An ordinary pacifier can unlock vivid memories of early motherhood’s intimacy and struggle.

A pacifier offers shared respite, revealing how a mother’s and baby’s needs intertwine.

Mothers need compassion and support, and those past hands-on parenting can champion both.

My friend told me about an experience that jolted her the other morning. She is my age, give or take a few years, and the mother of two adult daughters.

She was walking near the Hudson River when she spotted an upturned pacifier/dummy on the ground.

This image brought a flood of memories for her and became a visceral reminder of her own early mothering days. She told me about this, and I immediately connected with her experience. We gave ourselves the space to indulge our own imaginings and immerse ourselves in our individual inner worlds.

There is something embedded in the form of a dummy, which is intriguing. Maybe it's the shape, adapted from the maternal breast, and the meaning this can hold. Maybe it's something about the maternal collective unconscious and our need to soothe our child at any cost; our hope of harmony with our infant. The pacifier is also a gauge of social judgement; do "good mothers" use them?

My friend’s story took me back to the early days of my mothering. For me, the dummy played a prominent part in the mothering of each of my children. It represented an almost sacred object holding the potential of a........

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