Attachment Needs

Attachment.

A word so big, it needs its own sentence. Its own paragraph. It is my need. So deep and so old that I have only an iggling of an idea about when the seed was planted. Actually, though, didn't it start when we *were* attached? When life literally depended on the connection to one's mother. Then at birth, that cord is severed and thus begins the journey of our independence.

For some of us, that critical component of healthy development went awry. For me, a defective "secure base" has left me with longing that leaks from every cell in my body, every pore of my being. I remember visiting my grandmother as a pre-adolescent. She reached to hug me, but my arms hung limply by my sides. She lifted my arms, forming them around her body and said, "Here, this is how you hug."

By then, I think, I had already given up any expectation that my attachment needs would be met. As a teen, the longing for physical affection exuded from my skin as a burning sensation. My skin physically hurt. Of course, I didn't understand these big words and ideas, but I came to know that instead of validation, I would be humiliated. Instead of affection, touch became repulsive. And more.

Grown-ups now, we identify these things in therapy, working as archaeologists, sifting through the bone yards of our past. Over decades, I have self-sabotaged, self-harmed, self-hated - all for a longing, for affirmation, validation and arms that would wrap me in a safe embrace of unconditional love.

Those attachment feelings, needs, longings - are wiggling their way to the surface as I experience newT listening to me, judgment free, understanding these long unmet needs. My heart roars with a crescendo of feeling - hope, desire, fear.

Today, I will try to let my heart be open. And I will love on my dogs.

It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them.  -George Eliot

We long for an affection altogether ignorant of our faults. Heaven has accorded this to us in the uncritical canine attachment.  -George Eliot

Hugs -