What Does It Mean to Nurture?

“You are a terrible nurse,” my husband told me recently after one particularly bad bout of the man-cold. And while we can debate the truth in this statement, I recognize that this is simply not the way I nurture. I felt like I was nurturing him by keeping the kids away, maintaining the house, and leaving him alone. But he obviously needed something different.

This interaction has gotten me thinking about how we nurture ourselves and others. Nurture is in our name; implying, come to Nurture Therapy and our team will give you what you need. But what is that exactly? We all have a sense of what nurturing looks like: a parent comforting a child, helping a friend in need, nursing a sick partner back to health. But is this just what we tell ourselves nurturing should look like?

When I sit with clients in session and ask, “What is it that you need right now?” many are at a loss. They know they want their needs to be taken care of, but they can’t always identify what this looks like.

There’s a dichotomy in maternal nurturing. Mothers are often incredible nurturers; they are attuned, selfless and often intuitive to their baby’s needs. Research shows that nurturing is deeply wired into the maternal brain. When a mother hears her baby cry there’s a hormonally-driven neural response that triggers the release of oxytocin and lights up regions of the brain tied to empathy and caregiving. This biological response explains why mothers are so acutely skilled at nurturing others, and perhaps the reason they stop nurturing themselves.

Many mothers I work with have become so adept at caring for everyone else that they've forgotten how to care for themselves. They wear exhaustion like a badge of honor. They feel guilty for wanting a break, so they push through, dismiss their own struggles, and then they end up in my office and cannot answer the simple question: what do you need?

Nurturing was never meant to be a one-way exchange. When care only flows outward, it stops being sustaining and starts being depleting. Nurturing is not a one-size-fits-all act, and it doesn’t have to be self-sacrificing to be meaningful. True nurturing includes the ability to name your needs, to receive care without guilt, and to trust that tending to yourself does not take away from those you love. Let's reclaim what it means to nurture so it’s something you experience—not just something you give away freely.