Emptying the Nest: a Father's reflections on New Life, Loss and Leaving Home

Abstract

 

Preparing to move an adolescent out of the family home into tertiary education, or any new stage in life, can provoke a range of unanticipated feelings of loss for parents; located within a psychoanalytical frame of reference, this paper describes the feelings experienced by a father for his daughter as she leaves for university. Recounting the days beforehand and the moment his daughter says goodbye, he journals the full panoply of mixed emotions experienced. Detailing his paternal struggle, the author reveals how therapeutic guidance and the psychoanalytical supervision available to him as a member of a professional community of psychodynamic counsellors enabled him to move towards a state of emotional equilibrium. Drawing on private personal correspondence, the second part of the paper demonstrates how his therapeutic mentor, supervisor and friend used her own experiences of parenthood and applied psychodynamic, psychoanalytical techniques to support her supervisee in finding some psychological remedy in the immediate aftermath of his temporary separation.

 

 

Introduction

 

The following autoethnography is a personal reflection of one father’s memories of the birth of his daughter and of the day she left home to start a new life as a student at university. Her life has been framed by the turbulent aftermath of 9/11 and the weekend of her departure coincided with the 20-year commemoration in 2021. The author recounts his profound sense of anguish and loss as the sorrowful events of 9/11 which, by coincidence, mark the beginning of his daughter’s life, are recalled and how, by thinking about that terrible event, it stirred deep emotions associated with feelings of disquiet and loss at a transitional moment as she matured into early adulthood. Here he reflects on his profound sadness at the passing of her childhood and early adolescence as he moves his daughter into student accommodation.

 

The annual migration to university, for those adolescents fortunate enough to be able to afford Higher Education, marks the beginning of an exciting new phase of life. It is a ritual, a rite of passage, that should be acknowledged as significant but it can be one which induces conflicting and contradictory feelings.  Certainly, for many parents, witnessing the child’s transition away from the family home, it represents both a privilege and a loss; a sense of pride in seeing a child realise an ambition, whilst signifying an ending and a period of uncertainty, loss and even emotional turmoil. This is often referred to as ‘empty-nest syndrome’. The loss associated with empty-nest syndrome seems easier to manage by swapping humorous anecdotes with friends and colleagues. Easier to face than recognising and thinking through the actual pain. By trying to apply psychoanalytical thinking in hindsight, it became possible to acknowledge many of the unconscious defences used to try to hide the author`s emotional pain. From trying to do things, usually unhelpfully, like concentrating on student finances and planning the logistics of the move. Trying to focus on containing his daughter’s anxiety throughout the unnecessarily complicated processes of navigating university Admissions served only to deflect the intolerable feelings of loss realised once she left home for the first time.

 

 

Literature Review

 

Few literature searches address the impact of an adolescent leaving home on their parents’ emotional wellbeing and stability, fewer still on working through the pain by trying to think psychoanalytically. When researching leaving home, the initial themes within academic literature seem to coalesce around the potential benefits of gaining independence and the transition to adulthood whilst managing the impending economic and financial burden (Mulder and Clark, 2002; Patiniotis & Holdsworth, 2005). Others focus, understandably, on the emotional attachment of the student (Bernier, Larose & Whipple, 2005) and mental health concerns associated with psycho-social wellbeing for students (Burke, Ruppel & Dinsmore (2016). Whilst others focus on the pitfalls associated with achieving and then failing to sustain independence from the parental home, the term “boomerang” - used rather pejoratively in the press to highlight the plight of young adults struggling with meeting the significant challenges required to live independently - often failing to recognise the unequal impact caused through economic inequity and mental health problems (Sandberg-Thoma, Snyder, and Jang, (2015).

 

Whilst research clearly identifies the importance of positive relationships for the wellbeing of parents at times of transition from late adolescence to adulthood (Fang, Galambos & Johnson, 2021; Thomas, 2017), less research documents the unanticipated emotional toil experienced by parents when preparing to see their ‘child’ leave home. Some do indeed point to the `emotional distress and identity conflict` (Mount & Moas, 2015) and other reports identify significant changes in the marital relationship associated with the phenomenon of `empty-nest syndrome` (Nagy & Theiss, 2013); (Chen, Yang & Dale Aagard, 2012). Newer research also points to an expectation that ‘more involved parents’ are engaging in the lives of their children after they move away from home (Sørensen & Nielsen (2021).  It is hoped that this parental, autoethnographic narrative adds to that emerging body of knowledge.

