Today I was driving my four year old to a birthday party. While stopped at a light I observed two men on a bench waiting for a bus. One was old and one was young. The young one was drinking a bright blue gatorade and the older one was smoking a cigarette. They were chatting to each other but were sitting on the opposite ends of the bench as far away from each other as possible. I had already been thinking about it but for some reason these two men chatting away struck me as the epitome of our society in regard to touch. We are a society that fears touch and physical closeness. We try to never touch anyone. When you accidentally brush against someone in a store do you apologize quite profusely? Do you ever wonder why you do it? You didn't hurt them! I remember so vividly being on a sea bus with my husband and a young Asian man fell asleep beside him and just snuggled his head right on my husband's shoulder. People were videoing with their phones and smiling and giggling. It was really something they so rarely saw!!! My husband was kind enough to just let him sleep and when he woke up the poor guy was mortified. But really, was it that big of a deal? In our society it kind of is.
Touch. I did a Internship program through a church when I was nineteen. While there I met a group of girls, who were my classmates, that were absolute gems. They became wonderful friends. Starting out in this program I was someone who had been void of touch for almost my entire childhood. I felt uncomfortable whenever anyone even tried to give me a hug (so I had touch aversion I guess). Some of the girls in this group were very 'touchy' in my mind. That basically meant that they though nothing of throwing their arms around you to give you a hug or giving you a back massage or just basically showing a healthy concept of touch. I noticed it right away. As time went on they noticed MY massive issues with touch! We ended up going on a trip to the Philippines and when we were there we noticed that the culture was a very hands on culture. Men walked around with their arms around each other, children always held hands, and it was just so natural. The girls decided that they needed to work on my touch issues so we would walk down the street holding hands or with arms around each other because we knew there no one would think anything of it. Through that whole year at Interns I was taught a lot of things but honestly what impacted me the most was the realization of how much I had been void of touch and how much touch must be important to the human soul. I will always be grateful to these girls for caring about me enough to try to help me feel like giving someone a hug was a wonderful thing and that touch was life giving.
When I got married touch and the lack I had had growing up was even more glaringly apparent and when I became a mother ~ well ~ I just had to face things straight on. The weird part is for me ~ and I don't know how it is for others with this issue ~ but when someone hugged me or my child wantrd to hug me often I would feel like they were hugging a shell, that my actual self wasn't there to hug them. I also felt like in hugging them back I had nothing in me to give. It is hard to explain, but a hug is powerful, and when two people hug there is a deeper connection then just the physical contact. I felt my hugs were lacking in depth. It might not make sense but anyway I have been a mom for a while now and I have worked on this issue a lot but I still have so far to go!!
Touch is vital to a child's healthy brain development. Without healthy, nurturing touch a child's brain is damaged. Healthy nurturing touch brings healing so when a child (or an adult) has touch aversion ~ turning their face away from a kiss or holding stiff during a hug etc~ it is so important to go back in time and figure out why. Sometimes touch aversion has come from generations back and has been passed down and down. Sometimes it has been because the child was born premature and had to spend time in the NICU, there can be so many different reasons. It can help if the source is found and healing touch therapy begins.
I am writing about it mainly because tonight I watched the DVD Healthy Touch by the TCU Institute of Child Development and it reminded me of yet another thing to keep working on. I think our family needs some hug therapy happening. My husband and I have gone through a lot in the twelve years we have been married. Our children have gone through a lot also and the two older ones have been immensely affected.I am wondering if some 'hug therapy' would help one of my children who is really struggling with causing a lot of fighting and stress in our home. After watching this DVD tonight I feel more strongly that I need to keep working on my personal issues with touch but also I need to make sure that my children are getting more than enough.
I have one child who is very obvious about her need for a lot of touch. She needs to sleep WITH someone almost every night because she needs to snuggle. When she was younger she would often lift up the shirt of the person she was sitting by so she could nuzzle their tummy a bit. She often caught people off guard. She has been learning about safe boundaries now but she has been such a gift, such a reminder about how important and how life giving touch is. She often makes a happy humming sound when she is snuggling with me and I have noticed my baby doing this also. It is the sweetest little noise.
I hope that as time goes on I have the capacity to continue to heal and my children will be able to start a new generation of nurturing healthy touch families. I know my husband came from a family void of touch also. Healing touch looks like gentle massage, smiling eye contact, hugs, hands on shoulders, high fives, a hand on top of the head, hand holding, the list goes on and our house needs it. I just wrote myself little notes and posted them in the bathroom, on the back door, on my stove and places where I would see them. Operation hug therapy begins tomorrow. Even if YOU don't have 'touch' issues it is still a great reminder to make sure that each day you send your loved ones off with a hug and smiling eyes and when they come home you do the same. All the best ~ XO
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