I chose this photo today, a scene from our time spent at Green Haven. The image was taken before another permanent resident of the naturist site came over to have a cup of coffee with my wife and I. He is definitely one of the walking wounded who make the place home. I didn’t get a photo with him as I don’t care to break community rules regarding photography.
My mother was often suffering headaches, was often pregnant, and had her hands full with too many children. As her eldest child, I was the one who would step in by request, and by choice, to do what I could. I was one who had adapted to life’s early experiences by becoming a person who did what he could to please those around him. Nothing has changed over the course of my life, I still aim to please. Now, there is some consciousness involved in the behaviour of trying to please – yet there is a significant amount of unconscious processes involved as well.
No one makes it through childhood without being wounded in some fashion. I have talked before about being wounded by “not-enough-ness” and/or “too-much-ness.” Too much love or not enough love; too much of mothering or not enough mothering; every metric that you can think of can result in either too much or not enough. Of course, that doesn’t mean that we grow up with too much or not enough of everything – sometimes there is just enough. When there is too much or not enough, we develop unconscious and sometimes conscious strategies to buffer and mediate, and in some extreme cases, even survive.
As mature adults, we have learned to build walls to protect ourselves, walls that don’t come down simply because we become naked. Nakedness is a discarding of clothing. It is not a true disclosure of who we are beneath our skin. Discarding our clothing implies that we have nothing left to hide and thus not vulnerable anymore to unwanted exposure. Yet, nakedness is just another disguise that can protect that vulnerable wounded inner child within each of us.