 

 

Research methodology

 

Using autoethnographic methods, this narrative is offered to demonstrate how the therapeutic process afforded through the skills of an experienced therapeutic mentor provided an emotional balm to restore emotional balance.  

 

Empirical methods on the whole tend to document transition focused on the lived experiences and hopes of the adolescent (Arnett, 1997, 2001) using analytical conversational, storytelling methodologies - again assumed from an adolescent-centric perspective (Pasupathi & Hoyt; 2009) or understood from the perspective of adolescent identity formation (Meeus, 2011). Some approaches focus on personal narratives through storying family life (McLean, 2016). Whilst further approaches concern the development of empathy in adolescence measured through real-life events from the perspective of the adolescent and mother (Soucie, Lawford and Pratt, 2012). By contrast, this autoethnographic narrative (Ellis, 2007, Sikes, 2013), based on a series of journal entries recorded over a nine-month period from September 2021 to June 2022, is seen from the perspective of a father. Few literature searches address the impact of a daughter leaving home.

 

As stated above, that our daughter`s life has been framed by the events of 9/11 is entirely coincidental but this story is not about 9/11 although of course in every way it is about how that atrocity casts a permanent, harrowing shadow over our personal family moments. It is instead about ordinary lives, of birth and the relationships of affect (Stuart, 2007).  It is about being a parent, and a father trying to come to terms with separation and psychological recovery, recording the ordinary feelings of pain and loss caused by taking a cherished, first-born daughter to university.  Feelings that can only be described as a temporal loss similar to grief. For it is possible to identify clearly the significance `for many middle-aged parents, the quality of relationship with young adult children is associated with their psychological well-being`, (Thomas et al., 2017).

 

 

Managing painful transitions with the help of therapeutic mentoring – on the wider benefits of joining a therapeutic counselling organisation

 

Whilst writing a research degree I was introduced to an organisation concerned with the application of psychoanalytical thinking within the workplace. APPCIOS has since provided me with a therapeutic space to imagine and integrate psychoanalytical counselling skills within a professional context. The Association is designed to offer a safe space for professionals who work with children and young people and those interested in applying psychodynamic thinking to their practices. Most of the senior members are trained psychoanalystsand most members, like me, have either experience or training in therapy, counselling or human relations work. The majority work in a caring capacity within the public sector, healthcare, social care or education. Membership is open to anyone with a role focused towards meeting the needs of others. It is a professional Association that provides academic research combined with practical, therapeutic support and care.

 

 

On therapeutic mentoring

 

Therapeutic mentoring requires some explanation as in some ways it blurs the boundaries of what the organisation is there for.  But thanks to the excellence, perhaps just the humanity, of the counsellors and mentors, the psychoanalysts who form the core of our organisation, there is an innate understanding that sometimes our personal lives inevitably, no matter how hard we try, spill over into our professional worlds. Throughout my membership I have been provided with therapeutic mentoring which seems to have coincided with a few traumatic moments in my life and career.  When I was stressed, struggling to come to terms with a new professional role, or changes in my practice, I was listened to by my mentor and cared for. Drawing on the psychoanalytical tradition, the Association seeks to apply psychodynamic thinking to real-world situations. We attend online webinars, share reflections, stories, listen to visiting speakers and discuss academic research and papers.  It has been, and continues to be, of profound importance to me. I find it contains me when I worry about my work and my practice. Working with humans can be challenging and I feel held in mind (Winnicott, 1965) whenever my work causes me discomfort or disquiet and I need to think about my experiences.  At times of profound personal change this has inevitably spilled over into my capacity to think in a professional context. The following series of journal entries and the support from my mentor illustrate precisely one of those moments.  That these reflections concern a move towards the personal domain is worth sharing; they speak volumes about the counselling skills of my mentor, Anne-Marie, who has become one of my most trusted confidantes. A mentor, supervisor and friend.

 

 

Reflections on the weekend my daughter departs for university twenty years on from 9/11

 

The following entries from my personal journal recount the experiences we shared as a family – my wife Beth, daughter Hannah and son Billy during, the weekend of moving Hannah to university.

