touch

My dear Rebe has always had very sensitive skin. She feels pain very acutely and her skin is one of the first places that will show if she is feeling stressed or run down. When she was teething as a little one she used to always get terrible patches of eczema here and there until the tooth had broken through.
This time of year, the back end of winter, when immune systems are being tested to the limit, vitamin D supplies are low in the body, her skin becomes very dry and she gets itchy patches behind her knees and on her back. We have to be very careful with soaps and detergents, but the thing that works best is bear rubs! Long, deep relaxing bear rubs after a nice bath just before bed: good for the skin, good for the soul.

For a few years now we have been making our own cream. I have gradually built up my confidence doing so and will share with you how we make our bear rub cream.

You need:
a really good oil...we're using cold pressed organic sesame oil. This oil has lots of great properties: it is healing and the oil of choice in Ayurveda, and I love the nutty, earthy smell. You could equally use olive oil or almond oil.

dried lavender
dried calendula flowers
lavender essential oil (because we like quite a strong lavender-y smell)
beeswax

Put all your dried flowers in a small pot (we used about a handful of lavender and 2 of calendula)

Pour in enough oil to cover the flowers.
Heat until the oil is quite hot (but you couldn't fry chips in it) then take the pot off the heat and allow to steep for about half an hour.

Grate the beeswax

When the oil is cool enough to touch, strain the flowers out by pouring the oil through a muslin.

Squeeze out the extra oil (it looks and smells good enough to eat!)

Put the oil back into the pot and put back on a low heat.

Add 5-7 drops of lavender essential oil and the grated bees wax. Stir over the heat until all the wax has melted.

To test the consistency of the cream drop a tiny bit into some cold metal. If it sets very hard and white you can add a little more oil, if it doesn't set add more beeswax.

Pour the cream into wee jars and allow to set. This may take over night.

It is lovely stuff and all the kids got bear rubs last night.

It got me thinking a lot about touch. Rebe, of all of my children, needs touch. She craves it and asks for it. As a baby she cried and cried if she were ever put down. I think that often she needed nothing more than touch: to be held and stroked and patted.
I didn't really understand much about attachment parenting when she was tiny, and I was very confused and exhausted trying to find ways to put her down. I wish I had just held her more, I wish I'd had a wrap sling, I wish we had done more massage...but we didn't and I try not to feel too guilty about it. Instead I am glad that I know now and that I can see the importance of touch for her.

I do think that we underestimate the power of touch, the importance of touch. Our skin is the biggest sense organ of our body, we take in a huge amount of information through it. It really should be looked after and loved.

In our society and culture touch is pretty frowned upon. If you consider the amount of equipment there is on the market that creates a separation between parent and child there is a definite message there that too much touching is unhealthy or undesirable. In other cultures men hold hands walking along the street, people kiss as a greeting, mothers carry their babies for a long time and all the time. But here we hardly ever touch, in fact our sense of personal space is quite big and we defend it fiercely.

I do think this is pretty unhealthy! I wonder how much underage sex in our society is actually due to craving for touch? I wonder how much of poor body image is due to lack of touch? From being very young we are taught not to touch things that are disgusting or horrible. I wonder do young men and women equate not being touched by anyone with being horrible or disgusting?

We need touch and I am so grateful to Rebe for teaching me about the importance of touch, of contact. Touching someone is so silent and yet it can say so loudly I love you.

hugs x