Being organised and being persistent and maybe a bit pedantically boring - relationship between m/other and father
Contents
Introduction
I’ve decided to do something bold - or at least, it feels bold to me. This stems from reflecting on last month’s post about the boredom (or graft) of the craft of caring, and the resistances I feel because of our results-driven, profit-driven, outcome-obsessed culture. A culture that stifles the slow, repetitive work of care with an illusion of care - one that fixates on the idea rather than the action.
Like Val grappling with her relationship to men who care, we are immersed in the initial boring phase of getting to know the starting point of this fiction. Until now in these posts, I have cherry-picked pieces of writing that come to me as drivers of the next step in my thinking - fragments that reflect something I am ready to illuminate in myself and, perhaps, in you too. But from now on, I’m taking a risk. I’m going to share the fiction I wrote in November 2024, in sequence, from the beginning.
Writing under pressure during NaNoWriMo, I don’t really know what emerged. We are on a journey of discovery together. That’s frightening to me - I worry that sharing the whole work - bit by bit, month by month - might bore you. But I confronted that fear last month. Boredom can be facilitative when managed, and I am managing it in my editing and in my documentation of the research that comes alongside the fiction.
Take that surface fear away, and a deeper fear emerges. The fear that has driven my ‘cherry-picking’ is the worry that I am not good enough - that what I produce is insufficient, that I will expose myself and be humiliated, not just in the domain of writing fiction or the research lens I bring to it, but at a deeper, ontological level. I want the courage to face the possibility that I am just who I am, one small person writing ‘stuff’ and sharing it with you. It may or may not be of consequence to you or the bigger picture, but regardless of the outcome, I commit to the process, and that commitment is enough. That commitment lays the foundation from which each of us can discover something about how we can be the Theraplayer that is congruent with ourselves and in the service of others.
So here you are - Chapter 1. Not all of it, because I want you to read the research bit after the fiction, and I thought the 4000-odd words of Chapter 1 might be too much in one go. It will be continued next month.
For those who haven’t read previous posts: at the end of The Mad Man in the Attic (my November 2023 NaNoWriMo fiction), Joe’s parenting was being questioned by social services due to his history in care. He was also struggling to find work because of his history - specifically, being placed in secure accommodation during his teenage years for threatening a teacher with a knife. At the start of this fiction, he has started his own business as a painter and decorator.
Chapter 1: Starting points
Roots
“I’m really sorry, but I need the toilet.”
Val shut her eyes as she said it, screwing them up with embarrassment. Graham reached out and put his hand on her leg. They were in Val’s car. It was one of the compromises they’d made, putting him on her insurance; a bit of saving the planet by reducing fuel bills as they travelled, and a bit of testing the water of their relationship and what it might be. The smallness of her car in comparison to his now made it easy for him to offer the reassurance of touch without disturbing his driving.
His touch said to her, it’s okay. But it felt far from okay.
The gesture didn’t stop the other conversation that was running inside Val, part of that constant, sometimes intrusive, chatter that always accompanied her. She was young - five, maybe? She was in the back of the car, perhaps even on this bit of road.
“I need the toilet,” her five-year-old self had said.
“Why didn’t you go before we left?” Her father scolded.
“I did!” She dared to answer.
“You clearly didn’t,” her mother chipped in. “If you had, you wouldn’t need to go now. We’ve barely driven 10 miles.”
“I did go,” Val said again, but this time only to herself, shrivelled inside at the scold of her father amplifying her mother’s disapproval. Visibly smalling herself into the seat.
Her father didn’t stop at a suitable place. He drove on past the glitzy new modern service station. Val held out as long as she could before she shouted out again and, because he didn’t want her to wee on his car seat, he pulled over. She’d had to squat at the side of the road, visible to everyone driving by. She swore to this day that she could remember the faces of the women in the passenger seats of the cars that went by: the horror. That horror was her. She was convinced.
