[Marianne]

P.S. For the second part of your question, I think that parents should not hide truth from the child–maybe aside from stories about Santa Claus…I think that children can usually ferret out the truth of situations, that their intuition and instincts are very strong, and that adults, who are by the time they are adults are less in touch with their intuition and instincts in many ways (perhaps other than when a child might be in danger) often forget that. I believe it is a mistake to lie to children to cover up the truth–and let the child cover him or herself up in their blanket. I suppose by the time they are a certain age they would be told to not carry it around everywhere they go, but I for one don’t see any harm in keeping it or the child knowing it is kept in the cedar chest and still “honored” as memory.

I am sorry for your pain and sadness you went through as a child, and how this memory can still hurt today. If you would wish, you could visit your blanket in the imaginal realm and re-write the history of the event to your satisfaction and healing today. I think when we are children we personify our blanket just like a toy or stuffed animal and part of what we feel is not our own sorrow when an item is thrown away is our anguish for the blanket as if we have deserted it and caused it pain–as if we have caused it sorrow, not just the sorrow of us missing it, but the sorrow that it will miss us.

–Marianne