Tag: To Be Held

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To Be Held, by Betsy

When I was an infant, the scientists–physicians and psychologists–who knew everything there was to know about mothering, all proclaimed that holding your baby too much was not a good thing. The consequences of this seemingly natural human behavior was, in fact, risky. Babies could grow up expecting to be held all the time. They would become dependent on being held, they would become “spoiled.” Also at the time cow’s milk or cow-milk-based formula created by humans and promoted by the forces of capitalism, was better for a human baby than human milk which was, after all, only poor mother nature’s formula for what is best for a newborn.

Years later when I became a mother the same thinking was prevalent–except for the milk ideas. There had sprung up in recent years a group of rebel mothers called Le Leche League. The group promoted breast feeding among new moms. They had a book which described the benefits of not only the milk, but also the process of delivering the milk, not the least of which was to hold your baby close while feeding him. They held the notion that there is a reason the female human body is configured as it is. That properly and naturally feeding your baby required holding him close.

I actually heard many mothers at the time say “The problem is that if you breast feed your baby, you will become completely tied down to him/her.” When I told my doctor husband this, he had the perfect answer. “Well, a mother SHOULD be tied down to her baby. That is how a baby survives and thrives.”

My oldest child did not have the benefits of breast milk for very long. The pediatrician instructed me, a very insecure novice mom, to begin supplementing the breast milk with formula after two months or so. Why? Well, baby needs more milk and it was believed baby could not get enough milk from its mother alone. I soon learned that once you start the process of bottle feeding, baby learns really fast. It’s much easier for her to suck milk from a bottle than from a breast. It flows much, much faster out of a bottle and, well, they don’t have to work so hard to get it. Then, of course, they don’t want the breast milk, demand for the rich liquid plummets, and the milk-making machine quickly becomes non-productive.

I later learned that breast milk is the best, there is plenty of it as supply usually meets with demand, and it works perfectly for about one year, longer if one wishes, and if the feeding is supplemented with a source of iron.

Actually, in a society driven by corporate profits the truth is the main problem with breast feeding is that the milk is free, so long as the mother is properly nourished and hydrated. No one is buying anything. No one benefits monetarily from that method of feeding, no one except baby and mother. No corporate profit is to be made. Baby and mother alone benefit.

It seems that to be held IS important–not just for babies but for children and adults as well. Being held promotes healing, comfort, security, well being of all kinds. It is hard to imagine how it ever came to be regarded as detrimental. Yet the notion continues in some minds.

One of the first complete sentences my oldest child ever uttered was, “I want to behold.”

Of course when we first heard this we asked, “Behold–behold what? A star in the East?

“What do you mean, ‘I want to behold?’ Oohh! You need comforting and reassurance. You want to be held,” we said realizing that our brilliant three year old was not familiar with the passive form of the verb to hold.

Holding in a loving way and being held is loving behavior. What adult does not want to hold a kitten or puppy immediately when he or she see it. I think holding each other as an expression of love is something we learn or at least become comfortable with early in life. I think we could use more of it in this troubled world of ours. I’m all for it.

© 8 October 2012

About the Author

Betsy has been active in the GLBT community including PFLAG, the Denver Women’s Chorus, OLOC (Old Lesbians Organizing for Change), and the GLBT Community Center. She has been retired from the human services field for 20 years. Since her retirement, her major activities have included tennis, camping, traveling, teaching skiing as a volunteer instructor with the National Sports Center for the Disabled, reading, writing, and learning. Betsy came out as a lesbian after 25 years of marriage. She has a close relationship with her three children and four grandchildren. Betsy says her greatest and most meaningful enjoyment comes from sharing her life with her partner of 30 years, Gillian Edwards.

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To Be Held by Phillip Hoyle

If “to be held” is a goal, my relationship with the goal was one of slow, slow discovery. I have no memory of being held by my parents. I slept alone throughout my childhood since I was the only boy in the family. When as a little boy I went to my grandparents’ farm, I slept with Grandpa in his big Mission-style oak double bed. I recall he kidded me about having to build a wall of pillows to keep me from kicking him. I now wonder if he built the wall because I wanted to snuggle up to him, something he was uncomfortable doing. I’ll never know. One could say I am from a home in which touch was not withheld; it just wasn’t much of a factor, at least for this child.