Shame still tied her stomach in knots, and again she shrank into the seat. The touch on her knee made tears come to her eyes and squeeze out from under her eyelids. She opened her eyes, surprised somehow that she was grown up, in the front seat of her own car, being driven by the man she had come to value deeply as a friend. The disjuncture between shame and kindness was disorientating; trying to stay with it made her feel sick.
“We’ll pull in at the services,” Graham said. “It’ll only take a minute.”
To Stonehenge we will go
It had started as a conversation in response to the radio.
They had taken to meeting for breakfast, sometimes at Graham’s house, sometimes at hers, enjoying both the space and the companionship that such an arrangement offered. For Val, it made for a later breakfast, but since they were now both officially retired, that was fine.
Today it was at Graham’s. He was standing by the sink, looking out into the garden, Val at the table finishing her cup of tea. The radio was talking about roots, myths, a sense of belonging.
“What do you think of as your roots?” Graham had asked. Val’s cup paused between her mouth and the table. Uncertainty about his question created a flash of fear. What sort of roots?
She had to make herself stop and consciously note that he was not trying to catch her out, not judging negatively or assuming her stupidity. He was just interested! He was not her father, or at least not a father that her mother had created for her.
It had been a shock to keep facing a daily fear, a fear that seeped in when she didn’t expect it and caused her to see him not as he was. As a vet, Graham was fine-tuned to animal fear. It had been a necessary skill for his own survival, especially with the big farm animals. He’d also developed a massive capacity to absorb and dissipate such fear. Occasionally, when he was on his own, he’d pat his stomach. Nearly as big as this, he imagined saying to clients when he explained it, and of course they all laughed and understood exactly what he meant.
In real life, such conversations never exited the privacy of his shower, but nevertheless he used to offer the animals, and their human animal, the containment needed for him to do his caring. They both knew, he and Val, what he brought to their relationship: this capacity to neutralise fear. Not deny fear, but not let it stop the reception of needed care. Val knew, too, that this is what she’d done over the years working with children. It is what she’d received from female colleagues. But this was new, feeling it from a man.
“I mean,” he chipped in, as he noted the slowing of movement and the suspension of the cup, “now you know you are really, really English, what do you see as a place that roots you?”
The cup moved again, but back to the table rather than her mouth. At least it was a move, and they both breathed again.
“Stonehenge, I guess,” Val said without really thinking. “What about you?”
“Angel of the North.”
Val nodded her head in appreciation. She’d learned more about his early life in Northumberland, followed by a childhood in a distant boarding school where he’d lost his accent and his connection to his three brothers and the family farm. One of their journeys together had been to Gateshead. She had been driving and had heard his sigh of relaxation and homecoming as the Angel appeared.
“But I’ve never been to Stonehenge,” she said, the memory of Graham’s response to the Angel making her realise that her selection of a monumental metaphor of roots was imaginary, theoretical: not based on the same visceral embedded experience that he had with the Angel.
“Why don’t we go and see it?” Graham said, turning to her. She couldn’t see his face - the light was behind him. She smiled, realising she didn’t need to see his face to know he’d been caught up in an idea. He was excited, she could see it in the move of his shoulders, in the small uplift of his whole body and the bouncing step towards her.
Her responses tended to be more muted. Her containment of fear and anxiety had been honed on humans - on the children and parents she’d worked with and, through her supervisions and reflective practice, on herself. She had learned to not react, taking the lessons from childhood - the don’t answer backs, the don’t let yourself feels, the don’t believe the messages of your body until you are really really sure, or better still, just ignore your body - and turning that watchfulness into a skill that meant she had been good at her job.
“When does Joe finish decorating?” Graham asked.
That made Val smile too, the image of Joe driving off down to Bournemouth in his new van with the sign-writing on the side: JNS Decorators. All their initials. That was a story, him being able to find work by setting up his own business after settling the question of whether he would be able to keep the children as a lone parent. This was his first major job, decorating the house in Bournemouth ready for it to be used as a holiday home for people who may not otherwise get away. She and Nickie had waved Joe off, Niks and Sammy secure in their car seats next to their dad in the front of the van. It was going to be a sort of working holiday for them.