 

On the Today programme, BBC Radio 4, I listened to the thoughts of a journalist who was in the lobby of the North Tower of the World Trade Centre on the morning of 9/11 some twenty years ago and it made me think about the imminent departure of my daughter to university the following day. Reflecting on the twentieth anniversary of 9/11, The Guardian UK newspaper recounted the experiences of some now grown-up American children who, having lost their parents in the Towers, wish that they could expunge the whole month of September from their memories every year. It is simply too harrowing for them. There was nothing vainglorious or showy, nothing brash in their heartrending reflections, just melancholy and a desire not to think about the pain caused by the loss of their parents. They didn’t need to be reminded on special anniversaries, and the build-up by the media every year to 9/11 made their pain feel all the more intolerable.

 

My daughter is going to university for the first time after two years spent largely at home during the COVID19 pandemic. It’s not that I don’t want her to leave, and start her new life, I’m dreading it.  Because she was conceived in the week leading up to 9/11 all the attendant commemorations seem only to have amplified this sense of unease that I can’t quite explain. During the weekend before 9/11 in 2001 we had some American friends staying with us, a now retired Colonel in the United States Marine Corps and his wife, long-time family friends. That weekend was seared into my mind as an incredibly happy moment overtaken by all those destructive, brutal and profoundly sad moments of television footage. We shared small domestic chores to fill the void as we searched for words. Numbed by grief, like so many others, as we watched together in our small, North London home. Unable to return to the US, our friends paced up and down our hallway helplessly; their grief ever more keenly felt. As service personnel with a primal urge to defend their home, desperate but unable to return, the loss of telecommunications to the US seemed to paralyse not just them but us all.

 

Pushed to the backs of our minds, our small secret was becoming real. Was this even a thing? Together, Beth and I weren’t sure we even knew what we were embarking on, but we knew that now was not the time to share anything about a possible baby. Our first. How could we possibly share our news, if it was news, so what to do?   And so we kept quiet, focusing instead on the images of carnage and loss from overseas so keenly felt in our home, knowing something had changed globally and for us personally too.

 

As we approach the commemoration of the twentieth anniversary of 9/11 so Beth and I find ourselves, if not losing, becoming separated from, that little life that we made together; whilst this is hardly the same as those who remember the lives of so many forever lost in the destruction of the twin towers,  I feel this moment now as an intense projection of imperil and anticipated loss.

 

Journal Entry. Friday 10^th September 2021

“Desolé. I shouldn’t feel such profound grief. I mourn but inside, unsure why I feel the tears behind my eyes. Hold it together. I don’t want to hold it together. I feel unctuous, sanctimonious, nauseous to even have these thoughts wrapped up in the bigger events of such an horrific assault. What is this, a pulling, umbilical – a tearing apart and why, why now? “

 

These twenty years have come to be the best of my life. Twenty years that have passed in the blink of an eye. I like to think that I can remember it all, where I was when the waters broke, the cries of anguish and the complications of birth. I vividly remember the stifling heat of the weekend my daughter was born, everyone seemingly distracted by the Queen’s Golden jubilee. I recall the tangy mechanical smells of the hospital maternity ward, the practised calm at the nurses` station, my disbelief that anyone could turn their noses up and leave hospital food in the parents’ waiting room.   And my disbelief that a consultant, a doctor - an actual grown-up - was letting us leave the hospital with a baby. That seemed absurd. What would we do with a baby? Under the close surveillance of the nurses in a maternity ward with other new parents, health visitors and midwives, parents carrying tiny new-born babies made sense and it was only as the doors closed behind us that it occurred to me that this baby, sporting her pale-yellow hat and baby-grow, might actually be ours. A thing we were now responsible for.

 

My perfect new world.

-

My life had changed again nine months after 9/11. Not at the birth, certainly not in the days building up to the birth; the theatre, the anaesthesia and the scrubs were far too unreal.  It was at that very moment, there in a dimly lit vestibule at the entrance to the maternity ward, it became real. I stiffened my back, and carried my baby in her car seat to the adjacent hospital car park.

 

I can also vividly recall a sudden feeling of anxiety when, having carried baby Hannah to the car, I didn’t have enough hands to open the car door and I had to put Hannah and car seat gently down on the oily floor of the hospital car park as I opened the door to take her home.   Another moment, another dawning realization, that I couldn’t prevent germs, dirt and toxins from penetrating her perfect world stilled me as I considered the enormity of my new situation. I still feel that moment.   I return to it in my thoughts sometimes just to remind myself. An infinitesimal moment where I suddenly felt very small in the cosmos. A feeling which seems repeated now, and ever more real as she departs.

