My mother was not one for much touch, I have few memories of her hugging me. I presume she did so when I was a baby. I don’t recall her touch being embracing or particularly comforting, rather it was mechanical and obligatory. She might put her arm around me if she was standing or sitting and I was standing but not fully embrace me. I’m sure there were times when I went to her and received some comfort. But I sensed that that was not what I was to get from her and there was nothing I could do about that.
The time I had an accident on my bike on the road and a neighbour carried me home, I was lying on the bed screaming and I wanted her to hold me but she was not touching me apart from looking at my body. And she then put me to bed in a ‘quiet room’. I guess that may have been her way of trying to make me feel safe, to be in a quiet dark room, but I felt alone. And of course I thought she could see what he was doing by looking at my “down there” after hurting it coming off my bike. I wondered what it meant to have done that, was I in trouble from her, would I be in trouble from him, what had I done.
If I Talk 