The Untouchable Mother

As a young mother I was exhausted, I felt alone, and I was overwhelmed.  What young mother isn’t?  I knew that I had wanted children, but also I had known that I was not particularly good with tiny humans.  I wasn’t even very good with ¾-sized humans.  It was my best hope that I would at least be good with “my” small humans.  Emotionally, I was prepared for that steep learning curve of new motherhood.  What I wasn’t prepared for was my newfound inability to handle being touched. 

Being a typical Northerner, I have physical boundaries.  I’m not sure why I associate that with my northern roots, but it seems accurate. You Southerners have this beautiful ability to barge into someone’s personal space and stay there like you’ve been welcomed in and offered sweet tea rather than acknowledging that the bubble you popped contains a terrified Northerner sweating in panic and praying for an exit plan to materialize.  I’ve come to love that about y’all, even if I can’t do it myself.  But back before I had such an appreciation for people who happily reach out to touch one another, having little babies and a husband that physically needed me and felt they could enter my space bubble at whim was killing me.

Bedtime would arrive and I wanted to put down the children, walk away from their bedroom and be alone for at least 10 minutes before crashing into my own bed for as much sleep as I could gather before they would tiptoe into my bedroom as the sun eased its way into a sky of morning stars the next day.  It was painful.  What kind of mother has the urge to pull away when her beautiful 4 year-old touches her cheek?  What kind of mother lets go of her daughter’s hand as soon as she can, every chance she gets? I felt like my touch was only meant to control the people I loved or that it was being stolen from me without my permission.  I always had to keep the little one out of danger’s way and the other had in some ways stopped reaching for me.  What kind of a mother had I become?

 I had always read to my girls as they went to bed, yet even that was hard.  We would read the bedtime story and I would walk away, but our night wasn’t over. I’d be called back numerous times, often to end up holding one of their hands as I lay sleeping on the floor and she lay sleeping in her bed.  I’d wake with carpet fibers embedded in my face and I’d find my husband already asleep in our bed.  It wasn’t a happy time in my life and I very much thought it should have been.

Sometime in the spring of 2011, I wept in my shower and prayed desperately to God for peace.  There was a lot going wrong at that point in my life.  Our youngest child was ill and the Army doctors in Germany were not fixing anything.  I felt like she was a guinea pig and I was watching her waste away.  We took countless trips to the ER and it felt like we nearly lived in the clinic waiting room.  My husband was deployed at the time and there was no doubt in my mind that I was going to watch my child die… and I still didn’t want to be touched. Something had to change.  I prayed in that shower harder than I had ever prayed in my life.  

As I crouched on the floor of my tub, wracked with sobs, I heard the door open and my 6 year-old walked in slowly to ask what was wrong.  It was near midnight and normally I would have reassured her and sent her back to bed, but this time I asked her to hold my hand.  She brightened slightly and sat next to my tub to do as I had asked. My girl looked at me with worried eyes, but stayed quiet.  I shut my eyes and prayed with her warm little hand in mine.  After a few minutes I asked her to get me a towel and then to go find a book for me to read to her.  She left to find one, looking very confused.  I dried off, got dressed, and went to sit with her in her twin bed.  I read a nursery rhyme book and she followed along a bit, but soon drifted off to sleep.  Since I had no husband home at the time, I set the book aside and settled in to have a good night’s sleep, listening to my children breathe.  It was probably the best night’s sleep I’d had in months.  

It’s hard to face the truth when you are the problem.  I hadn’t blamed anyone else for my discomfort with physical touch, but I hadn’t tried to mend what was broken in my soul.  It took time and patience, but most of all, it took forgiveness.  I had focused so much on the space I thought I needed and wasn’t being given that I had lost sight of the very real physical needs of the people around me and my own need for positive touch.  It’s not as though I hadn’t touched my children, held their hands, or hugged them with every ounce of love I could muster, but those moments had been fleeting.  My touch was not freely given.  I was really quite miserly and it didn't just hurt them.   

In the months after my little girl had held my hand while I prayed, life got better.  Morning snuggles and bedtime stories became easier for me.  My child no longer looked at me questioningly before sitting on my lap or holding my hand.  The youngest one never had questioned her right to my space, but I’m glad of that.  I can’t say I changed overnight into the mom that relishes holding hands and being snuggled up with her kids, but I can say it started that night.  We all changed as time went on.  I’m still sorry I had ever made them question such a simple thing as touching their mother, but I can’t change what was.  I forgave myself and asked for their forgiveness, too.  At this point, I don’t know if my eldest child remembers how different life with me had been.  I hope she doesn’t.  Now, when they sit by my side, walk with my hand in theirs, or rest their lovely heads on my shoulders I can think of no place in the world I’d rather be.  

I know I’m not the only mother ever afflicted with this aversion to touch, but it did last longer for me than for many. It’s certainly not something any woman expects when she begins a family.  I guess they’re now calling it being “touched out” and I’ve seen a few articles about it swimming around the internet.  Eight years ago, it wasn’t mentioned as normal in any way and I thought I was losing my mind.  In all of this, I didn’t even mention how my relationship with my husband suffered, but I’ll leave that for another day.  

If you are dealing with this issue in your own life, please talk to someone you love.  Let them know how hard it is and how much you still love everyone.  Ask for space… and ask for touch in those moments when you feel you can handle it.  We’re not meant to go through life alone.  Rest in one another’s grace.  Find a way through this.  If you are open and honest about this with the people in your life, the ones that love you will be there to hold you in their arms once you find your way back to them.