I want to tell you a story about the day I threw my mother in the garbage.

My mother was my blanket. I was made to throw her in the trash one day with my other mother encouraging me and praising me for being strong.
I learned recently that my blanket was what is called, a “transitional object”.
The definition of a transitional object according to the APA dictionary is this:

transitional object

1. a doll, blanket, or other thing spontaneously chosen and used by a child to ease the anxiety of separation from his or her first external object, the mother, until the child has established an internal object, or mental representation of her, that provides a sense of security and comfort. [first described by British psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott (1896–1971)]

2. by extension, any person or thing that provides security, emotional well-being, and a symbolic connection with a valued other.

If you are a parent and have ever watched “Elmo and the lost blanket”, you have a sense of how important a transitional object is for a child. They would go to the ends of the universe to locate it if it’s lost.

So I had this blanket. Blankie. Blanks. It had been years since I thought of my blanket but lately, I’d been dreaming about the day I was forced to give up blanket.

As a side note, I LOVE blankets and can never have enough of them. I love heavy ones. Fuzzy ones. Soft, thick German cotton ones. Every bed in my home has a minimum of 3 blankets and several more on the ready should anyone need them. I have more than enough blankets, but I find myself looking for more. Searching, searching and searching. Maybe I will always search for “THE ONE AND ONLY BLANKET”? Maybe I am really seeking HER. All my life I’ve searched for HER. I would scan crowds for women her age and wonder if we were standing near each other and thinking we’d just know.

But I digress. Back to THE BLANKET.

The Dream. Or is it a nightmare?

Imagine you are 2 or 4 or somewhere in-between those ages. You are standing in front of a large, tan pasty garbage can in the doctors office. The garbage can is larger than you are and it has that type of revolving triangle top that opens as you spin it. It looks like a big monster’s mouth.
I keep seeing my hand reaching up to deposit Blankie inside. The revolving mouth is HUNGRY. it wants to devour my precious blankie. I feel like crying and then my dream goes completely black.

I usually wake up sad and tense. I feel like I am back at that moment. Like it just happened even though it was almost 47 years ago. The loss is painful still. It makes me tight. I can’t describe it other than this blanket was MY blanket. How betrayed I felt when I had to give her up. How confused I felt when I was praised for giving her up. How unseen and sad I felt when I wasn’t given any space to grieve.
I’ve spent my life searching for her.

My mom will tell you a different story. Hers is happy and sugar coated and seen through her lens. My blanket was BAD. It made me sick all the time. What kind of mother would she be if she let her child keep something that made her sick all the time?
It HAD to go.

I had loved blanket so much, she was falling apart. My mom had cut her into 4 squares so she could rotate them and wash the dirty ones while I still had a piece of precious blanket. At this point, 3 of the blanket pieces had mysteriously been “lost”. I had the last remaining piece under watchful eye. I would not give her up. So my mom brought in reinforcements- the doctor.
My mom will describe how I sat on the exam table clutching to blanket as the doctor lectured me. He told me blanket was BAD and made me SICK because she was DIRTY and GERMY. She describes my solemn face and HUGE eyes. How I listened and didn’t say one word.

The doctor told me I HAD to throw her out. RIGHT! NOW!
”And then you were SO BRAVE! You didn’t say a word and just got up off the exam table and threw out your blanket.”

“I was so PROUD of you!” My mom always says right after she talks of me trashing blanket.
My mom has told this story my whole life. I’ve always laughed about it. I’ve felt proud at how mature I was and that I got rid of that dirty gross blanket.
See, the thing about this is that I was never given the space for my version of this story. My mom’s version never held the space for my version. What is that saying? And… what is that saying- “There are three stories- your version, the other person’s version and the truth.”

My version is a painful, nightmarish version. The version that tells me it was just a dirty blanket- it deserved to get thrown out. It’s no big deal and I shouldn’t care about it. I believed this. I believed I shouldn’t feel angry or sad about it.

Here’s the thing I know about the blanket. It was so much more to me than just an object. Here is what else I know. Adopted parents need to hold space for thier kids feelings. Even if they don’t understand it or want to make those feelings go away. It is not their job to make them go away, it is their job to attune to their child and help the child process.

If my blanket represents my first mother…. then my second mother asked me to throw out my first mother because she made me sick. Then she praised me for it as she stood by watching. Imagine all the confusion for a small child who is told not to shed a tear. Not one.
Imagine being an adult and finally realizing why you always cringed when that story came up. But here is the thing. My mother didn’t know. She did what she thought was best for me to keep me safe and healthy. Her version makes her the protector. My version makes her the aggressor. The real version is somewhere in-between those two.

If I could re-write this story, it would be a version where my mother held me and told me how hard she knew it was for me to throw out blankie. She would tell me it was ok to be sad and maybe cry a little with me. She would ask me to tell her about the things I loved about blankie, how she smelled, how soft she was. And then she would help me to walk up to the trash can and say goodbye to blankie together. She wouldn’t say anything about being brave. She would ask me what I needed and how did I feel. She would hold me tight. If I tried to push away she would hold me tighter so I would know how much she loved me and that she would NEVER leave me like blankie did. And sometimes, we would just sit around and say things like “remember blankie and how special blankie was to you? I know you were special to blanke too”.

As T.S Eliot says:
”And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”