Sources of our Becoming
Letters on breastfeeding

Our thoughts are not born in isolation. They are shaped by the stories we hear, the norms we inherit, and the silences we are taught to accept. In the realm of infant feeding, few topics are as emotionally charged and socially complex as breastfeeding. The way we think about it — as natural, as optional, as burdensome, as empowering — is deeply influenced by cultural narratives, medical discourse, marketing strategies, and generational beliefs. Breastfeeding activism challenges us to examine these sources critically. It asks: Who benefits from the way we think about breastfeeding? Whose voices are amplified, and whose are dismissed? By tracing the origins of our thoughts, we begin to reclaim them — and in doing so, we create space for informed, compassionate, and justice-driven conversations about infant nourishment and maternal autonomy. 


These letters are written by An Eerdekens, neonatologist and IBCLC lactation consultant, Melanie Miller, IBCLC lactation consultant, and Inge van Nistelrooij, care ethicist. They are an invitation to the reader: to walk alongside us, to discuss, to reflect, and to deepen. It is a call to plant seeds — seeds that highlight the significance of this ingenious piece of biology within our society. Breastfeeding is not merely about feeding a child; it is about the emergence of relationality, a defining trait of our humanity. It touches upon ecology, philosophy, women’s rights, and human rights. Through this exploration, we hope to shed light on its broader meaning and impact.

We wish the reader an enriching journey through these reflections, and we look forward to your response.



Email: gloedacademy@gmail.com


[continued]


13th February 2026
Letter by An


 ... the line’s fruitful sharpness lies precisely there: not that love prevents dying, but that without love, life itself—our shared life, our moral fabric—begins to decay. We must love one another or die does not state a biological fact but a moral necessity: the soul of a world.

Seen from that necessity, I look differently at what I witnessed in the clinic. Early socialisation does not begin with slogans, but with the body: closeness, skin-to-skin contact, responsiveness, nourishment—breastfeeding where possible—and the repeated experience that one’s signals matter. Attachment is embodied recognition. It teaches a child to regulate itself, to trust the face of the other, and to experience the world as inhabitable. Where love is structurally absent—through violence, neglect, or the scars of the past—trauma spreads in patterns that repeat themselves. But just as real is the opposite movement: care given with attention and fidelity interrupts the transmission of pain. No romanticism is needed to call this radical.

That same tension—between immediate pleasure and a deeper, more enduring good—resonates in Handel’s Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno. Pleasure and Beauty stand opposite Time and Wisdom. The message: beauty nourished solely by pleasure fades; beauty carried by wisdom deepens. For me, this touches the essence of love. Love is not a fleeting affect but a form of attention that requires time, respects boundaries, endures truth, and thus makes beauty lasting. It is not opposed to pleasure; it orders it, so that it remains human.

What does all this mean for the condition humaine? If love is one of its building blocks, then it is not only private but also public. It lives in small gestures—a premature child opening his eyes to his mother—but it also requires conditions that make it possible.

Three thoughts:
  1. Attention and recognition. Love begins where someone is seen. In early relationships, this means responsiveness; in society, it means structures that do not punish vulnerability but surround it: accessible care, time for care, space for grief and repair.
  2. Truthfulness and boundaries. Love is not mere softness. It can withstand truth—about pain, history, guilt—and draws boundaries that protect. In doing so, it breaks the chain of repetition that feeds trauma.
  3. Time and fidelity. Love needs rhythm: repetition, patience, return. What is damaged in one generation can be healed in the next if the practice of care endures.

Thus Auden’s line returns, stripped of naïveté but not of urgency. We all die; but without love, something in us dies along the way—our capacity for relational truth, our vision of the other, our courage to carry one another. Every time I place a newborn in the arms of its mother, I am reminded that love is not abstract. It has weight, warmth, breath. It is the quiet centre from which we learn to be human—and from which a world, perhaps, might begin again.


Have a nice Valentine’s weekend!

Best wishes,

An





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Sources of our Thoughts - Letters on the Golden Hour