The Hug
LISTEN NOW
00:00
/
00:00
Today I want to tell you the story of my logo because it is a fantastic story and I am trying so hard to be entertaining in this process. I usually am! But sitting in a small room with Andy, as good company as he is, it’s a little bit tricky for me. So I thought if I tell a story, maybe some of my humour will come out. I will try my best.
So the logo represents so much. It represents, love, safety, kindness, courage, risk, innocence, friendship, care, timing. Simply, it’s a symbol of vulnerability.
The logo is a hug. Or as Australian’s would say a Haag. I’ve written H, double a, g to remind myself about how I was going to pronounce that. It was funny when I first came to Australia, when I use to pronounce ‘jug’ or ‘hug’ and how I had to stop and think about how that was said in Australian. It’s very different. People don’t understand my Irish accent all the time. Anyway, let me tell you a little bit about me before I tell you about ‘the hug’ itself.
You will hear me talk about trauma being caused by neglect not abuse, and this is a good example of how that plays out. I talked a little about my childhood in the first podcast and I will probably repeat some stories. So bear with me on that one.
The only physical contact I remember as a kid was either being hit or sexually assaulted. Other than the famous memory of my father holding my hand. Though it’s my memory, I still find it odd that for years I didn’t know what was going on. So the memory is of me looking up at my hand, in my father’s hand. Sounds obvious now. But for years I didn’t know what was happening in that picture, as I had in my mind. The lack of healthy affection began to show up in my teens. I didn’t know what healthy affection was. I only knew what was wrong.
So I grew up in Dublin, and I have a memory of me at a party, I must be about 17. I didn’t drink yet. Well I did have a few sips of my mother’s beer once or twice, it was horrible stuff, I coughed and sputtered all over the place. Didn’t sell the whole deal to me. Anyway at this party a boy comes up to talk to me and I freeze. I can’t move. I am completely aware that I can’t move. My breath is shallow but it’s there. My eyes are recording the whole scene. I don’t know if I could hear him, I don’t remember that, I was reliant on lip reading and I still am a lot to this day. And he keeps talking and I know that, and eventually he said something like, “Fuckin’ weirdo!” and walks away. Slowly my body starts to unwind, warm up, come back life. I take it as normal and get on with my night. Funny what becomes our norm.
So I will tell you another wee story of how I operated in the world and now I’m in my 20’s and I living in London. Each day I had to walk past a construction site. Men everywhere, as you can imagine. To be fair they may not know that I am a woman because I hid, I wore jeans and collared shirts. In this case I could feel the paralysis coming. Now I know more about the psoas muscle, I believe that it was starting to contract, pulling down my shoulders. My blood supply was leaving my extremities and heading to my organs. For me that meant my legs were turning to jelly. My breath becoming shorter.
Interestingly enough my mother had taught me this trick of naming things when ever this happened, whenever this kind of paralysis collapse was coming in. So as I walked along the road past the construction site I would repeat, car, road, building over and over again, sometimes very fast just to keep myself present, until I got past and felt my body come back to me. Now and again I would hear a wolf whistle and that would make me so light headed, oh my gosh, so I would have to concentrate even harder. It wasn’t any fun. I would get off the train and know that I would have to face that every time and coming out of work every time. So it would start well before I got anywhere near the construction site. It’s classic now to think that is what I had to go through everyday, but anyway I did.
In London I lived with a man who became my first husband. He rescued me really. Literally, when we met in Greece after my drink had been spiked, and continued to do so when we became a couple. I was so blessed that he was the one that came along and found me that night while I was laying on a wall in Greece. I couldn’t move, took me days to get over it. Anyway, this fella, my first husband, as he became, he and I lived together in London and he taught me basic stuff. He taught me how to tie my shoes laces, how to blow my nose, read the time. He hugged me a lot, introduced me to healthy affection. He taught me how to hug, because to be fair Irish people at the time I grew up in Ireland weren’t terribly affectionate anyway. It wasn’t just what was going on in my family. He encouraged me to find my own sense of style as well. He noticed my moods and would do a check list in his head to see if I needed, food, sleep or affection. It’s all really basic stuff. He looked after me. He kept me safe and he helped bring me back to life.
