Grieving a Lost Childhood

[orek]

(10-12-2012, 06:27 PM)MakersDozn Wrote: emma 19,

Thanks. Our therapist has been a great help in this process. It's hard for us to recognize nurturing when it's present in forms other than parent/child. We're still learning.

MDs

Yeah, we understand this hole, too. We spent much of our lives confused by the incredible "mother craving" inside that always has driven us to look for surrogates. We had thought she was the good parent (though we've since been getting a more full view of our family), so why did we always feel like a motherless child? We have found that, over the years with our current T, we have been slowly internalizing the healthy nurturing we receive in that safe space--with all the respectful boundaries and positive interactive modeling of intimacy and kindness and validation that is so new, strange, and often confusing for us.

We're still a long way from being able to mother ourselves, but we have started to recognize the nurturing filtering into those deepest places and changing us in ways we couldn't have even imagined, not having experienced it before, and we feel we have a place to start in the hard task of initiating and directing that kind of nurturing inward at ourselves.

I only mention all this because I've long heard of the need to mother oneself to fill the holes left by inadequate parenting, and I do believe it's true. But I've never felt I had the tools or ability, try as I might. As you say, I felt the "need to experience nurturing from a safe outside source first." And more than that, nurturing that touches the deepest, darkest places, the most vulnerable insiders--or at least enough of them to get the idea of how it feels, how it's done. I've had lots of caring from various sources throughout my life, but none that saw or touched us beneath the walls to where most of the pain and suffering lived, to where the motherless children languished in their abandonment.

Sorry to go on so long, but this is such a good topic, one that touches on lots of stuff for us. I'm sorry it's a struggle for you, and others here.