In my early teen years I asked girls to school dances. I asked them because I liked to dance having been taught by my older sisters. In the junior high gymnasium we danced the Bop with its spins and fancy steps, the Twist with its aerobic benefits, and sometimes slow dances based on the Fox Trot. My favorites were several line dances the teachers taught us. I liked slow dances, too, for the holding and being held. Sounds pretty normal I guess. Anyway, as we danced, my ninth grade girlfriend rested her hand on my lower back, a fact that others noted and commented on. She was very short, and we danced very close. I had no objections. So we danced a lot that year hanging onto one another. Although at that time I wanted to dance with African American kids in line dances, it never occurred to me to dance with another boy. I had engaged in sexual things with grade school friends but none of my friends danced. I had never heard of boys dancing together let alone seen it. But had I imagined it, I’m sure I’d have wanted to dance with a boy, black or red, brown or white, or any other color of the rainbow.

In my mid-teens a new friend introduced me to a new kind of male-to-male sex that included the intimacy of kissing. I’d never been able to get myself to kiss a girl. I suppose I was still under the influence of my childhood groans during movie love scenes. I had no idea that the fact the hugging and kissing was between a female and a male could have anything to do with my lack of interest. Of course since I am music-sensitive, the introduction of sappy-sounding orchestral strings in such scenes may have really repelled me. But I readily took to kissing with my boyfriend. I didn’t realize that my kissing relationship with him was the kind that felt just right. I didn’t think in terms of either/or, either girl or boy. I just enjoyed what we did together and kept open my search for a girlfriend. In high school I dated several girls. We danced but didn’t fall in love.

Then I met a girl who with my grandmother was visiting our family. We attended a dance together. I danced close with this very sexy and enthusiastic young woman. In the car after we drove back home we held and kissed one another hungrily. She seemed to enjoy that I knew how to kiss even though I hadn’t been able to practice it for over two years, ever since my kissing boyfriend had left town. The next day she returned to her home a couple of counties away. I went off to college. I never saw her again.

I didn’t find anyone I wanted to kiss again for about a year. Then I met Myrna. We held hands. I put my arm around her. On the third date (the appropriate time according to discussions in the 1950s youth group I had attended) I worked up my courage to kiss her. We were parked late at night in the city zoo parking lot watching the lights caused by military maneuvers at nearby Fort Riley. The light show was nice, a novelty for her. Then I kissed her; she bit my ear. I thought, ‘This is something new,’ the effects of it shooting like lightning right down to my groin. I assumed she liked my kisses and maybe me. As it turned out she liked me just fine, but the bite was not a tease or a love bite; she was nervous. She would rather have only held my hand and continued liking her boyfriend back home (whom I never even heard about until years later). She’d rather have gone bowling, played volleyball, and skipped all the sexual, romantic things. But later, when I kissed her in front of several other students, right there in public, she opened herself to feelings she’d heard of in fairytales and assumed she had met her Prince Charming. In short, we married, had kids, and as a couple enjoyed living together with great intimacy—including a lot of touch, kisses, and sex—for years and years.

Still, I sought intimacy with a man. Ten years into the marriage I fell in love with him and basked in our occasional touch, our holding. Twenty years into the marriage I learned much more about my need to be held. My work partner, the senior minister with whom I’d served as an associate for seven years, died a sudden death early on a Sunday morning. I organized elders of the congregation to be at all the doors to greet folk and tell of the death as they arrived at the church. I was cast in the pastoral role for the congregation and realized that all I had learned about grief should be heeded for the whole group as well as for individuals. I didn’t have time to grieve for my personal loss. I bore the heavy responsibility, but I needed desperately to be held.

During the ensuing weeks, my wife and I kept to our normal patterns of intimacy. I held her. That was good. She remained responsive but somehow our pattern didn’t meet my needs. I eventually realized what I needed was to be held by my male lover, a man I’d been in love with for nearly a decade. He called by phone. I was pleased, but he did not come to the funeral. He didn’t come to see me in the following weeks. I didn’t think much about it at the time being too busy tending others. Still, I didn’t get held like I needed to be held. I seemed unable to ask anyone for what I needed. Eventually I did find a man to hold me. In receiving his fine care, I realized I had sought it because I was unwilling to call on my friend whose responses to me had always been unpredictable. I was needy beyond my past experiences.

