Where Does Your Safety and Security Stem From?

As this week is bonfire night here in the UK and election night in the US, I thought this would be an appropriate time to talk about safety and security. Where did you get your safety and security from when you were born? And what about when you were a little kid?

You might be thinking, “what safety and security?” Unfortunately a lot of people feel fundamentally unsafe. You might not even realize or honor it as a safety issue, but fear stems from not being safe.

And it starts with that birth imprint. So if your parents were crazy, or not happy, fighting and screaming, or if they felt very insecure in themselves, or insecure as a parent, they might not have been instilling in you a feeling of safety. Were you born during a war or some other global crisis?

The mother bonding with the baby is the most important, because you’ve been inside her, but if you had a present father who was really a hands on Dad and there for you, especially when you’re a baby, and taking care of the feeding and the changing of the nappies and all of that stuff, that bond can happen with the father as well.

Some schools of thought say, he’s basically a bystander until about the time that you’re two. But I don’t necessarily agree with that. I witnessed my own children bonding with their father from very early on.

I was born very sick. I had digestive issues. My mother chose not to breastfeed. They couldn’t find anything that I could keep down, until finally, they found goat’s milk. So I was a screaming, unhappy baby for the first six months of my life. Stressful! My mother already had a challenging time during pregnancy, she had to stay in bed and stand on her head every hour, on the hour. And she had a toddler, my sister, to look after.

So my father was the calm, quiet parent, and not that I remember this, but he tells me, and I’ve grown up with this story, that he would hold me on the length of his arm with my little baby head cradled in his hand, and the rest of me kind of balanced on his arm while he’d be shaving in the morning. He’d talk to me and sing to me. He said that that was our bonding time in the morning together. Whenever he told me that story his face lit up as though he were a new father all over again in memory. Your birth story matters more than you think!

So there was a consistent quiet time of connection with my father that instilled in me a sense of safety and holding that I didn’t have with my mother, for all of the reasons I didn’t have it with her.

Even though my father is the source of my wounding, yes, he is on some other levels, but guess what? Fundamentally before he was the source of my wounding he’s also the source of my safety and security.

How does this manifest in life, having my father be the source of my safety and security?

For me, it was literal. Literal safety, literal security. And all of my kind of feminist friends would admonish me, “What is with you? You’re like a 1950s housewife. You give up your power to men all of the time!”

And I owned it. I grew up in the 60s in the United States and Daddy went off to work every morning, and Mommy stayed home. My mom was a working woman all of that time, but I modeled these roles from the 1960s established with my father and with my mother. That’s what I grew up knowing, and that’s what I grew up wanting.

I wanted the man to be the strong man, and to provide the safety and security that I was looking for. Now, where I got confused along the way was that I wasn’t looking for this on a material level. I thought I was for many years, but in truth, I was looking for the strong, masculine.

I was looking for the safety and security to be met where I’m at, for somebody who would always have my back, for somebody who was always going to support me, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, psychologically, and yes, when I was younger, materially. Even in adult years, materially, my father is perhaps the most generous man I’ve ever met in my life. Thanks Dad.

The imprint of where you got your initial safety and security from can manifest in your life in a multitude of ways, and you can confuse that safety and security with literal safety like old school manners, “put your cape down, protect me from the splashing puddle when when a carriage goes by” or “jump in front of bullets for me” or material safety, “pay for everything or take care of me financially.”

I’ve certainly given up my power to men that way in my life, which wasn’t good for me, because we as independent, aligned, strong feminine women need to be able to take care of ourselves in all aspects.

But what I see in my children, the men that I’ve raised, is how supportive they are of their wives in the strong, masculine sort of way, that they’re not wanting to take away their women’s power, or control them. Instead, they’re supporting their women in becoming the best versions of themselves.

So it’s a really good idea to look at where your safety and security comes from. Because when we have a strong foundation of safety and security, even if it’s a little warped and you haven’t quite figured out how it’s manifesting in your life, it enables us to move forward more easily.

Think about how your safety and security has manifested. Or if you don’t feel like you have any, why not? And where can you find it from? Because this is something we can generate in ourselves. This is all knowledge, and so much of it comes from our birth imprint.

Look at where you got your safety and security from. See how it’s manifested for you on the material level, on the physical level, in your life, where you live, what’s your community, your self-nurturing, like? Safety and security hits us at every single level.

Look at the world now, hopefully we’re going to have a safe election moving forward, because our leaders hold “the people’s” safety and security at a global level in their hands.

I encourage you all to look at your own foundations of safety and security, where it stemmed from, and who you got it from.

If you don’t feel like you have it, why don’t you book a call with me, and let’s see how we can help you establish that in yourself, or unpick ways that you do have it that you’re just not noticing anymore.

Because with a strong foundation of safety and security. It allows us to move forward with confidence, being the best version of ourselves all the time.