Then we moved to Australia. Oh and I loved it. I felt like all my Christmases had come at once. An expression from my Catholic past. I loved the sunshine, the beaches, the food, the people. I was so happy and I was safe. I was married. I had what felt like a tin can around me my whole life and now I had a different kind of protection. A legitimate one. It allowed me to relax more. I hid behind my wedding ring.
And now for ‘the hug’ story…
I’m in my second job in Australia. I loved it, It was so much fun. Working with so many different people. I remember there were eleven different nationalities on the floor where I worked on. I love people. Here was the amazing opportunity to learn more about how to be around people from all over the world in the comfort and safety of my marriage. How wonderful…
There’s a guy who works there. He’s quiet, shy, very serious. Tall as a house. I talked to him like I did everyone. My boss noticed this and challenged me to see if I could make him smile. So I took the challenge. With blind ignorance. I took the challenge.
I don’t remember how our friendship began, to be fair, my memory isn’t that great and I was still a bit of a freezer in those days. So not always in the building to be recording it. I just remember that we end up chatting not just in person but on the intra-net. Now who remembers the intra-net? I think it was possibly before the internet was more readily available, I don’t know. But you could chat amongst yourself within the company. We would sit at our desks and chat on our computers and giggle. We thought no one knew, but everyone did. We had lunch a few times together, and then most lunch times together.
One day he tells me that because he’s so tall he never gets a hug where the other person’s arms are around his neck and he always has to bend down, and that stayed with me. I liked this man. He was sad. He had dreams of moving overseas and I’d been helping him with all that. Helping him with the paperwork, the emotions. We were close now. But I’m married remember. Safely married. Invisible behind my wedding ring.
Now I do know how to hug by this stage, but usually I still freeze if it’s someone new. Don’t know how to end it. I’m still very awkward. So it’s just a big deal. So I think about how I can do this. How can I hug this man? I really wanted to help him to be happy. I don’t remember that much about the build up to it. Definitely there were sleepless nights and a fair bit of deep breathing. Yet no doubt, this was going to happen.
My plan was this… I piled several phone books on top of one another in a cubicle next to his. It was empty and private. I don’t know if you can imagine the set ups in office places. Anyway, so I just did it. One day I just walked up to him, phone books are in place, and asked him to follow me. He did. When he came around the corner I was standing on the phone books with my arms out. We hugged. I remember him sighing, him falling into me and his sadness. I could feel him. I was there. I didn’t freeze.
Still I was blissfully unaware of what was happening…
We hung out more. We went to see Paul Kelly with some friends. It was hilarious, there was a girl there, she had only just discovered Paul Kelly the previous week. Girl visiting from Ireland and she kept screaming her fucking head off every time he started a new song. We were telling her to fucking shut up. It was hilarious. Anyway. He came to my house, he met my husband. Then one day I am travelling home on the bus and I’m thinking about him… again…. and I see it, I feel it, I know it… I’ve fallen in love with him. HA!! and I’m still, I’m still just just happy, I’m married, I’m safe. It’s just a nice feeling. How lovely for me … hahahaha! Bless my cotton socks.
The next memory I have is of the two of us standing in an underground car park facing one another. Silent in that memory most of the time but I know that we told each other then how much we loved each other. I know I said, “I love you so much I could die happy.” Interesting that I remember that because as a kid I had a belief that I would die the moment I was happy. But I didn’t die. I became move alive. And it was on. Let me tell ya. I remember several people shouting out, ‘get a room!’, because for some reason I have decided they were English.
