It’s important for us to understand our parts and what they are trying to do when we are using an attachment lens. These parts can give us so much information about our needs and what would be helpful and supportive to us in our current relationships (or inform us about what we really want and need in a partnership if we aren’t in one currently and want to be).
Read MoreI hope you’re enjoying early springtime. Here in the mountains of Western North Carolina, so much is already blooming and I’m soaking it all in on my short walks (waddles?) with my dog. I’m 37 weeks pregnant and even though our initial plans were to have a non-surgical birth this time around, it looks like we are headed that direction after all. This sweet baby is happy to sit head-up in their cozy uterus hammock and just like with my first, seems to be asking us to come get them. So my mantra lately has been “okay love, I hear you. Stay put. We are coming for you. We will be there so soon.”
Read MoreThe Pay What You Please Online Course Sale is happening NOW through Sunday, April 24!
Read MoreI’ve been thinking a lot about how our old relationship patterns show up over and over again in our lives, and how we have opportunity after opportunity to heal those patterns with new people. I see it every day in myself and the people around me (and once you see it, you can’t unsee, so get ready!).
Read MoreI have been dreaming about sharing some big news with you for months, and I am finally able to tell you! I’m just going to get right into it:
I wrote a book!
I recently returned from a short trip back to where I grew up—southeastern Michigan, the suburbs of Detroit. I don’t know about you, but when I visit the place where I spent my childhood, I have an intense emotional experience. As I walked around my undergraduate college campus, I was flooded with feelings of grief. I wish I had known and understood certain aspects of my identity when I was younger. I wish I had been more self-confident. I wish I hadn’t stayed in those terrible relationships (if you could even call them that) with people who didn’t respect or appreciate me. I wish I didn’t try to control people. I wish I didn’t try to convince people to love me. I wish I loved myself more. I wish I understood my worth and potential and was able to relax and enjoy my life instead of chasing people who didn’t recognize it either.
Read MoreI read an article recently that shared this statistic that I hadn’t heard before in my attachment theory studies:
“Further research tells us that in approximately 85 percent of cases a child…will have the same attachment pattern as the parent” (Buckwalter and Ehmen, 2013).
It makes sense that children will have a similar attachment style to their caregiver in a number of cases—but 85% of the time?!
Read MoreI’ve been thinking a lot about healing our attachment wounds in the context of community. I am so lucky to have an amazing network of people in my life who are fully on board with doing the work—our individual work, our collective work, and everything in between—and in conversation with these people, I am reminded of not only my care and love for them but of my responsibility to them. My life does not exist in a vacuum. The actions I choose to take and how I show up in the world directly impact my family and my community, and our communities are all connected.
Read MoreIf you’ve been around Heirloom for a while, you already know this but I think it’s important to share again: connected relationships require the presence of intentional behaviors just as much as the absence of unhealthy patterns.
Read MoreThis post feels important to me. I hope it lands for you, too—and as usual, I am open to your feedback and thoughts. I appreciate you so much. Thank you for reading.
As a white woman creating material to support folks who are interested in healing their early attachment wounds and creating healthy adult relationships, I want to emphasize that I am not the end-all-be-all when it comes to this work. I approach attachment theory in a very specific way (one that I hope brings a lens of compassion and justice through relational health and fulfillment) and there are many other approaches that are just as valid and important.
Read MoreI used to be a person who would lose herself in romantic partnerships. And to be honest, over the past 14 months of being a mother and experiencing a global pandemic, I’ve felt whispers of those times in my life. Who am I anymore? What do I like? What is it like to maintain some of my energy for myself rather than constantly investing it in others?
Read MoreOne of the things I’ve learned as I have engaged in attachment work is that healthy relationships don’t just happen—we have to cultivate them. Even relationships that naturally fall into place in our lives require our care and attention. Eventually, they will need us to invest in them and devote our time and energy to helping them grow.
So why not start now?
