other than, at best, judgement, irritation and ignoring.

This is the world the Lost Boys carry inside of them.

The Lost Boys need men to make their own journey, to become elders, and then to come and find them, so that they find, can make, the journey back to themselves.

ÓTrevor Waldock 2026