I often think of the expression "failure to thrive."  when my boys were babies, it was something that concerned me for about a second, but as they were clearly thriving--fat and sassy and laughing--I let go of worrying about this syndrome.  Now and again, I would sometimes let my mind drift to the sad scene of disconnect between mother and infant, the baby and mother listless and scared, the relationship somehow not working and the baby the manifest symbol of the problem.  The failing baby did not eat, did not grow, physically or emotionally.

The mother would have to learn how to reach her baby through touch and talk and love, and once that connection was forged, the baby would thrive, would grow.   

Lately, though, I've wondered if this syndrome or condition is something we could apply to people later in life.  I'm thinking about the time in life when we let go of our children and they are in the world on their own.  They are no longer connected to us on a daily basis, connected through affection and love and perhaps money.  We pick them up and launch them--and they fall.  Failure to thrive.

Maybe, really, it's a condition we can get throughout our lives, something stopping us at any point.  Yes, I know we can call it depression or anxiety or fatigue or upset, but it often seems that people reach a point where they physically can no longer go forward and their bodies and their hearts just say, "No more."  failure to thrive.

I wonder if the cure is somehow the same.  A warm human body comes forward to love the person, touch and talk to the person.  A person gives the failing person a true, deep connection.  But as we grow older, these connections aren't easy to find.  No one can love you like a mother, I suppose, the old adage true.

But I hear stories of these adults just launched failing, and I wonder how it might work.  If we are indeed hardwired, this cure has to be the same no matter what age.

Jessica