Tamsen Fadal

And I read the book and I knew the questions I was going to ask her, but I don't think until she was right in front of me that I really, really understood the framework of all of it.

And it's been really powerful.

It's powerful for women who didn't get what they needed from their mothers.

And she identified three essential elements of maternal love that I'd never thought about before.

Nurturance, protection, and guidance.

And I never split anything up like that.

And a lot of it's because my mother was sick for a very long time before she died.

And maybe I just didn't have any clear, you know, I didn't do any clinical work in all of this.

But what she found in her clinical work is that when any one of those three things, nurturance, protection, and guidance is missing, you feel it in different ways in your life.

You feel that hunger for touch, for belonging.

Some people feel a constant low level of anxiety that they don't know where it comes from.

Some feel like they don't have an internal compass for their own choices.

That is not a character flaw.

That is a gap that was created and never filled.

Here's what also stayed with me.

Those three things can be found elsewhere.

You're not too old or too late for that.

Nurturance, warmth of somebody who sees you and says, I'm here.

That could be a friend.

That could be a mentor.