I see many Winnie the Poohs at the hospital (aka Winnie aka Pooh aka Pooh Bear), as you may guess. Many look like this, a bit flat and with small wounds, designed to have a removable shirt:
They come for spas:
New hearts and stuffing:
And plumping up so they have a proper belly again:
Sometimes they look like this:
A bit more loved… or as his person said, in more “desperate condition”.
He also had a spa (not everyone does):
As you may’ve noticed, he needed a new nose and there were several options:
His heart had a pooh on it as well as some magic from a heffalump:
And after a bit of arm and smile surgery, soon he was healthy and ready to fly home:
His person wrote “He looks wonderful!”
The final Pooh I’m going to show you today just flew home yesterday. He is always called Pooh Bear. He is 14 years old and showed every year of hugs.
Here are the photos his person’s mom sent for diagnosis:
As you can see, Pooh Bear was a bit flat and a bit gray. He came in for a spa:
Got new stuffing and a magical Heffalump heart to preserve a bit of his original stuffing:
And finally was clean and plump and fluffy and ready to fly home:
He could even sit on his own! His people said his chubbiness was perfect and as I said, he flew home yesterday!
i hate the trope of kids giving their favorite stuffed animal to a younger child as a sign of compassion and coming of age, as if this is something that should be expected of kids as they grow up
im 22 and i dont care who you are you’ll have to pry my ikea shark out of my cold dead hands
I can’t remember the name of the study, but there was a theory, supported by pretty good evidence, that if you have your comforter, be it blanket, plush, pacifier, whatever, taken away when you’re not ready to give it up, even if you’re a dinky little kid, it can have really long lasting effects. People who kept their comforters into adulthood were less likely to smoke, drink or do drugs, tended to have better family relations and home lives etc, while those that saw their comforter removed or destroyed were more likely to be drawn to more serious “comforts” elsewhere. The more extreme the removal, the more extreme the result. Typically.
We learn at our own pace to make and break connections and emotional ties, and the situation is forced upon us, we seek comfort. But whoa wait, you can’t possibly have comfort anymore, you’re five. You’re a big kid now.
So when parents are forcing you to “grow up” by tearing the only comfort in the world from you, they could actually be messing you up big time.
In psychology they’re called “transitional objects” and they help the neurobiological process of helping children learn to internalize the experience of being loved and cared for, which is an essential part of learning to regulate your emotions. They are REALLY important.
I wonder what it means psychologically that I’ve started getting a few more for myself?
Well, there’s a process we call “re-parenting yourself” where you give yourself the love you missed out on in childhood, and thereby start to heal the pain you’ve carried since then. And using childhood comfort objects can be part of that.
Oh..
Oh my god…
In the year of the lord 2018 our grown asses start healing.
This makes me feel less bad for being an adult that still sleeps with a teddy bear. My parents tease me about it but they never took any comfort items away from me.
Children playing with Barbies in media:“This is Sally. She’s the mommy. She loves fashion, swimming, and she drives a convertible! She has a baby with Ken and sometimes they kiss.” OR “Look, I ripped Barbie’s head off! Ha ha ha! I’m a boy.”
Children playing with Barbies in real life: “This is Aurora, the fallen goddess of the sky. She has been banished from her kingdom and bound to a mortal body by her sister, who rose to power by human sacrifices. She now leads an army of cannibal water spirits who eat men. Sometimes they have orgies. They dismembered a traitor and keep her head on a Popsicle stick as a warning to others. Aurora can turn into a wolf and uses battle magic to paralyze her enemies. The king of the stuffed animals developed rabies and she had to slay him to save his people, but they do not understand that it was an act of mercy and kindness and are sending assassins after her for regicide. This is Aurora’s soulmate, Crystal, but her soul is trapped in a gemstone while an evil spirit pilots her body and attempts to murder her friends.”
Steel Phoenix Studios 