That was a Friday night and I left my husband on the Sunday. Now remember this man was heading overseas. We only had 6-7 weeks together before he flew away. It was a massive risk but I had never felt love like that before. Turns out he was all too well aware of how he felt when we hugged. I know now that his love for me provided a different safety. A safety for me to be able to hug him. It blew the whole you need to love yourself first argument out of the water. Love is relational. Do new born babies have to love themselves first? I was thinking about this. I often do this a bit of a skit in class or in session when I describe this to people and I usually put on a London accent but the Scottish accent is sometimes better for saying saying the word ‘first’.
So can you imagine a wee baby is born and the wee baby goes ‘No. No, no. Don’t look at me with your love and trying to switch on my motor neurons. No. I got to love myself first.’ It doesn’t make any sense, does it? I mean it’s ridiculous. Do you know what happens to babies who haven't had their motor neurons switched on? Who aren’t loved? They don’t thrive.
In the time we had together, we never held back on telling the other how we felt. We talked a lot about a life we would have together, a life that would never happen. He wrote me a letter once, left in under my keyboard. Very romantic. So cute. He talked about if his life was a movie and he could choose how it played out, and he said, and I quote, “you would be my ending.” I was as sure of our love as I was that the sun came up every day. And then he left.
Soon after that I experienced debilitating depression. The joys of coming back to life hey? You have to feel. So I did. I learnt how to feel. How to live without freezing. And I’m still learning.
So the drawing, the logo, over the years I would find myself doodling with the simple drawing of that hug. The first drawing I kept it in my wallet. I don’t have it anymore. When I first went into practice as a counsellor I used a different version of it, more curly one, didn’t sit right with me. Then when it came time to chose a logo for the podcast I drew it again Lyndell Maree, who does my social media, she digitised it, Erica Gully, who does a lot of my artwork and my printing of NotJustBusinessCards, vectorised it and Andy Downer of Custard Apple, recording this today, uploaded it.
It reminds me of my courage to be vulnerable and my ability to love without reciprocity. So it’s him on the left, tall, me on the right small, standing on phone books. A symbol of a moment. A moment that changed my life and his.
I am driven to feel that love again because I know it will benefit not just me and he, but all those who will love us and those we meet and work with. I know it will happen.
Thank you.
So the logo represents so much. It represents, love, safety, kindness, courage, risk, innocence, friendship, care, timing. Simply, it’s a symbol of vulnerability.
The logo is a hug. Or as Australian’s would say a Haag. I’ve written H, double a, g to remind myself about how I was going to pronounce that. It was funny when I first came to Australia, when I use to pronounce ‘jug’ or ‘hug’ and how I had to stop and think about how that was said in Australian. It’s very different. People don’t understand my Irish accent all the time. Anyway, let me tell you a little bit about me before I tell you about ‘the hug’ itself.
You will hear me talk about trauma being caused by neglect not abuse, and this is a good example of how that plays out. I talked a little about my childhood in the first podcast and I will probably repeat some stories. So bear with me on that one.
The only physical contact I remember as a kid was either being hit or sexually assaulted. Other than the famous memory of my father holding my hand. Though it’s my memory, I still find it odd that for years I didn’t know what was going on. So the memory is of me looking up at my hand, in my father’s hand. Sounds obvious now. But for years I didn’t know what was happening in that picture, as I had in my mind. The lack of healthy affection began to show up in my teens. I didn’t know what healthy affection was. I only knew what was wrong.
So I grew up in Dublin, and I have a memory of me at a party, I must be about 17. I didn’t drink yet. Well I did have a few sips of my mother’s beer once or twice, it was horrible stuff, I coughed and sputtered all over the place. Didn’t sell the whole deal to me. Anyway at this party a boy comes up to talk to me and I freeze. I can’t move. I am completely aware that I can’t move. My breath is shallow but it’s there. My eyes are recording the whole scene. I don’t know if I could hear him, I don’t remember that, I was reliant on lip reading and I still am a lot to this day. And he keeps talking and I know that, and eventually he said something like, “Fuckin’ weirdo!” and walks away. Slowly my body starts to unwind, warm up, come back life. I take it as normal and get on with my night. Funny what becomes our norm.