 

If I’m wiser, then perhaps I’m more capable of handling the sudden upheavals associated with being a dad, a proud, very proud, dad, a father. And so on the anniversary of the same weekend it all began, on the same weekend Hannah made me become me, I now needed to take her to university to begin this next chapter for her.   I don’t want to.  I’d rather she stayed here and worked at her part-time job at our local butcher. It’s a smaller world, and you wouldn’t think that in the middle of a bloody and cold butcher`s shop Hannah could find happiness, solace and protection, but butcher Pat runs a proper, family butcher`s and treats her like one of his own. She likes the small world, she always did.  She might have been born in London, a big-city girl, but she’s very like me, she’s had to learn to like the lights but she values small, loyal friendships and family over the glittery lights. I see the apprehension in her eyes as she contemplates this journey. Coming of age in a pandemic has been remarkably difficult, and she has managed admirably. I know she’ll do well. She’ll manage far better than she thinks she will, and even though I know she’s only 55 miles away, I think I’ve come to realize something of the separation from family that she must go through. In her seminal work, Inside Lives, Margot Waddell, a psychoanalyst and Consultant Child Psychotherapist, explains the moment of transition from late adolescence as one of `extreme separation`. She suggests that `it is a time of hope and expectation, but for many, also of extreme sadness and distress, and even of breakdown for the few who find themselves unequal to the task.` (1998, p.177). I suspect Hannah will be more than equal to the task, it’s me that I’m worried about.

 

 

Journal entry. Friday 10^th September, 2021

“these significant events, traumatic moments, memories - a weekend I’m dreading; a journey, a moment, a reflection, wrapped up in the most seismic shift in my life time. These inescapable moments of sadness and loss, joy that transcend cultures that are for me all distilled down into this one small face. An age of loss, sadnesses that should be cherished and valued. Experienced, if not understood. Though the broken images amongst the dust and detritus can be reflected in the window of her lifespan, her 19 years of life narrow my gaze, becalm me, contain my sorrow, console and elevate us all. She doesn’t know it, how could she?”

 

There is so much beauty and joy in my life: my remarkable Billy, my cherished Beth, friends and family. It’s just that I’m dreading this weekend. I’m dreading the memories of 9/11; I’m unsettled by my own grief at feeling that I’m losing Hannah and I’m not sure what I’ll do now. For her, see me. If she’s not there, where am I?   It has to happen. I just wish it didn’t. I hate the idea of some people just not knowing who she is, and not seeing her for what she is and has become. Will be.

 

Something`s flickered for the first time? A life-stage moment - my mortality fear?

 

Saturday 11^th September, 2021

 

In the evening, we had a barbeque for Hannah. We invited our friends and neighbours, those we could in the light of lockdown restrictions and who had most closely shared moments of lockdown within Hannah’s bubble. I didn’t want to host it, I couldn’t face the thought of it, but Beth rightly pointed out that the neighbours wanted to say goodbye too and they had, after all, watched her grow up and been an important part of our lives.

 

Journal entry.  Saturday 11^th September, 2021

“Hannah’s schoolfriends, will also miss her, Beth reasoned, and so - reluctantly - I organised the barbeque. I wanted to invite Pat the butcher because he had been such an instrumental figure in Hannah’s life throughout lockdown. It felt important, but he couldn’t come. He will miss her too, her singing, her funny comments, her eye rolling when difficult customers left the shop. He saved her from herself during lockdown more than we could. The regularity of the job whilst she was in her gap year, with her friends already gone, meant that she found her equilibrium and it helped keep her more depressive thoughts at bay. Pat and his wife were at their caravan on the night of the barbeque but he sent her gifts, a bottle of sparkly wine and a fifty-pound bonus, and even his assistant - the big, lovely lad at the back - bought her chocolates.  He apologised for the illegible handwriting in the card he bought for her because he is dyslexic but he is such a sweet lad, so generous. He put himself out for her. That set me off. My emotions so raw, I could almost sense his kindness under the surface of his scribbled out, untidy script.

 

I nearly wept again when I saw the inside of Pat’s card for Hannah. His wife had written his card and the sentiment was equally lovely. He was so appreciative of her, and had enjoyed her company as much as she had enjoyed his. For two people, a 62-year old butcher and a 19-year old with, on the face of it, very little in common, they got on incredibly well. They found solace in each other’s company whilst working together through the pandemic, singing along to songs from the radio, and Pat liked her work rate, energy, very much.   Hannah, for her part, loved Pat; she will miss him as much as us I think.”

