A Tale of Attachment, Separation, and Adventure.
The idea for this book began with the observation that the material comfort and abundance we live in today has created an epidemic of emotionally codependent adults. Much of the anxiety and depression I see in my practice comes from the unintended consequences of a life devoid of healthy stress derived from pursuing goals in the external world. Let me explain.
Two of the most powerful needs human beings have are the need for care and comfort along with the need for freedom to explore. All of us express these needs at different times. However, in my clinical work I’ve observed a couple of things:
- A significant piece of what makes a person who s/he is depends on whether this individual spends more time striving for comfort (either for themselves or in caring for others), or straining against social and/or emotional restraints to achieve greater freedom.
- People feel a deeper longing for either comfort or longing depending on which one they lacked more of in early years. A child who lacked comfort from a caregiver, will spend greater energy seeking out emotional attunement, empathy, and care from the world. Conversely, intrusive coddling stifles a child’s natural need to explore, and is thus a paradoxically insensitive form of parenting; these children grow up longing for freedom.
- Of the client’s I encounter seeking treatment for anxiety, depression, borderline personality disorder, eating disorders, among other conditions, experience distress not because their childhood was too harsh, but because it was too smothering. We are currently facing an epidemic of emotionally stunted, dependent, and deeply unhappy young adults; what’s worse is that these emerging adults are both underprepared to face the challenges of adulthood, and face much higher barriers to entry given the complexity and scarcity in today’s economy.
Dreams of Zugunruhe is an attempt to help parents and maturing school-aged children trust their instincts to roam, explore, and take on new challenges. It’s a book for parents and children to read together, and there are important messages for both parent and child.
Over the last century, we’ve made great strides in recognizing and developing solutions to insensitive and harsh parenting methods. I think we’ve overcorrected, though. Dreams of Zugunruhe hopefully will fill a desperate need in parent-child relationships as a tool to have a healthy conversation about helping parents and children trust our wild, inner nature.
Why a Children’s book?
I wrote this book to address issues beyond child psychology. My hope is that this story impacts parent-child dyads. The language has to reach both parents and children, and thus the default classification is as a children’s book. It’s important to emphasize that the real audience of the book is the relationship between parent and child.
The conversation I’ve aspired to create between Mother Tern and Little Tern is one where each member of the dyad sees something new in the other; Mother sees Little Tern as innately wise, and Little Tern sees Mother as powerless against nature.
What does the story tell us about human attachment?
This story emphasizes that attachment is a bit of a paradox; as humans, we are dependent on others throughout our life, but we rely on the help of others so that we can become as independent as possible.
In my experience, most people think of “safe haven” behavior when they think of attachment. That is, people automatically associate attachment with parents comforting their children. This is not the whole picture, though.
The reason we need to receive comfort from parents early in life, is so we can learn to regulate our emotions, gather any information we need to face the challenge again, and then get busy with the process of exploring the world around us. This is the side of attachment referred to as “secure base” behavior.
The child runs off to take on the world because she has a secure base. When the world gets to be too much, the child, the teenager, the adult, and the aging know they can trust others to be a safe haven because of deeply-learned lessons in childhood.
What are the key themes that children will relate to?
I believe children will intuitively relate to several themes from the story:
- The difficulty seeing oneself as a strong and capable adult
- The fear of doing a difficult thing alone
- Worrying they’ll never see their loved one again after a separation
- Having faith in oneself
- The pain of feeling s/he is abandoning a loved one
What are the key themes that parents will relate to?
I think similar themes will resonate with parents. The ones that come to mind are:
- Having faith in their child’s inner resources
- Having faith that s/he has helped the child enough to face real challenges
- The pain of letting go of one’s child
- The pain of no longer being needed
- The anxiety that one is abandoning a beloved child
- The awesome responsibility of having to teach a child by example
Why birds & specifically Arctic terns?
I love birds and have enjoyed birding from a young age. When I say “birding,” I mean the pursuit of finding and observing birds of all kinds in the wild. When I was a child, it was pure instinct that drew me to the world of birding. But as an adult, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about why I was so interested in birds.
So far, the best reason I can think of for why I have always been fascinated by birds is that they are the ultimate symbol of freedom. They’re free to travel. They’re free of gravity. In some cases they’re free of predators. The only thing they are not free of is their instincts. Zugunruhe, for example.
The Arctic tern was the obvious choice for the story because of how far they roam. If you’ve ever seen an Arctic tern, you would also be impressed with how petite and dainty it looks–like the Italian Greyhound of the avian world. It does not in any way appear to be a sturdy or robust creature. And yet, it’s as rugged as they come.
If you study birds for any time at all, you’ll come to appreciate just how grueling an adventure migration is. Arctic terns are the virtuosos of migration.
Little Tern’s struggle is that it does not see itself as strong enough for the journey. Little Tern is filled with doubt, as any observer would be if that onlooker was aware of the challenges terns face. And yet, Little Tern is capable. But that capability would never be tested if not for powerful instinct and a great deal of faith.
What age of child is the book best suited to?
As stated earlier, this book is not a pure children’s story. In fact, I tried to make this book for all ages. The pictures and language are accessible to children as young as 3 or 4, but the themes apply equally to someone at the end of life. Separations, letting go, and trusting your own inner resources are struggles we have until our final breaths. Attachment is an active force that impacts all of us across the lifespan. We don’t grow out of separation any more than we become too old to grieve.
The book I tried to create is a combination of two works of genius: The Runaway Bunny and Oh, the Places You’ll Go! While I claim no comparable brilliance to these books, I do think that the message is appropriate for just about any audience. For example, I see it as a good gift for a college graduate, a couple expecting their first child, a middle-aged man whose mother has just died, along with just about anyone else.
Dreams of Zugunruhe is available in paperback, hardcover, and Ebook formats from Amazon.
This article is also available on Medium.com.