So I will tell you another wee story of how I operated in the world and now I’m in my 20’s and I living in London. Each day I had to walk past a construction site. Men everywhere, as you can imagine. To be fair they may not know that I am a woman because I hid, I wore jeans and collared shirts. In this case I could feel the paralysis coming. Now I know more about the psoas muscle, I believe that it was starting to contract, pulling down my shoulders. My blood supply was leaving my extremities and heading to my organs. For me that meant my legs were turning to jelly. My breath becoming shorter.
Interestingly enough my mother had taught me this trick of naming things when ever this happened, whenever this kind of paralysis collapse was coming in. So as I walked along the road past the construction site I would repeat, car, road, building over and over again, sometimes very fast just to keep myself present, until I got past and felt my body come back to me. Now and again I would hear a wolf whistle and that would make me so light headed, oh my gosh, so I would have to concentrate even harder. It wasn’t any fun. I would get off the train and know that I would have to face that every time and coming out of work every time. So it would start well before I got anywhere near the construction site. It’s classic now to think that is what I had to go through everyday, but anyway I did.
In London I lived with a man who became my first husband. He rescued me really. Literally, when we met in Greece after my drink had been spiked, and continued to do so when we became a couple. I was so blessed that he was the one that came along and found me that night while I was laying on a wall in Greece. I couldn’t move, took me days to get over it. Anyway, this fella, my first husband, as he became, he and I lived together in London and he taught me basic stuff. He taught me how to tie my shoes laces, how to blow my nose, read the time. He hugged me a lot, introduced me to healthy affection. He taught me how to hug, because to be fair Irish people at the time I grew up in Ireland weren’t terribly affectionate anyway. It wasn’t just what was going on in my family. He encouraged me to find my own sense of style as well. He noticed my moods and would do a check list in his head to see if I needed, food, sleep or affection. It’s all really basic stuff. He looked after me. He kept me safe and he helped bring me back to life.
Then we moved to Australia. Oh and I loved it. I felt like all my Christmases had come at once. An expression from my Catholic past. I loved the sunshine, the beaches, the food, the people. I was so happy and I was safe. I was married. I had what felt like a tin can around me my whole life and now I had a different kind of protection. A legitimate one. It allowed me to relax more. I hid behind my wedding ring.
And now for ‘the hug’ story…
I’m in my second job in Australia. I loved it, It was so much fun. Working with so many different people. I remember there were eleven different nationalities on the floor where I worked on. I love people. Here was the amazing opportunity to learn more about how to be around people from all over the world in the comfort and safety of my marriage. How wonderful…
There’s a guy who works there. He’s quiet, shy, very serious. Tall as a house. I talked to him like I did everyone. My boss noticed this and challenged me to see if I could make him smile. So I took the challenge. With blind ignorance. I took the challenge.
I don’t remember how our friendship began, to be fair, my memory isn’t that great and I was still a bit of a freezer in those days. So not always in the building to be recording it. I just remember that we end up chatting not just in person but on the intra-net. Now who remembers the intra-net? I think it was possibly before the internet was more readily available, I don’t know. But you could chat amongst yourself within the company. We would sit at our desks and chat on our computers and giggle. We thought no one knew, but everyone did. We had lunch a few times together, and then most lunch times together.
One day he tells me that because he’s so tall he never gets a hug where the other person’s arms are around his neck and he always has to bend down, and that stayed with me. I liked this man. He was sad. He had dreams of moving overseas and I’d been helping him with all that. Helping him with the paperwork, the emotions. We were close now. But I’m married remember. Safely married. Invisible behind my wedding ring.
