Some of you may have seen these videos I post showing how my mom sniff kisses the hell out of me. I post them because they’re really sweet and maybe other people might enjoy the love vibes too. I also post them as proof to my inner child that this kind of love exists with my mom. Because in a lot of ways, my body is still processing what it feels like to receive such physical touch.
Growing up, physical affection was not one of those five love languages I experienced much of. I imagine that I was carried and held as a baby, but as I got older, even at toddler age, I don’t recall getting many hugs or being embraced physically by my family that regularly. No cuddles or gentle touches of care or encouragement. If we did hug, they were brief and usually offered awkwardly (the infamous side hug!) while saying goodbye. I remember my dad patting my head or back sometimes, and even that would be offered without gentleness.
So going back to those five love languages that became a popular quiz that many people took. When I took that quiz during my marriage, my primary love language turned out to be acts of service. This is no coincidence as love in my family was most often expressed in these ways:
“Here’s some food I cooked for you.”
“I’ll take you to your friend’s house.”
“I’ll pick you up.”
“Here’s some money for the movies with your friends.”
“We work hard so you can go to college.”
When I’ve talked about this experience with friends, it’s common that people will say “okay but that’s just how Asian culture is” and perhaps it’s a response people offer to assuage their own unacknowledged grief about what they didn’t receive. But honestly, I don’t buy that rationalization. Maybe it is how Asian culture has been conditioned to be for a variety of reasons… but I refuse to believe that simply put, Asian people are culturally devoid of loving affection. We all come out of the womb needing to be held, cradled, and loved on for our survival. In my curiosity, I discovered this study done in the 1940s about high infant mortality rates (nearly 100%!) in orphanages where babies were medically treated but did not receive love including physical touch and affection. They died not because of disease or starvation but due to “severe emotional and sensory deprivation.” I don’t believe these needs we have as babies change – we just adapt our basic needs as adults because wanting love in all its forms as grown people can be seen as weak, needy, and undesirable… because who has time to give that kind of love?
It turns out though, human touch is fundamental not just for our survival but also our development and thriving. World-renowned family therapist Virginia Satir discovered that 4 hugs a day are needed for survival, 8 hugs a day for maintenance, and 12 hugs a day for growth. Damn, where would this earth be if each of us were receiving 12 hugs a day?!
Skin hunger is especially real in these disconnected, distant, and often isolating times of modernization. I didn’t realize how touch-starved I had been… how many years I had lived with a quiet deficit of hugs, closeness, and affection in my family and marriage. I only began to understand it when I fell in love with someone who offered touch with such generosity and presence that my whole system could finally feel what it had been missing.
Full-bodied hugs, skin-to-skin embrace, warm hand holding, gentle caresses, even soft, steady gazes from the windows of our souls… all of it nourished me in ways I hadn’t known I needed. And in receiving that kind of loving touch, I realized that my belief that I “just wasn’t a physically affectionate person” was never the truth. It was a story my ego crafted to protect me from the pain of growing up and loving in relationships where the affection I longed for simply wasn’t available.
So maybe you can understand why this experience of receiving affection from my mom is still something I am acclimating to. I don’t have to be good to receive love in this way. I receive love simply because I am.
My mom’s stroke cracked open a vast, earth-sized treasure chest of affection that none of us really knew was there. In this time of getting to know her more deeply, it’s clear that this kind of affection is something she never received yet desperately needed too. Today, I hold my mom’s hand when we take walks, I sniff kiss her regularly, I hug her in the morning when she first wakes up, I rub her back and stroke her head, and I tuck her into bed at night after we cuddle for a bit. The sacred reciprocity of love and affection between us is healing my heart and body in profound ways.
So…in addition to a tenderness revolution, I believe we are in need of a hugging revolution too…
By the way, sniff kissing is a special way of affection in Vietnamese families. Usually adorable chubby babies are the ones who get these premium smooches because apparently sniffing with our nose is a cleaner way than the mouth. I’m so happy to be back in this boat of chubby babies!