Val looked at the date on her watch.
“Today!” She said. “The time’s gone so fast! He’s coming back as it’s the end of half-term and the children wanted to be home for Halloween.”
Graham groaned. “Well, that’s a good reason for us to get away. I don’t want to be here with the hoards of children coming round again.”
Val looked up. That didn’t fit with what she expected of him: his joviality, she thought, would mean he enjoyed the appearance of children at his door. She thought she was the grumpy one who turned off her lights and pretended she wasn’t home. She was surprised to see tension on his face and raised an eyebrow, knowing he’d see that as her desire to know, thankful that with him, she didn’t need to struggle to speak.
“Last year they scared the daylights out of Hilda next door.” Then he chuckled. “Or maybe Hilda scared the daylights out of them.”
Hilda, 95 years young, had lived in the house next door to Graham’s since she’d married at 19. She was now a little lost in a house she couldn’t quite manage on her own. She was intimidating to say the least, with a waspish tongue covering up her vulnerability.
“What happened?” Val asked.
“They rang on her doorbell, but she didn’t hear. She had all her lights blazing so they thought they were invited, but when she didn’t answer they threw eggs. I saw them. I got the worst from both the children and her.” Graham almost deflated before her as he sighed. “I even got an ear-bashing from some of the parents for getting involved when it was none of my business, according to them.”
In the end, it was Graham who scrubbed Hilda’s door, the impact of her words and those of the parents leaving him feeling like it was all his fault.
Had they really not known each other this time last year? Not like this, not being able to talk about the rubbish stuff of life without it sounding like a whine.
“We can have a look at how he’s got on,” Val said, going back to Joe and the decorating.
So, after lunch they were in the car heading along the motorway, and, as so often happened, even though she’d gone to the toilet before they left, the drive, the anticipation, the worry of a journey, meant that not long after leaving home, Val knew she needed to pee, and that until she did, the distress and discomfort would not dissipate.
Service Station
Graham pulled into the service station lane smoothly, allowing the car to take the line as he eased off the accelerator and their speed reduced. He glanced in the rearview mirror and noted a lorry that was taking an alternative approach to the junction, seeming to get closer at high speed before braking. This distracted him from his usual awareness of the road ahead of him.
“Sorry,” he said, as they bumped in a pothole.
As they’d got to know each other more deeply, Val had become astonished at how small language could carry such shared and deep meaning. In her work, she’d been used to what she and Brenda, her former supervisor, had called ‘unpicking’. She could go back to the people she was working with and bring to the surface unshared, inhibiting, unspoken assumptions so that they ceased to limit the world of her clients. It had been such a joy to offer this to children who’d been so misled in early childhood and were bringing those old stories into their new adopted families. And to do that without words through Theraplay - well, that had been extraordinary.
Now, unexpectedly, she was finding Theraplay worked in just ordinary life, with Graham; a resonance and connection that could flourish as she became aware of the unspoken, inhibiting assumptions that influenced her view of men. All because of a childhood shaped by an experience she’d been unaware of until Graham had gifted her a DNA test and she’d discovered that her birth story was not what she’d thought.
Graham’s ‘sorry’ carried all of his I care about you, I care about the way I drive, I’m proud of the way I drive, I missed that pothole and made a mistake, I was doing my best, life and roads are full of potholes, I care for your car so I don’t like it that I hit a pothole, but it doesn’t undo me.
Val smiled. Then she smiled even more, realising that she smiled more frequently these days. She lived less in a state of stress. She no longer saw stress as something she needed because it kept her on her toes and sharp to the meaning of what was going on around her.
It was her turn to put her hand on his knee, and to know that the meaning of that communication wouldn’t be misunderstood, or just plain missed.
Graham navigated the convoluted route into the car park, smaller than she expected - than she remembered. Yes, it was a memory!
“I think I’ve been here before!”
“I’d be surprised if you hadn’t,” Graham responded, and then picked up more from the tone of her voice.
