Reparenting Ourselves and Each Other

I have always placed my tongue on the back of my top two front teeth. I can still remember the dentist I visited with my mother who pointed it out and gave me exercises to “break the habit.” Years and several lifetimes later I would learn that it is not uncommon for infants and kids to adapt and self-soothe this way. This natural instinct to suckle, to seek comfort. When I saw a dentist a few years ago he told me that I have most likely done this since birth and it doesn’t take a dentist or an academic to connect the dots for me. Is this natural? Yes. Is there more to the story, to my story? Also yes.

Something that needs to be said, and something that I will continue to examine is this- my mother was deeply traumatized and therefore deeply flawed herself but at the center of my body I knew she loved me fiercely and wholly. But love doesn’t always mean tended-to. Love doesn’t always look like smoothing someone’s edges and mine frequently were not. I sat in my car and cried harder than I could remember crying in a long time after that appointment and never did see that dentist again. My body remembers.

The way humans adapt is remarkable and devastating.

---

Anaya is sulking during our therapy appointment which is unlike him. His 7 year old version is practically curled into himself right there on the couch- his fists mimicking his form. “I don’t need you to mother me!” Our therapist lets the static in the air hang for a moment before she softly counters- “what if, sometimes, that’s exactly what you need. what you both need.”

We both cry silently and I unfurl his hand and heart and place them in mine.

---

I don’t necessarily love the description of this sculpture by the artist and I have never been to Burning Man but I do love the symbolism and what it means to us. We were gifted a print of this for our wedding and it lives on the wall in our bedroom.

I did not grow up with the privilege of undivided attention. The consistent kind, and this is the critical part- consistency. The hard and fast pendulum swings of a mother that was either all-in or all-out like I touch on here. Not every single person every single moment can be given our true and undivided attention every time. I was used to, and eventually resented, the inconsistent and fleeting moments that I held inside the palm of my hand like a captured firefly. The times I would keep asking my mother questions, the thread becoming bare and losing context, just to get her to stay for one more minute. But I do remember when she would turn down the music, side-eyeing me as my 14 year old drawn-on-tattoo fingers swiped cigarette after cigarette from her leather cigarette case that housed her Marlboro mediums and zippo as we barreled down rural Minnesota highways while she told me things. Everything. Too many things, really, but to my 14 year old self this was what it meant to feel inside God’s country. I ached for more. Don’t stop, I would say. Tell me more. I wanted to consume her the way the world had consumed us both.

Whatever it takes to get you to stay.

---

My therapist reminds me that I have to be clear when I am asking for help and/or when I’m not okay.

“Your 10 does not look like most people’s 10. It looks like people’s 3 maybe 4, and it makes sense why, but you’ve got to name your 10.”