volume 5 | issue 1
editorial According to my thesaurus, an attachment can be the noun meaning an addon, as in accessory, extra, part, addition, supplement. But I honestly didn’t think of
it in those terms. I was considering all the ways we think about attachment as some kind of
affection, as in connection, regard, friendship, liking, fondness, tenderness, warmth, love, bond, or its opposite—detachment.
Having spent most of my adult life as an early childhood educator with both young children and the adults who choose to teach and care for them, my initial thinking about attachment was of
that crucial bond between adult and child. I was considering the importance of babies bonding
with their essential adults in the early minutes, hours and days after birth, and even of the bond that happens between mothers and their unborn children while they are still in the womb. I was considering how babies’ task in the first year of life was to trust that the adults in their
lives would be there for them – physically, emotionally and spiritually. How the trust <> mistrust continuum set in their first year shapes their relationships throughout their lives.
My next thought was about our attachment to place, and how my own early life was filled
with the work on our dairy farm in the Ottawa valley, a farm that had been in my family for
generations, and how my parents always thought of themselves as being stewards of the land.
Despite being attached to the land of my ancestors, in my young adulthood I headed out across the country (hitchhiking) and found a new place to love—the Rocky Mountains and the towns
of Banff and later Canmore. New places for inspiration and creativity. My love of northern spaces came later in both Whitehorse and Fort McMurray as my love of the brilliant, vibrant northern night skies, and the forested paths and flowing rivers of my current home gave me a new
attachment to the land. It’s a combination of fascination, appreciation, and now groundedness. I am delighted with the responses we got from artists, authors and poets to the Attachment theme. Their submissions expanded my initial thoughts of attachment, widening and deepening my understanding of the topic, and giving me perspectives that I had not
yet considered. I hope that the scope of these submissions expands your thinking about Attachment too. Enjoy!
Hope Moffatt |
issue twenty - five editor
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