Childbearing & Mothering
The Breast Milk Theory of Love.
by Sheri Winston
Author of Women's Anatomy of Arousal: Secret Maps to Buried Pleasure
http://www.herbalmedicinehealing.com/store/item_view.asp?estore_itemid=1000416
Ah, Breastmilk, Mother Nature’s most perfect
food, the nectar of the Goddess. Evolution has developed an
exquisite system for nurturing young mammals, perfected through
millennia. It is an elegantly simple system, based on supply
and demand. A breast is essentially a milk factory. When a
baby sucks on the breast, it stimulates receptors which tell
the breast (via the brain) to respond by producing milk. As
the infant’s needs increase, they get hungrier and suck
more, and thus more milk is produced. Despite myths to the
contrary, the breast is never empty. There is essentially
an endless supply. There is always as much milk as a child
needs. As long as the system is not interrupted, and the mother
is adequately hydrated and nourished, there will always be
an abundance of glorious milk.
Mammalian milk has evolved to meet the highly
specific needs of each particular species. Human milk contains
the exact nutrients in the perfect balance to grow the complex
brains and bodies of our infants. It contains living immune
factors to protect the health of the child. It teaches both
our immune system and our metabolism how to function properly
for the rest of our lifetimes by mechanisms that are still
poorly understood.
Sweet and plentiful breastmilk is the perfect
food, always ready, warm and delicious. And it comes in an
attractive and time-tested package, that of the woman’s
breast, firmly attached to the warm, soft, breathing, beating
body of the mother. This perfect food is delivered from within
the context of the first love relationship that the baby knows.
This is how evolution set up the system. When the humanling
feels one of its basic needs, that of hunger, the need is
met, not with an external object, but by their own personal
beloved. Fed from her warm soft body, cradled in her strong
arms, enveloped in her scent, her loving touch, steadied by
her heartbeat and breathing, gazed at by bliss-filled eyes.
Ideally, the human need for food is answered in the context
of a relationship, by a person, with love.
Compare this to the synthetic formula given
to most of us as children and to many babies even now. It’s
a nasty tasting wallpaper paste also known as artificial infant
formula. It’s given in a transparent bottle, clearly
in a finite amount. When the bottle is empty, that’s
it. It’s all gone. There is no more. The need for food
is met, not in the context of a warm and loving relationship,
from a soft and sensuous woman’s breast, but with a
‘thing’, a hard and separate object. So removed
from the context of relationship that it need not even be
given while the child is held. A bottle can be propped up
or self-held by an older baby.
Is it any wonder that so many people in our
culture, as adults, look to consumer goods, to objects, to
satisfy their oh-so-human needs? But more stuff is never enough
to fill those needs. So they buy even more stuff, newer stuff,
bigger stuff, better, faster, sexier stuff. More, more, more.
But it’s really no good. No matter how much we accumulate,
objects will never satisfy our needs for love, security and
acceptance. Only relationships can do that.
Moreover, artificial infant feeding formulas
are unhealthy and blatantly inadequate substitutes that can’t
come close to Mama Nature's perfect food. Indeed, they cause
innumerable health problems, commonly including gastrointestinal
distress, irritability and malaise. So food, nourishment and
the associated feeling of love can become deeply connected
with feelings of sickness and pain.
Should we be surprised that so many people have
mixed up feelings of love and desire with pain and dysfunction?
After all, for most of us our first model of relationship
taught us that food and comfort come from an object that is
separate from another body. We learned that nourishment is
finite in amount and unpleasant tasting to boot. That satisfying
our hunger is likely to make us feel uncomfortable and even
ill.
It’s no wonder that we feel that love
is a limited commodity with only so much to go around. It’s
not surprising that we can’t get comfortable and form
trusting relationships with others. Is that why it’s
so hard for some people to receive pleasure? Scarcity consciousness
and bottle-fed limits are deeply ingrained. Bottle-contained
artificial infant formula, unsatisfying, toxic, and unpalatable
has confused us about the nature of love.
In the first few years of life we learn some
of our most basic life lessons. Is the world a good or bad
place? Am I loved? Can I trust that my needs will be met?
Is my body a good place to be in?
If we’d had our needs met, completely
and efficiently, with love, security and nourishment all coming
together from the abundant breast of a loving mama—would
it be easier as adults to form secure and trusting love relationships?
To not be possessive and jealous? To trust in the abundance
of love and that our beloved(s) will be there when we need
them? To be able to receive pleasure? I believe that this
is true. And so I’m trying to re-frame my beliefs about
love and attachment, about scarcity and abundance, from a
breastmilk perspective. It’s remedial education, to
be sure. It’s a process that requires practice and repetition
to succeed at changing (or at least influencing) such old
core beliefs.
But I’m doing it. Rethinking love, in
the breast-milk model. I’m granting myself my denied
birthright. Reminding myself, over and over, and over again
that there is an abundance of love. That there is always as
much as you need and plenty to go around. And that if you
need more, just suck and more will come. The breast is never
empty, just like the heart. There is always enough. And my
hunger can only truly be satisfied by human relationships,
never by things. True milk, like true love is plentiful and
nourishing, never finite or toxic. And it tastes really, really
good.
No wonder the breasts are right over the heart.
It is where love comes from. Endlessly. Without limits.
by Sheri Winston
Author of Women's Anatomy of Arousal: Secret Maps to Buried Pleasure
http://www.herbalmedicinehealing.com/store/item_view.asp?estore_itemid=1000416
Sheri Winston, CNM, BSN, RN, LMT
Womancare Practitioner
Teacher Of Womancraft & Wholistic Sexuality
Women’s Health Care Provider, Educator, Midwife, Massage
Therapist
Sheri Winston is a Teacher
of WomanCraft & Wholistic Sexuality, a retired Midwife, a
Womancare Practitioner, Blood Witch and Pelvic Priestess.
She's also a Registered Nurse, Health and Sexuality Educator,
Women's Health Issues Counselor, Licensed Massage Therapist,
Writer and Artist. In over 20 years of working with women's
health, she's attended over 500 births and provided clinical
health care, counseling and education for thousands of women.
Sheri currently offers wholistic gynecological health consultations
and teaches classes and workshops on women's health, female
anatomy, wholistic sexuality and birth.
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