He spotted a space and pulled to a halt, preparing to back in. These days he had to put his hand behind the passenger seat to get enough twist in his back to get a good view of the process. Val’s car did have a reversing camera, but old muscular habits die hard and he kept finding himself immersed in this bodily action before he realised it. It did mean he caught a good glimpse of Val as he turned to look at the parking space. He could see an agitation. This was another of those emerging jittery memories that seemed to be popping up to the surface like bubbles in a fizzy drink - pleasurable, but a bit sickening too.
“What do you remember?” He said, before turning his full attention to the parking. He knew Val wouldn’t answer out loud; she would be exploring the image that had come to her mind.
It was black and white, in her head. The image was of a news report from her childhood. The place opening, the wonder of a new thing, a place to stop and eat at all hours of the day and night. Visiting, and feeling like she was in a spaceship of grey, standing over the top of the road and seeing the cars, feeling the cars as one by one they sped beneath her, moving the hairs on her skin so slightly. It was thrilling, scary. She squatted on the bridge over the road, impressed by the sounds and sight - car, whizz, pause. Car, whizz, pause.
She was jerked back to the present, just as her mother's hand had once jerked her to her feet. What a difference to the continuous howl of traffic now, never a pause. She shook her head, knowing that such ‘memory’ was made of many parts - actual event, added meaning, other people's stories from things said, things read, things heard.
She’d learned in her work, and now in her life, to hold memories lightly and allow truths to emerge; truths of feeling and relationship, not facts of action and event.
Being organised, being persistent and maybe a bit pedantically boring - relationship between m/other and father
Last month, I said that I would read around the role of the father in attachment theory and Theraplay, and I did.
The reading was in the nature of me being a practitioner researcher: squeezing it into my spare time, making use of the resources that came my way, opening myself to being an information super-encounterer. It may not have been ‘thorough’ or ‘systematic’ in the sense of traditional research, but I am seeking to disrupt traditional ways of researching to make it possible, through this Heuristic Inquiry, to see my world in new ways and pose the possibility that our m/other tongue can be used to make a positive difference for those we care for in our professional practices.
So, while my ‘smash-and-grab’ approach to the literature might not fit the usual academic mould, I’d argue it is, in its own way, thorough. It provokes me (and by extension, you, since you’re reading this) to consider the ‘question’ from a new perspective. In much the same way, the evolving relationship between Val and Graham is causing both of them to think about their worlds, and the world they could create together, from new perspectives. The research ‘question’ the fiction is seeking to illuminate is how to operationalise our m/other tongue - how do we make tacit maternal knowing work in the ‘real world’.
To me, these new perspectives feel more like evolutions than revolutions. Such evolutions must emerge from the bodies in which they have been gestating. As Val’s relationship with Graham deepens, she finds herself drawn back into her past. This requires her to confront the limiting aspects of her earlier experiences - not by rejecting the possibility of a relationship with a man, as she might have done before, nor by unquestioningly positioning Graham as a symbol of the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy - which she finds herself falling into - but as a fellow human who just happens to inhabit a male body. The evolution is from black-and-white thinking - where man equals bad, dangerous, violent, and woman equals victim, silenced, enslaved - to a place of each first accepting themselves, then accepting each other. It is a tricky and slow process.
Reading as a way to try to digest and make sense of the fiction this month helped me untangle some of this tricky, slow process.
I could tell you what search terms I used and where I looked. In fact, in my first draft of this post, that is what I did - but it was dead dull and I asked myself, why am I telling you all that?
I realise now that I was trying to impress you - trying to prove that I am a ‘proper’ researcher, that I understand systematic literature reviews and how to answer real research questions. But just as I came to see that I needed courage to share all of the fiction in the order it emerged, I recognise that I cherry-pick here too. I try to convince an imaginary you, dear reader, that I am acceptable as a practitioner-researcher by presenting fully formed, neatly structured ideas.
But the truth is, it’s far messier than that, this place of evolution. And all I can really do is share my fascination with the ongoing attempt to live out our m/other tongue: to care, to love, to cherish others, even when I keep getting pushed off track. The reality of ‘I don’t know’.