I survived. I realized I needed a man-to-man relationship that would provide me more reliable and accessible contact. Eventually I found it. Then another. My needs pushed me into behaviors that spelled the ends of my marriage and career. I don’t say this as an apology for my behaviors or as an accusation against anyone. I tell it as description. I don’t expect other people to be more able to respond to life’s challenges any better than I. So I describe these experiences because the events and my responses revealed to me just how strong a need can be and how strong a pattern of behavior can be to prevent one from getting the need met.

I finally realized I needed to be held by the people I loved and who I knew loved me. I’m an old man now having entered a gay world where one can get sex rather easily, but the habits still restrict me; and of course there are the habits of other men as well as my own, habits that define asking and getting. They clarify experience, feelings, fears; mine and theirs. Sadly and stupidly I again find myself getting less holding than I believe I require.

I cannot write an ending to this story; I’m not yet dead! Who knows what the coming years may yet teach me about my need to hold and to be held?
Denver, 2012

About the Author

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen practicing massage, he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists and volunteers at The Center leading “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot

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To Be Held by Betsy

When I was an infant, the scientists–physicians and psychologists–who knew everything there was to know about mothering, all proclaimed that holding your baby too much was not a good thing. The consequences of this seemingly natural human behavior was, in fact, risky. Babies could grow up expecting to be held all the time. They would become dependent on being held, they would become “spoiled.” Also at the time cow’s milk or cow-milk-based formula created by humans and promoted by the forces of capitalism, was better for a human baby than human milk which was, after all, only poor mother nature’s formula for what is best for a newborn.

Years later when I became a mother the same thinking was prevalent–except for the milk ideas. There had sprung up in recent years a group of rebel mothers called Le Leche League. The group promoted breast feeding among new moms. They had a book which described the benefits of not only the milk, but also the process of delivering the milk, not the least of which was to hold your baby close while feeding him. They held the notion that there is a reason the female human body is configured as it is. That properly and naturally feeding your baby required holding him close.

I actually heard many mothers at the time say “The problem is that if you breast feed your baby, you will become completely tied down to him/her.” When I told my doctor husband this, he had the perfect answer. “Well, a mother SHOULD be tied down to her baby. That is how a baby survives and thrives.”

My oldest child did not have the benefits of breast milk for very long. The pediatrician instructed me, a very insecure novice mom, to begin supplementing the breast milk with formula after two months or so. Why? Well, baby needs more milk and it was believed baby could not get enough milk from its mother alone. I soon learned that once you start the process of bottle feeding, baby learns really fast. It’s much easier for her to suck milk from a bottle than from a breast. It flows much, much faster out of a bottle and, well, they don’t have to work so hard to get it. Then, of course, they don’t want the breast milk, demand for the rich liquid plummets, and the milk-making machine quickly becomes non-productive.

I later learned that breast milk is the best, there is plenty of it as supply usually meets with demand, and it works perfectly for about one year, longer if one wishes, and if the feeding is supplemented with a source of iron.

Actually, in a society driven by corporate profits the truth is the main problem with breast feeding in that the milk is free, so long as the mother is properly nourished and hydrated. No one is buying anything. No one benefits monetarily from that method of feeding, no one except baby and mother. No corporate profit is to be made. Baby and mother alone benefit.

It seems that to be held IS important–not just for babies but for children and adults as well. Being held promotes healing, comfort, security, well being of all kinds. It is hard to imagine how it ever came to be regarded as detrimental. Yet the notion continues in some minds.

One of the first complete sentences my oldest child ever uttered was, “I want to behold.”

Of course when we first heard this we asked, “behold–behold what? A star in the East.

What do you mean, “I want to behold? Oohh! You need comforting and reassurance. You want to be held.” we said, realizing that our brilliant three year old was not familiar with the passive form of the verb to hold.

