ABSTRACT
Research into experiences that occur within the relationship between mother and child often focus on implications for the well-being and development of the child or mother as separate entities. This inquiry explicitly explored the frequently engaged, simple activity of holding through memory reconstruction and multimodal meaning making. Holding included a sense of shared history and relational patterns carried by important co-created ‘stories of us’. With increased awareness of the relational make-up of these stories came the opportunity for mother and child to savour and/or re-story the ‘us’. Holding was experienced as purposeful and this purpose was co-created and co-navigated by mother and child. Holding provided unusual but significant experiences of expansion of self into ‘us’; a foundational quality for each finding. This ‘us’ is more than mother or child; it is a significant life-long entity of its own and we can develop experiential, aesthetic, conceptual and practical knowing about it. I suggest that developing awareness of co-created experiences and knowing within holding may strengthen and enrich the bond between mother and child and support mothers through experiences of felt isolation, ambivalence, fear, anxiety and hurt over the long term. Drawing attention to and developing relational agency, incorporating an awareness of co-created reward, can enhance the often challenging but deeply meaningful mother/child relationship.