Now I do know how to hug by this stage, but usually I still freeze if it’s someone new. Don’t know how to end it. I’m still very awkward. So it’s just a big deal. So I think about how I can do this. How can I hug this man? I really wanted to help him to be happy. I don’t remember that much about the build up to it. Definitely there were sleepless nights and a fair bit of deep breathing. Yet no doubt, this was going to happen.
My plan was this… I piled several phone books on top of one another in a cubicle next to his. It was empty and private. I don’t know if you can imagine the set ups in office places. Anyway, so I just did it. One day I just walked up to him, phone books are in place, and asked him to follow me. He did. When he came around the corner I was standing on the phone books with my arms out. We hugged. I remember him sighing, him falling into me and his sadness. I could feel him. I was there. I didn’t freeze.
Still I was blissfully unaware of what was happening…
We hung out more. We went to see Paul Kelly with some friends. It was hilarious, there was a girl there, she had only just discovered Paul Kelly the previous week. Girl visiting from Ireland and she kept screaming her fucking head off every time he started a new song. We were telling her to fucking shut up. It was hilarious. Anyway. He came to my house, he met my husband. Then one day I am travelling home on the bus and I’m thinking about him… again…. and I see it, I feel it, I know it… I’ve fallen in love with him. HA!! and I’m still, I’m still just just happy, I’m married, I’m safe. It’s just a nice feeling. How lovely for me … hahahaha! Bless my cotton socks.
The next memory I have is of the two of us standing in an underground car park facing one another. Silent in that memory most of the time but I know that we told each other then how much we loved each other. I know I said, “I love you so much I could die happy.” Interesting that I remember that because as a kid I had a belief that I would die the moment I was happy. But I didn’t die. I became move alive. And it was on. Let me tell ya. I remember several people shouting out, ‘get a room!’, because for some reason I have decided they were English.
That was a Friday night and I left my husband on the Sunday. Now remember this man was heading overseas. We only had 6-7 weeks together before he flew away. It was a massive risk but I had never felt love like that before. Turns out he was all too well aware of how he felt when we hugged. I know now that his love for me provided a different safety. A safety for me to be able to hug him. It blew the whole you need to love yourself first argument out of the water. Love is relational. Do new born babies have to love themselves first? I was thinking about this. I often do this a bit of a skit in class or in session when I describe this to people and I usually put on a London accent but the Scottish accent is sometimes better for saying saying the word ‘first’.
So can you imagine a wee baby is born and the wee baby goes ‘No. No, no. Don’t look at me with your love and trying to switch on my motor neurons. No. I got to love myself first.’ It doesn’t make any sense, does it? I mean it’s ridiculous. Do you know what happens to babies who haven't had their motor neurons switched on? Who aren’t loved? They don’t thrive.
In the time we had together, we never held back on telling the other how we felt. We talked a lot about a life we would have together, a life that would never happen. He wrote me a letter once, left in under my keyboard. Very romantic. So cute. He talked about if his life was a movie and he could choose how it played out, and he said, and I quote, “you would be my ending.” I was as sure of our love as I was that the sun came up every day. And then he left.
Soon after that I experienced debilitating depression. The joys of coming back to life hey? You have to feel. So I did. I learnt how to feel. How to live without freezing. And I’m still learning.
So the drawing, the logo, over the years I would find myself doodling with the simple drawing of that hug. The first drawing I kept it in my wallet. I don’t have it anymore. When I first went into practice as a counsellor I used a different version of it, more curly one, didn’t sit right with me. Then when it came time to chose a logo for the podcast I drew it again Lyndell Maree, who does my social media, she digitised it, Erica Gully, who does a lot of my artwork and my printing of NotJustBusinessCards, vectorised it and Andy Downer of Custard Apple, recording this today, uploaded it.
It reminds me of my courage to be vulnerable and my ability to love without reciprocity. So it’s him on the left, tall, me on the right small, standing on phone books. A symbol of a moment. A moment that changed my life and his.
I am driven to feel that love again because I know it will benefit not just me and he, but all those who will love us and those we meet and work with. I know it will happen.
Thank you.