Holding in a loving way and being held is loving behavior. What adult does not want to hold a kitten or puppy immediately when he or she see it. I think holding each other as an expression of love is something we learn or at least become comfortable with early in life. I think we could use more of it in this troubled world of ours. I’m all for it.

Denver 2013

About the Author

Betsy has been active in the GLBT community including PFLAG, the Denver women’s chorus, OLOC (Old Lesbians Organizing for Change). She has been retired from the Human Services field for about 15 years. Since her retirement, her major activities include tennis, camping, traveling, teaching skiing as a volunteer instructor with National Sports Center for the Disabled, and learning. Betsy came out as a lesbian after 25 years of marriage. She has a close relationship with her three children and enjoys spending time with her four grandchildren. Betsy says her greatest and most meaningful enjoyment comes from sharing her life with her partner of 25 years, Gillian Edwards.

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To Be Held by Michael King

Increasingly in my senior years I am more aware of the power of touch, human warmth and acceptance, with acknowledgement and sincerity in my interactions with others. I went to a study group thirty-six years ago and had a new experience. The male host, as I was leaving, grabbed me and gave me a big bear hug. I froze. Never had anyone except a close family member had ever done that. Even as a child there was seldom more than a pat or handshake. 

Slowly, as I became a father and had intimate relations with my wife, I was more and more affectionate and receptive of warmth and closeness that I’d seldom experienced as a child. However, I had never hugged or been hugged by a man and only by the women that I had dated or married. When Jim hugged me, my automatic stiffing and adrenalin rush became an obsessive mind blower over the next several weeks, something I’d never even thought about. Intellectually I knew that hugging was one of the things that everyone at the study group did as they said good bye. I wasn’t prepared emotionally. It is surprising how a single, seemingly innocent happening can be life changing.

At the time I could not have let myself think of having an emotional or physical interaction with anyone other than my wife and kids. I was now introduced to a group of people who showed each other their welcomeing, acceptance, acknowledgement and greetings by hugging each other, and doing so without any sexual or manipulative overtones. It took a while for me to adjust to this totally different way of interacting with others. This whole thing about touching and having different emotions and intensions became a new and complex learning experience, both mentally and experientially.

As the years passed and my last marriage dissolved I became more and more attracted to men, another challenging and mind boggling growth experience. I must be an awfully slow learner or had so much childhood baggage that it took many years to wrap my mind and emotions around the simple act of an affectionate, heart-felt hug or even being comfortable in intimate encounters, of which I hadn’t had much experience. Not only does our thinking change almost unconsciously over time, but so do our emotions, our attitudes, our beliefs and the naturalness of opening our arms, inviting a hug and having that contact that is warm and personal without the unwanted overtones.

I now have a reputation for being a hugger. It is amazing how starved people are for acceptance and acknowledgement. Yesterday I was with someone I hadn’t seen for a couple of months. We greeted each other and gave each other a hug. It was so natural and caring and she said what I so often hear, “I really needed that.”

At the GLBT Center, Prime Timers, and in other situations when it seems comfortable, I usually invite hugs and often a kiss. Most of the time a hug is accepted and I think, appreciated. Receiving that acceptance and affection for me is a joy and a boost. It makes being so much more meaningful and positive. I feel uplifted, accepted and appreciated.

I’ve heard that it is a gift to someone to offer your friendship and affection. I believe and experience that as true.

I would also mention that to wake up in someone’s arms is one of the most comforting and fulfilling of experiences.

Living a life filled with love is what I am most thankful for among all the other wonderful blessings that are now a part of the joys of my beingness.

About the Author

I go by the drag name, Queen Anne Tique. My real name is Michael King. I am a gay activist who finally came out of the closet at age 70. I live with my lover, Merlyn, in downtown Denver, Colorado. I was married twice, have 3 daughters, 4 grandchildren and a great grandson. Besides volunteering at the GLBT Center and doing the SAGE activities, “Telling your Story”,”Men’s Coffee” and the “Open Art Studio,” I am active in Prime Timers and Front Rangers. I now get to do many of the activities that I had hoped to do when I retired; traveling, writing, painting, doing sculpture, cooking and drag.