 

 

The day of Departure – 12^th September 2021

 

The day arrives, with us feeling calm and surprisingly well-prepared. Beth and Hannah had been putting small domestic items aside over months, unbeknownst to me, and Hannah’s bedroom had gradually filled with spare crockery, duvet covers and an assortment of the domestic things essential to a student leaving home.

 

Journal entry. 12^th September 2021

“We set off in good time, the car packed and with Hannah squeezed into the back seat. Inevitably, I got lost.   We were searching for the new bypass and our Satnav took us off in a completely erroneous direction before we righted ourselves, late and stuck in traffic. The uni. have allocated specific moving in times now so families can no longer just turn up but must do so in an allocated time zone. Serious stress.

 

She is staying in a purpose-built Halls of Residence. They’re brand new, half-completed by the looks of it, in a less than salubrious part of town, close to the ‘student village’ and her Science campus. The persistent, disquieting sense of something important pending stills all three of us. We chit-chat about nothing and everything. We laugh, and as we pull up outside the building Hannah and Beth run into the Reception of the building.  It`s an anonymous brick tower block rising out of the detritus of building works, compact terraced streets, a sheltered housing complex and council housing tenement blocks, cheek and jowl with student housing.   We unload, Beth and Hannah purposeful, me subdued, waiting by the car, a bit tetchy with some student helper in a branded T shirt who tried to make polite conversation without necessarily appreciating my mood. Or most likely because they had. My inner child seethed as I grumbled to them about monstrous profits for universities, and capitalists.  I slowly dragged Hannah`s suitcase into the lift: “we never had this in my day”, “look at this, I mean does it need this much branding, why does a lift need corporate livery anyway?’”, I fumed. The helper had long since gone.  Finding our way to her room, it became obvious that we had been taken in by the marketing.  “There are submariners with more space”.

 

 I’m given a ‘snagging checklist’ to keep me quiet whilst Han and Beth get on with the serious business of unpacking.   I march the two steps around this aeroplane toilet on the tenth floor that we’ ve paid 7 grand for, looking for unearthed wiring that would have meant I could have triumphantly called the council’s Trading Standards to decry the university.  I grumbled, moaned, picked holes before being unceremoniously shooed out to find a suitable restaurant for our last meal together. After a very small glass of over-priced beer, that was actually bottled in London, I noted sourly, I`m beginning to feel trapped in an Alan Bennett play.  We drove back to the apartment where, of course, we must say our goodbyes.

 

Except as we pulled up outside one of the small, brick-orange, terraced houses, all of us silently waiting for the moment when we must part, I was so preoccupied with my parking that I hadn’t quite realised that it was the moment. Beth and Hannah had already left the car. So the moment I had been dreading for so long had happened and I’d missed it.   It was only as I turned to climb out of the driver’s side of the car, it dawned on me that they were already embracing, both crying softly and hanging on to one another in a tight embrace.

 

Preoccupied with my own worries, it hadn’t even occurred to me that Hannah would be tearful or upset.

 

Why didn’t that occur to me? She had been so excited, anticipating her new journey, her adventure, it hadn’t crossed my mind that she would be actually in tears as well.

 

I stood and watched hopelessly. Helpless, as ever, at times of crisis. No baby seat this time, a different car door, a different oily parking spot. The same inability to find the right words, and thoughts. This was our moment. One that I will never forget.

 

Slowly leaving Beth’s embrace, Hannah came around the car to the driver’s side, tears streaming down her face, to give me a hug, holding on for just a moment too long. And in a parody of a real dad trying to be strong, or just trying to hold it together, not quite knowing what to do, I mistimed a friendly hug at which point Hannah snapped back at me indignantly, “what are you doing? I’m not a child”.    Head down, she marched off bravely and turned the corner to her new life, and I can’t quite put the words on paper – an overwhelming sadness, perhaps the closest I have ever come to melancholia,overwhelmed me as I stood on the spot watching the other students streaming into the Halls of Residence. I felt my teeth grinding against one another in mournful grief.

 

Despair, hollow. disconsolate.”

 

 

Some further reflections

 

As we slowly sat in the car, I sank into the driver’s seat, unable to move. I couldn’t turn the ignition of the car on. My muscles didn’t work. Only my tear ducts.

