What is the meaning of each connection we create? Answering this question will help set the orientation for how we will show up to others. When a connection is significant we can see the responsibility reciprocated. There is a positive correlation between effort and interest. As in our parents, we connect expecting a responsibility, because they provide us with everything we need to survive for such a critical time, likely the most critical connection we have. Can we survive without parents? Some people have to, and this does not minimize the need for surrogate families or community when this happens. The level of responsibility might be associated with the power of the bond. The covalent strength of the connected parts of our lives synced with the level of devotion and responsibility to the meaning that is rooted in our connection describes what I see as bondability. The meaning in our connections define the commitment and security of our bonds.
With meaning I found it easier to understand how to work with reactive children. What does this relationship mean for this child. Granted it was usually a best guess, often summed up as speculation, and likely more often projection. Having an observation in the form of some type of meaning, lets me establish the necessary curiosity that will enhance this guess. The guess evolves into a better informed bond assessment. What does this child need from this relationship and in other words what does this person mean to this child. Many of the children that I worked with were in foster care or parented by someone other than their biological parent. So I often had the challenge of working to see what meanings the custodial interactions could mean for the child client. It is hard to unpack what mom or dad means to a child. We don't often build that into our culture. I have never had to think about what my mother means to me.
As soon as I can start unpacking what I need from the people I know as parents, I can construct an awareness for being accurate with what I need for love. Mom and dad as archetypes are socially cliché people we dogmatically rely on. Parents are instinctively vital to our survival. Through our culture's lens we build up expectations for who we want our parents to be. Working through the complexities of these influences and how they spill over into less vital, less expectation filled, and more selective relationships is a big part of maturing. This is what the industry calls "doing your work". For me doing the work, is the process of understanding what I need in relationship to my environment. Once I have a strong awareness of what I have needed, I can apply it to the child in front me. Cultural awareness is a critical component to applying my speculative guesses because my speculation is only as good as my experiences have taught me. Although I do believe that what we all need is very similar, and paradoxically different enough. So any empathetic and loving attempt at relating should bring a bondable experience. This is hard to teach.
Take a mother and child for example. There are several hypothesis as to why a mother cares for a child. And this journal entry isn't revisiting any biological research to interpret any of these, this entry is for capturing my interest to explore the meaning behind a mothers responsibility. I have to take the child's perspective because I'll never understand what it truly is to be a mother. As a son I see how the meaning in my relationship with my mother has evolved from being completely reliant and tightly covalent to now becoming balanced or a harmonious covalence. This shift has also help me have new meanings along the way. As a youth my mom meant safety, comfort, and home as I have matured this meaning has evolved to become peer, friend, and lineage. These meanings reveal the philosophical attributes my mother child bond has created, what makes me curious are the psychological reasons and physiological process that get put into play in order for this bondability to cultivate.
Now how does this apply to navigating a relationship? The fundamental atomic parts of a bond are found in the polarity of what we need!