I keep getting caught off guard, like Val, and falling back into old patterns of what ‘should’ happen and what I ‘should’ do to fit in and please and make myself a seat at the table of power. But rather than cherry-picking to please you, entertain you, or stun you with my intellect and academic skill, I want to select what to share with you to make it possible for you to wonder with and contemplate alongside me how we operationalise our m/other tongue.
Life is not about getting somewhere: the action of the fiction takes place when Val and Graham are thwarted in their going to Stonehenge. They are obliged to find meaning where they are, stuck at an out-of-date service station that is trying to keep up with the demands of today's traffic having been built for the traffic of fifty years ago. I am also obliged to find meaning, stuck as I am in making sense of the place of fathering in the operationalisation of our m/other tongue, trying to see how this fits while wrestling with the limitations of my representations of interactions, generalised (RIGs - Stern, 1990) that are also half a century or so old.
Graham hits a pothole because his careful driving, a sort of relationship with the car, was distracted by the aggressive driving of the bigger lorry behind. In contemplating this moment, I realise I hold two versions of manhood within me: the careful, thoughtful driver seeking connection, and the aggressive, destructive driver seeking domination. I also realised that I don’t separate manhood from fatherhood. They both get swept up in the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy with its driven, destructive domination.
I want to find a way that, authentically, in my lived experience, the role of father can be a power that modifies the world, and works in harmony with the world, making it manageable: not a power that frightens and overwhelms. Yet, I feel it keeps becoming patriarchal within me, in the old-fashioned use of the word - taking power for the powerful at the expense of those who are less powerful, using fear as a way to force the others' behaviour.
Val’s decision to give up some of the freedom of her car is a compromise. The car is a mode of transport that they are now sharing. Each gives up some power to both be in the same vehicle to make the journey together. In my imagination, I’ve unquestioningly given Graham a bigger car than hers (it’s a Land Rover in my head). Yet for both of them, the cars were about getting around to do their jobs - they just had different sizes of kit to carry. Now, their ‘work’ - and my ‘work’ in illuminating my tacit knowing - has shifted to navigating their relationship, integrating their two modes of caring. Here, the fiction holds a mirror up to me, saying: You do know how maternal and paternal functions come together for good. And yet, I still can’t quite grasp it.
This leads me to wonder: apart from biology, is all this talk of mothering and fathering simply nonsense? As I reflect on what I’ve written in the fiction, I see that Val and Graham are doing the same things in their own ways: caring for the more vulnerable. As I unpick this further, I become more aware of how I habitually give away my power to the internalised experience of a patriarchal system, a system I know many women (though maybe not all) have experienced from infancy. I assumed that Graham has a bigger car than Val, I assumed the aggressive lorry driver is a man! It’s a system woven deeply into my being, passed down through generations - it's a RIG.
When I read the Newland and Coyl’s (2010) paper about their conversation with Richard Bowlby, I found the diagram illustrating the roles of dual primary attachment figures in terms of the proportion of soothing and calming versus outward excitation provided to the infant particularly helpful in taking my thinking further.
It led me to wonder where visibility fits in, and how visibility and power connect. Neither of these primary attachment styles are labelled mothering and fathering in this diagram, but I label them that myself. I think of the explore and excite aspect of the dual primary attachment relationship as being a fathering role that promotes the visibility of the infant into the world. What meaning do I give to that visibility in connection to the private, quiet, less visible role I am naming as mothering?
I see that explore and excite work, that enabling the infant/child/theory/practice to thrive in the world, as the lauded role, the role that takes the glory of the production of such magnificence for itself, overshadowing and ignoring the secure base and comfort work.