 

We both sat there, and whilst Beth cried openly and freely, I tried to suppress a wail of grief from emerging that I felt knotted up within my stomach.  Whilst we sat, unable to comprehend what had just happened, we stared up at her window, counting along the rooms, trying to work out if we would see her. Continuing with our parental role of ‘waiting until we knew she was in’ before we could move on. After five interminable minutes sitting in the car looking, waiting, watching, not knowing whether I was even looking at the right apartment floor, we saw her little hand appear, waving, to let us know she was in and all right, at which point the wail of emotion I was trying to suppress threatened to escape. I opened the window and waved back.  Then I began to wail, slowly at first as I pulled the steering wheel of the car around.   I wasn`t just crying, I was sobbing.  Convulsed with loss, I bawled like a child.   I hadn`t cried like that since I was eight. I couldn’t see oncoming traffic for the tears, I was so engulfed with loss.

 

Whilst sitting at the traffic lights at the end of her new road with our backs to her accommodation, we watched balefully as other students walked past, all the while wiping our tears away with tissues. I began to drive home.

 

When people talk about their longest journey, I now know what that feels like.  I have my own.  I simultaneously felt wretched, inconsolable, and stupid. I felt like an insufferable imposter absorbed with my own thoughts, knowing only too well how privileged we are as a family; knowing perfectly well that my daughter hadn’t died, she wasn’t sick or suffering with a terminal illness, she wasn’t a desperate refugee, just a very lucky, special, priceless sweetheart, my treasured daughter. I knew, at that moment, that somehow life would never be quite the same again, and nor would I.

 

As I drove, I was left with a sense that I had no idea what to do now. In that moment, I remembered all those words of advice from friends and family about enjoying them whilst they are young.

 

As a father I no longer knew what my role was any more. Or what I was supposed to do within the family.  When she was at the butcher`s, I would rise every morning, make Hannah`s breakfast, see her out of the door (usually with a packed lunch), watch her leave, smile, wave, close the door. Then I would start my day …now what?

 

 

Monday 13^th September 2021

 

The following day, working at home, I burst into tears for no apparent reason and sobbed after my Mum sent me a text that said ‘I love you’.   Beth hurried out of her room and offered me a reassuring hug. That one simple text set me off, my shoulders heaving as I held onto Beth whilst at the same time breaking down into laughter at the stupidity of a grown man crying in the hallway of his own home. My life turned upside down. Inconsolable. Primal.

 

 

Therapeutic mentoring with Anne-Marie

 

Tuesday 14^th Sep. 2021

 

This routine catch-up session had been planned in advance of taking Hannah to university. Our catch-up was to talk about my work, my role, whatever came to mind. Poor Anne-Marie had no prior knowledge of my weekend!

 

Journal entry. Tuesday 14^th September 2021

“Anne-Marie sat, actively listening, as she does, practised, calm. Kind. She has retired now but still offers supervision and mentoring for members and this session was part of our catch-up. I told her the story, the build-up during the barbeque and the drop-off. The departure. Her words and thoughts were immensely comforting.  She suggested that what I felt was the grief of a dad who was devoted to his family. She felt not that I was playing through an ‘act’, acting out a set of emotions as if I was playing a part, but real, absorbing, whole emotions had crashed over me, unbearable grief.

 

She was fascinated that Hannah was studying Zoology, and recalled a story of an adolescent elephant actively kicked out of his herd and who was behaving badly. The elephant trailed along, desperately acting out immaturely behind the rest of his herd to be noticed. His need to still feel a part of his herd. Loved? The rest of the herd, she felt, recognised his fear, his anxiety and isolation but possessed a wisdom, the social knowledge that meant before he could start his own herd he had to be kicked out to survive. He needed to embrace the rejection from his herd and the more he became frustrated and petulant, tearing down trees and kicking sods of earth, the more the herd closed ranks.

 

I know. I get it. She’s right.”

 

It still hurts when you’re one of the herd.

 

 

Personal correspondence from Anne-Marie

 

I shared some of my journal entries above with Anne-Marie and, to my utter delight, the following day she wrote me an email. This was unusual. We normally organise our sessions by email but they are usually brief and perfunctory, setting dates for when we will meet next. This was striking both in tone, and in that, clearly, Anne-Marie had been thinking about me.

 

I have been given permission to share the following, which I present in its original form.

 

 

Dear Phil

 

I’m starting my day gently with a cup of tea and reading your thoughts which I feel privileged to have been sent. I am so moved. Your writing is quite beautiful. I too have tears behind my eyelids. 

