Body

Published on January 30th, 2025 | by Calley Marotta

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Mothering Through Attachment Strain

When my daughter was two, I could not reach for her without her pushing me away. Sometimes, she kicked my body until it stood at a distance from hers. She rejected my limbs but clung to her father’s—using her tiny fingers to pull her head into his neck, his leg, his chest. When he left the house, she rammed her shoulders into the door. Neither my husband nor I understood why. She was supposed to love me; I am her mother. Our therapist called our situation an attachment strain. She said it happens—often with trauma, but sometimes without. The word strain evoked both injury and effort. I felt myself straining for my daughter as she strained away from me.

The therapist recommended play therapy. So, each night, I sat with my daughter on the floor. She chose what we played while I described her actions aloud: “You moved the yellow triangle. Now you put it in the house” or “You are making a squiggle line. You drew that.” I used the word “that” deliberately. I learned not to limit her imagination. I learned not to ask questions that might overstimulate her. I learned to incorporate praise into these scripts. I was a good student and did as I was told. It seemed so simple, yet it was difficult for her to stay with me.

I thought of adrienne maree brown: move at the speed of trust, she urged me. But I was impatient. I did not expect to wait or to work for my child’s trust. My daughter struggled to meet our target play time, mere minutes, without running out of the room to find my husband. And even if she stayed, it was hard for me to believe these simple actions could ever repair us. I did not understand why we were broken in the first place. Even now, I don’t have the answers you might want. The story I share is less about why this all happened and more about how I learned to work with our often-unbearable strain.

Photo by Townsend Walton on Unsplash

An academic by training, I initially tried to research away my pain. I collected parenting manuals and read them feverishly. But no book came to my rescue. No author reflected my experience. On the contrary, they told me: there are no mothers like you. Even our therapists struggled to provide examples of attachment problems like mine. I spoke up and asked for an example of a child rejecting their mother. But I saw in their faces: they didn’t know any stories like mine.

Attachment was having a moment. It seemed to be everywhere and explain everything. On some level, I understood the appeal. I was always searching for ways to understand myself and my child, and attachment seemed to offer the ultimate origin story. It explained relationships across the lifespan: secure, insecure, or avoidant patterns started in childhood and went on into later life. But soon I began to cringe at the sound of the word attachment. Its internal “ch” started to feel cutting. But I kept searching. I read that, in cases of adoption, attachment can form within a matter of months. My child was not adopted. So why didn’t she attach to me? I felt betrayed by my body, by attachment, by books.

When I tired of parenting books that did not speak to my experience, I turned to books about psychology and trauma. I quickly flipped to the sections about attachment before I lost my nerve. I looked at each one and said, maybe you will not be like the others. Maybe you will not break my heart. Still, I read defensively—my jaw clenched and eyes darting. I whispered questions into the books’ spines: Where do I find attachment? Is it hiding in my torso, in her fingers, or her toes?

When I read about the consequences of attachment problems, I was always horrified. I read that the safety a child feels with their mother predicts everything from their likelihood of PTSD to the amount of morphine they require for pain. I read these things and grieved. I did not need to be convinced how bad things were. I heard my daughter scream “No Mom!” I felt her escape from my arms. I could not soothe her. I read about disengaged mothers who made their children nervous, and traumatized mothers who struggled to sense what their child needed. I searched for myself in mothers described as hostile, intrusive, neglectful. Was I like that? Were they?

I resented that so many of the founders of attachment theory were white, upper-class, male psychologists who felt unloved by their mothers. Why was everything about mothers? John Bowlby, often called the father of attachment theory, claimed children must be mirrored and witnessed. He urged mothers to attune with their children by witnessing and mirroring their behaviors. The children need this, he says, to feel real. But I read Bowlby’s words and wondered, what happens to a mother when no one can reflect her experience? How will she know she is real? I put down the books. I needed a break. But I continued my work with my child. What other choice did I have?

To prepare to play with me, my daughter needed physical stimulation to calm her body. In other words, she needed to tackle me before we could pretend to be animals or swirl paints on a page. I found the idea that she needed to prepare to be with me devastating. But my muscles welcomed the contact and release—the feeling of her weight against mine, the pressure of her touch. I felt relieved as I told her to push my hands with her feet. I could finally stop resisting. I could finally invite her to push me away.

Photo by Mea Morrowheart on Unsplash

To prepare to play, I put my feet on my daughter’s stomach and propelled her into the air like a plane. I stretched her wingspan with my hands and bounced her torso with my knees. She giggled. I bounced her higher until her arms and legs flailed in the air. I worried her body would drop to the floor, so I flanked us with pillows. My toes dug into her stomach. It felt primal—like our bodies were meant to fight lions. I felt her giggle vibrate through my knees and her muscles begin to relax. My daughter’s body may have thought it was fighting a lion, but my body knew it was fighting for her.  

One day, many months after beginning our attachment work, I sat sprawled on the floor. I was describing my child’s movements aloud when it struck me all at once. Play therapy with art and blocks and airplane—these were all embodied activities helping us attune. Each time we played this way, we were bringing mismatched notes into alignment. I was teaching her body to trust mine. Each time I said, “You moved the yellow triangle. Now you put it in the house,” I was witnessing. And when I picked up the yellow triangle and put it into the house, I was mirroring. These were the things she needed from me. And through these mundane actions that, at the time, felt so small and meaningless, I was helping my child feel real.

Now, my daughter and I put on music, we are partners. We twirl and fold into one another’s arms. She leads. I watch carefully, feeling, anticipating. We use our fingers to cut tissue paper into triangles and squares, to drag pens into a scribble, a zigzag, a curve. I copy my child’s stroke, and she notices. We do this facing one another or side-by-side at the kitchen table. Sometimes we tape our artwork together. We breathe and touch inky elbows. We attune. I notice when my daughter leans her weight into my body because it is new, this feeling of her skin accepting mine. And I think: perhaps I am healing too.

courtesy of the author

Works Referenced

brown, adrienne maree. Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds. Oakland: AK Press, 2021.

Raby, Kenneth Lee, and Dozier, Mary. “Attachment Across the Lifespan: Insights from Adoptive Families.” Current Opinion in Psychology, vol. 25, 2019, pp. 81–85.

Van der Kolk, Bessel. The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. Penguin Books, 2014.


Feature photo (child pushing carriage) by Ayla Meinberg on Unsplash

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About the Author

Calley Marotta is a writer, mother, teacher, and friend. She teaches writing at the University of Denver where she researches the relationship between literacy and carework. Her creative writing has appeared in Atticus Review, The Los Angeles Review, and The Maine Review. She thanks family, colleagues, writing groups, and students for supporting and inspiring her writing.



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