Hugs Satisfy What Words Alone Cannot

Hugs satisfy what words alone cannot. A hug is a specific form of physical love for which there is no possible substitute. If you don’t get enough hugs, there will be a kind of emptiness, a quiet longing in you. If you go long enough between hugs, then like fuel in a gas tank, your heart can run dry. I remember years ago during a counseling session, when my client suddenly cried out: “It has been years since anybody has hugged me!” He said he felt isolated, not only without a friend in the world, but without a hug in the world.

Research has demonstrated decisively that there is power in touch. Touch can heal, and there is no more powerful form of touching than a caring, sensitive hug. An elementary teacher once shared with me a story about the power of hugs. She had gone to school with a stomach ache. During a recess, a small group of first graders surrounded her and gave her a big hug. Her stomach ache went away. She said she realized in that moment that hers had been a “nervous stomach.” The assuring hugs of spontaneous affection healed it.

I am a hugger. That’s the way my mother, a wonderful hugger herself, raised me. She knew how to love in touch as well as in word. Of course, I have to be very careful about whom I hug, and where and when. I don’t want anyone to misinterpret my caring through touch. As there is a time to hug, so also is there a time to leave well alone and to respect another’s wish not to be hugged. Permission on both sides is essential.

My wife and I have raised our children to be huggers. Once while teaching one of our sons how to swim, in the city pool in Iowa City, I noticed a man watching us with clear enjoyment. When we emerged from the pool, he came over to me, and said something which meant much to me. He was from France, from a culture comfortable with touching and physical love. He told me that our son would love his body because of the way I was loving his body. I am convinced this is true: how we treat through touch the bodies of our children directly affect how they will treat their own bodies.

Hugging a son or daughter, for that there are no adequate words nor substitute. I remember picking up our son Theodore at the Quad City Airport, for an all too brief visit. While we talk on the phone frequently, months had flown by since last I saw his precious face. Our “bear hug” at the airport satisfied a longing in my heart as nothing else could.

I also remember the time when six of us men had a two-day prayer retreat at New Melleray Abby, a Trappist Monastery outside Dubuque, Iowa. We had much time alone and much briefer time together. The filled silence of a monastery is something one just has to experience. At the close of our final evening discussion, where powerful, personal sentiments had been expressed in confident, confidential sharing, we embraced in a group hug. The hug somehow consummated our sharing, and granted us a sense of solid caring, of being there with and for each other, as nothing else could. At that moment, we were not only one in spirit, but we were also one in body.