 

What you describe is the love of a parent for a child. I am not the father of a daughter and wonder if the need to protect is even stronger in that relationship. As a mother of sons, I know the feelings you describe so perfectly, I described them, at the time, as having a limb removed and still being able to feel it move. My skin ripped off and my body without protection. 

 

Parents, mothers, fathers, our greatest labour, our life’s work is to love, protect and worry about our children. The more they are vulnerable to the world, the harder that is and so the harder it is to let them go out into it.

 

But you are not really letting go, not at all. I read a line in Hamnet* which I need to write down (I have lent the book) in which the author describes a mother throwing out a mental fishing line to each of her children to hook them in her mind wherever they are in any hour, or day.  This is every day for ever. We need to know that they are always safe and happy. Sadly life is not that easy. I imagine Beth is feeling just the same but it’s too raw and a shared grief might be unbearable, overwhelming. Keep quiet and we will survive this week end. Be careful, my experience is when it’s this tense, you row instead of holding each other to weep. We are funny creatures. 

 

I think you are disadvantaged because women talk about this stuff, our friends who have been through this ahead of us help us to grieve. Men have to be so stoic. It’s so unfair.

 

I could go on......we could chat if you like. I would listen. For now, what helped me, was to write a letter by hand to my son. I posted it because it was too hard to have him read it with me around. He went to US at Hannah’s age and I didn’t see him for 10 months. I told myself he was fine, excited, ready to fly. He probably wasn’t but he protected me with his jolliness. My second son, older and autistic, went to Birmingham. He stood tall.  I cried, proper cried, all the way home until we finally had to stop at Oxford services for me to try to calm down. We were on our way back to London. 

 

Anyway the letters. I told them their strengths and qualities, I told them how proud I was .....I told them they could always rely on me for whatever they might need.....they were boys, at the time I heard nothing back but they heard things that I had never, and still haven’t, heard from my parents. They have both kept the letters. The down side, is that they bloody tell me everything and my heart gets a frequent kicking, but I asked for it.

 

Finally, containment. You are bearing all Hannah’s fears, you are helpless in the face of these powerful projections, all added to your own and maybe a few of Beth’s thrown in. This is one of the hardest things you will have to do. You can and will do it.  She needs you to be able to bear this. Not joke your way through but cry a bit, fuss a lot, let her make fun of you. This is something she needs to see is survivable. 

 

 Hannah is a baby conceived in a storm but safe in her cocoon, her little car seat, daddy’s strong arms. Letting those arms loosen is so frightening but she won’t fall. She knows her way home. 

 

Monday after 3

Tuesday 12 before 4

Wednesday anytime 

 

Take care Phil. I’m thinking about you. 

AM 

 

• A novel by Maggie O`Farrell

 

 

Two weeks later

 

“A letter in the post arrived today. A brown envelope, a formal letter. I’ve seen similar. A parking fine from Stockport Council for speeding on my way to dropping Hannah off. Of course it was.”

 

My own petulant, baby elephant reared on his hind legs and trumpeted angrily. Ordinary life continued.

 

 

Interpreting Anne-Marie’s guidance

 

Reflecting back on the feelings I experienced in the moment Hannah disappeared into her new Halls felt like being turned upside down and emptied out. A hollow sense of loss. I felt wretched, inconsolable and completely overwhelmed with sadness. As if at the bottom of a well, with the walls closing in, unable even to look up. Rationally, I knew that this moment was coming, I knew it was temporary, but in the moment and all the way home it consumed me in a way that I struggle to articulate. I have experienced grief, the grief of a child for a beloved grandparent, colleagues and acquaintances and for close, personal friends. Like so many others, I knew someone who died in the twin towers attack.   The feelings Beth and I shared the day we dropped off Hannah weren’t like those experiences. It felt impossible to cope. How would we ever be able to find a way forward without her, would our small family be resilient enough to cope without her, would we heal and restore, establish a new set of relationships? We have a son still living at home, we could focus all our love and energies into him and we did. But would we ever be the same, what had we lost, even if we knew that perhaps the loss was momentary and might lead to positive futures? And yet, I don’t think we shall ever be quite the same. In her Introduction to Grief Works, Julia Samuels identifies a series of paradoxes that shape our relationship with loss, helpfully pointing out that “Alternating ‘letting go’ with ‘holding on’ is something we need to live with.” (2017, p. xx). This isn’t grief so why does it feels like grief?

