As Teen Mom star Leah Shirley approached her birthday last November, 16 wasn’t feeling all that sweet. 

Having endured a disaster of a celebration dinner when she turned 15, the high schooler’s biggest wish was to not include mom Amber Portwood in the festivities, as she detailed to dad Gary Shirley and her stepmom Kristina Shirley. 

And while Leah wasn’t exactly sad that she’d only seen her mother three times in the previous year, the absence certainly hadn’t made her heart grow any fonder. 

“I’m not really sure when I realized Amber, like, wasn’t there,” Leah reflected during the March 27 episode ofTeen Mom: The Next Chapter, “maybe somewhere around, like I was, eight to 10 years old, maybe. I don’t want her around, but I do have abandonment issues from it.” 

To be clear, continued the Indiana resident, who lives with Gary, Kristina and her 9-year-old sister Emilee, “It doesn’t hurt me that she’s not here. It’s just the fact that she did in the first place, when she was supposed to be there, is what’s affecting me. I have abandonment issues.”