I was reading this post below—it was on Facebook —and reflecting on it and thinking about the work we do with clients with trauma to create safe spaces, including considering the smells, sounds, and textures that make these spaces safe and happy. This post resonates with the stories we hear and memories people share with us.
It seems fairly obvious because of what we know about the power of our senses, particularly the smell or olfactory system and its strung connection to memory and emotion. This is probably why the parent’s bed may be such an attraction, an antidote to stress or pain, bad dreams, and a restful place for those with positive childhood memories.
If I close my eyes, I remember the smell of my Granny’s bed and special sleepover days in her little flat. The smell of sheets and her big old brown bed was perfumed by something that smelt like an intoxicating mix of Pears Soap, Yardley’s Old English Lavender, 4711 perfume and freshly peeled Granny Snith apples, the smell of her heavy satin quilt, and the feel of it’s smooth, shiny cover, with faint wiffs of a lingering hot drink shared and pages of the story books we shared.
Whether a parent or grandparent, the smell of love and safe spaces is very precious and powerful for those of us lucky enough to have such memories. Recreating these in therapeutic settings and using them as powerful personalised intervention strategies is just so ‘sense-able’.
And we see the different positive and tricky smells and aromas of those we teach. During group work on our trauma and mental health workshops – the power of smell is evident – and each person’s unique set of happy smells is so very personal – reinforcing the need for creating individualised sensory spiders, turning these into individualised person-specific sensory strategies; whether for self soothes, self-regulation, be calm or wake up sensory boxes, bags or kits.
Here is the post I read and the original picture, translated from Spanish, I believe. I cannot find the original author or source, but it is beautifully written and speaks to the power of the senses.
THE BED OF PARENTS
The parent’s bed has a magnet, a magic, some sleeping pillow, a mysterious love powder impregnated on the pillows, which causes children to fall asleep immediately and that the worst nightmares, the most trembling Night Terror, flee at seven feet.
In the parents’ bed, the last refuge from fears, peace is absolute and total.
Here they come, taken by exhausted parents and losers, or by their own feet, all sweaty and scared, little birds fly at night to walk down the halls of the house until they arrive at the venue of the places. Two colos with soft sheets and the smell of parents. They drop like flies to sleep peacefully.
Parents pretend they care the next morning: ′′ You went to our bed again! When will you learn to overcome fears and sleep alone? You have to grow up!” But they don’t even look into the children’s eyes when they say these things, afraid they will discover that in that short return to the nest, to the initial cradle, parents are filled with love and tenderness and also with them shielding your concerns.
A hot neck. A chubby hand in our hair. One foot back to the mother’s rib. The quiet breath in the shared holster.
The secret desire is for the nest to stay like this forever; it takes the morning to arrive.
May the pillow’s mystery love powder forever preserve these night pamper excursions that are a clever foreshadowing of immense nostalgia for the best days of this life!”
Author unknown – translated from Spanish.