 

It was thoughtful, empathetic listening, the kind offered by Anne-Marie, that helped me to work through the pain I felt inside. I think she created a holding environment for me (Hyman, 2012), a safe space where I didn’t feel judged or that my experiences seemed insignificant, trite or trivial. To know that I was ‘held in mind’ (Winnicott, 1965) by someone important to me mattered.   Anne-Marie was right of course, I did cry a lot, I was overly protective and I did fuss.  I am happy for Hannah to groan dramatically when I’m overdoing the emotions. Above all, I felt cared for by someone and reassured through her wisdom and – crucially - I think I came a little closer to understanding Bion’s notion of ‘container-contained’ (Bion, 1962).   Based on Klein’s formulations of projective identification, (Klein, 1957), Bion suggests that a central role of the mother is to take in the baby’s projected cries of anguish, anxieties and petty frustrations, before ‘modifying them’ (1962, p. 90) and re-introjecting them into the infant in more tolerable doses, thus soothing their needs (Malone, and Dayton, 2015).

 

As we come to terms with all the endings and new beginnings, I am reminded again of Winnicott, who suggests that whilst soothing the inner world of the baby the mother is also needed to `present the world to the baby`(Winnicott, 1964, p. 80), arguing that there is a tension between engendering a healthy relationship between the inner creative world of the baby whilst preparing the child to be disillusioned, a process he saw as a vital ‘wider aspect of weaning’. For Winnicott, the move from a need to a wish or desire suggests that a transition is taking place, which is the maturity to bear external reality whilst `weakening the instinctual imperative` (1964, p. 81).

 

To help me to move towards a different state of mind capable of holding the needs of my `child` I needed to project onto an external figure to help me to make sense of my experiences. Knowing that a trained psychotherapist was able to listen to my experiences, and able to empathize, to give of her own experiences as a parent, was a remarkable gift and one that helped both me and Beth to develop a new phase of our lives as parents. I know that she still remembers the idea of a fishing-line and takes comfort from this too.

 

Waddell again is useful and, whilst not intending to account for the relationship between therapist and mentee, it is possible to apply her thinking and use this to aid our capacity to bear emotional pain, regardless of our life stages.  Here she explains the transition from late adolescence to adulthood:

 

`The difference between maturity and immaturity hinges not on the fact of chronological years but on a person’s capacity to bear intense emotional states; on the extent to which it is possible to think about, and reflect on, psychic pain as a consequence of having found, and sustained, a relationship with external and internal figures who are able so to do.` (Waddell, 1998, p.196).

 

It becomes possible through the therapeutic process to find some familial balance, to add some much-needed balm to our fractured relationships and to move towards a more restorative state, achieving affective growth:

 

`In a parallel process, therapist and mother both undergo affective growth, in which potential for experience enlivens and expands, creating within the mother the internal space that allows her to be in synchrony with her own baby. In this dyadic work, the container/contained process becomes multileveled and mutually fulfilling for the three individuals who engage and are permeated by each other’s feeling states` (Malone and Dayton, 2013, p. 268).

 

 

Postscript

 

One academic year later.

 

Hannah did well. Of course she did.

 

Journal entry.  22^nd June 2022

“Hannah found some class mates who have become close friends. They`ve found a house for their second year. She loves her course and passed her first year with flying colours. I think we all did. It hasn’t been easy, we lost some of our `glue`, but I, Beth and Billy adapted. We found a new groove. We shared our space and enjoyed each other’s company.”

 

A year has passed, and as I went back to Hannah`s accommodation to move her out I stared out at the surrounding suburb from her tenth floor flat and watched as a young mum expertly jemmied open a door into the dingy, council apartment building opposite, balancing an armful of clothes and bags whilst carrying her small infant in her arms. She weaved inside the security doors and went about her business. I wondered if her little lad would have the same opportunities that Hannah has had. I doubt it. But I so hope that I’m wrong. Some children were kicking a ball happily and some students were wandering off somewhere contentedly.

 

I even noticed that the flood waters we caused last year had subsided.

 

“Well, that is until Billy goes to uni.” (7297)

 

 

 

 

 

Acknowledgements

 

Dr. Anne-Marie Wright for her continued friendship, wisdom and support, I’m not at all sure what I did to deserve that over the years and I will treasure your insights.

 

Mandy Little, for her generosity, time and patience

 

My friends, colleagues and all at the Association of Psychodynamic Practitioners and Counsellors in Organisational Settings (APPCIOS)