For some, visibility becomes an illusion of power. I think of the young girl in Wales, who, after stabbing her teachers, believed she would become a celebrity. But becoming visible is critical for othered populations. It allows them to have a presence in the minds of the powerful. It allows them to see themselves as worthy of being recognised for who they truly are - not as an ‘othered’ group, but as individuals entitled to equality. At the core of developing a sense of self is the way mothering, and m/othering, works: the more powerful and mobile figure uses their strength to serve the less powerful other, recognising their needs and creating the right environment for them to grow into their own power. However, being made too visible too soon - or being exposed in a way that lacks joyful celebration - is destructive (I’m thinking about the contrast between Val as a child and Joe driving off in his van with his children).
These struggles to make sense of the meaning of being seen in the world are central to the operationalisation of our m/other tongue. The right balance between the mothering of secure base and comfort and fathering of explore and excite is needed for the person-cared-for (or the work of the therapist, educator, researcher, or manager) to have a sustainable and creative place in the world. Without that balance, visibility can be destructive in many different ways. In developing and operationalising a theory of tacit maternal knowing, I am struggling to make m/othering visible in a way that is creative, not destructive, and not driven off the road by the distractions of internalised aggressive manhood. This requires some sort of theorisation of the explore and excite process.
I set out to think about fathers, and I think I’ve reached a point where I can begin to contemplate how that explore and excite function of attachment experience is a necessary part of sustaining the use of our m/other tongue in the world of therapy, therapist education, research, and management. I think I’ve come to a place where I can explore whether this role is about managing the process of visibility, while mothers take on the immersive caring. When you’re immersed and offering of yourself, it is difficult to have an external eye at the same time. Managing visibility, then, is about using power in the service of the less powerful other, with care, insight, and explorative questioning. To use Theraplay terms, it’s how Nurture and Challenge work in harmony.
I have reached no destination, found no roots nor meaning, but I have stuck with the process. I have been disciplined in trusting the fiction is telling me something important. I have resisted the visible traps of wanting to please by offering what I think I ‘should’ give, while still being selective enough to make my thoughts accessible to you. Pedantically, I have gone back again and again to the fiction to ask it ‘what do I know?’ on the basis that, as Moustakas (1990, p.15) says, “with virtually every question that matters personally there is also a social—and perhaps universal—significance”.
Have I enabled you to explore? Have I excited you? Perhaps I do know more about the fathering functions in operationalising our m/other tongue than I’ve allowed myself to realise before. I wonder what the next piece of fiction will make me think about!
Bibliography
This really is a bibliography this month! I’ve only included three references in the blog, so the books listed below include texts I have been reading to make some sense of fathering, fathers, parenting, parents, and paternal in the literatures that form my ‘foundation’ theorists. I also did some basic reading around the Oedipus and Electra complexes, mainly through unverified internet sources - we will see if I end up doing more thorough reading on those as the fiction continues.
Bowlby, J. (1988). A secure base: Clinical applications of attachment theory. Routledge.
Davis, M., & Wallbridge, D. (2014). Boundary And Space: An Introduction To The Work of D.W. Winnincott. Taylor and Francis.
Erikson, E. H. (1995). Childhood and society. Vintage.
Moustakas, C. E. (1990). Heuristic research: Design, methodology, and applications. Sage.
Newland, L. A., & Coyl, D. D. (2010). Fathers’ role as attachment figures: An interview with Sir Richard Bowlby. Early Child Development and Care, 180(1–2), 25–32. https://doi.org/10.1080/03004430903414679.
Schore, A. N. (1994). Affect regulation and the origin of the self: The neurobiology of emotional development. L. Erlbaum Associates.
Schore, A. N. (2012). The Science of The Art of Psychotherapy. W.W. Norton & Company.
Stern, D. N. (2006). The interpersonal world of the infant: A view from psychoanalysis and development psychology. Karnac.
Symington, J., & Symington, N. (1996). The clinical thinking of Wilfred Bion. Routledge.
Tronick, E. (2007). The neurobehavioral and social-emotional development of infants and children. W. W. Norton & Co.
Winnicott, D. W. (1975). The child, the family, and the outside world. Penguin Books.
Wright, K. (1991). Vision and separation: Between mother and baby. Free Association Books.
Wright, K. (2009). Mirroring and attunement: Self realization in psychoanalysis and art. Routledge.