The taming vs Good enough holding….   (Edited)

“… an environment that holds the baby well enough, the baby is able to make personal development according to the inherited tendencies. The result is a continuity of existence that becomes a sense of existing, a sense of self, and eventually results in autonomy.” (From Home Is Where We Start From: Essays by a Psychoanalyst by D. W. Winnicott)

“Real isn’t how you are made,’ said the Skin Horse.  ‘It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.’ (From The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams)

Also, I’d like to share an article with the title The Midlife Unraveling by Brene Brown, imbued with humor, on the serious and painful business of the midlife unraveling, which I know from experience is a lot of things and often encompasses a spiritual awakening of sorts, a waking up to more reality, a need to feel suppressed emotions and unspent grief and a reclamation of aspects of one’s self.

Brene Brown writes ‘Many scholars have proposed that the struggle at midlife is about the fear that comes with our first true glimpse of mortality. Again, wishful thinking. Midlife is not about the fear of death. Midlife is death. Tearing down the walls that we spent our entire life building is death. Like it or not, at some point during midlife, you’re going down, and after that there are only two choices: staying down or enduring rebirth.’

The tearing down and rebirth pains are only yours to endure. Nobody can feel the grief and cry the tears for you. It can be brutal. Like a boxer you have to walk into that ring alone and meet all that you have denied, forgotten, buried, lost, suffered. They say that boxers do not only face their opponents in the ring, but also themselves and that boxing forces oneself to look deep within to discover one’s true self. Maybe, I don’t know much about boxing, neither do I like watching it, though I do admire the presence, speed, stamina and skill that it requires. Only you have no padded gloves and you don’t fight what you find there, you see, feel, remember, understand and embrace over and over – because we are built in layers we heal and understand in layers.  You can read the passage at:  https://brenebrown.com/blog/2018/05/24/the-midlife-unraveling/