Touch is sometimes abused. Some people use touch inappropriately to molest children, and this terrifies us all. Some teachers have molested young students. Some priests molest grade-school parishioners. It must stop. Of this there can be no doubt. But how?
Some communities are passing new laws designed to protect the children. Attorneys are meeting with school teachers to educate them in the new standard of acceptable behavior. It turns out that the proposed solution to the problem that some people abuse touch is to focus not the offenders, but on touch itself. The approach to the problem doesn’t ask “how can we get a better handle on these disturbed people?” or “how can we raise people who know how to use touch appropriately?” No. The solution to the problem of people who abuse touching is to stop all people from touching.
So now school teachers are told that if they are caught touching a child, they could lose their jobs. And what message is given to the child who runs to his teacher crying and is repelled? How does this boy learn about good, safe, nourishing touch; about getting support when he feels hurt or sad? Where does he get enough “good” touch so as not to grow up and seek touch in abusive ways?
Psychotherapists are afraid to offer a hug to a crying client, or even to put an arm around a shoulder when they are leaving. It has become a strictly no-touch practice. Yet, the withholding of appropriate human touch is at least as immoral as the crimes we are trying to prevent. Suffering human beings are denied the benefit of what is one of the most powerful healing tools we have – our caring and compassionate touch. If this is not immoral, what is?
The most ludicrous example of just how crazy this is getting comes from a recent conversation I had with a young psychiatrist. He has just completed studies in energy medicine and massage therapy. I asked him why he did that. Did he intend to leave medicine to do massage? “No,” he said. “But I want to be able to touch people, and to do healing work with them. Now I have a license that allows me to do that.” A physician training in energy medicine and massage so he can actually practice healing and legally touch patients – how far will this madness go? What are we thinking?
If anything should be clear it is that we are a society in need of more, not less touching; more, not less nurturing; more, not less caring. We need to be touched. Touch conveys something essential to the entire body-mind-spirit. It tells us that we matter. It tells us that we exist; that we belong; that we are not isolated strangers floating alone through time and space. Touch grounds us in the here and now; bonds us to incarnation; tells us that embodiment is gift, pleasurable, safe. Touch tells us that we are good, welcomed, deserving of time and attention. Touch lets us know that we are still alive, still here; that we haven’t slipped into some dimension between life and death. Touch comforts us, soothes us, nourishes us – literally, the skin releases a rush of chemicals when we are touched that are good for both the toucher and the touched.
Touch is the first language of woman, because it is the language of connection and relatedness. It is the language of the body; the instinctual self. Even animals do not need to be told to pick up their babies, to hold them and soothe them and rock them. As women, we must, we absolutely must, speak for touch in every forum we can. To allow our society to slip any further into this isolating, touchless, fear-based mentality can only be disastrous in the long run. Please, become a woman who is a champion of touch.