Desi Lydic

If anyone knows anything about attachment theory, I didn't know if I'd ever see my mother again.

Yeah.

And I love my mother.

And she, you know, I was, we were, it was third grade, so I was eight, nine years old.

So it was, and my mother always said that like, if you don't act right, I'm gonna put you out on the street.

And so after the orphanage, I was like, okay, she's not lying.

I can't, I mean, the amount of,

trauma and fear that a young child like that was would go through it is almost unfathomable and i'm smiling through it now just to kind of you know not have you know

But yeah, it was awful.

And there was just a deep sense of being unwanted, unlovable.

But God, what's so powerful about becoming adult and reading a lot, bell hooks.

My feminist icon, feminist mother, the late, great bell hooks.

Wrote in her iconic book, All About Love, there's a difference between care and love.

And Belle talks about her own family, that she understands that her family deeply cared for her.

They provided, you know, roof over her head, food on the table, but they didn't love her because love isn't supposed to hurt.

And when I read that the first time, it just hit me in my gut, and I...

I was like, oh, that was me.

That was me.

And that's okay, because the care helped get me to where I am now.

And I'm pretty cool, I think.