Letters, Comfort vs Nurture. Comfort filled but Nurture Deprived | by Charu Gupta | Aug, 2025

Dear Reader,

I know it’s been a long time! I’m writing this at midnight, and hope.. that the words I’ve been meaning to say for a long while may flow through me. Once again, Thank you for sharing this time and space with me here. At the moment, knowing that you will be reading this already puts me at ease.

My last letter here is from July 2024, and wow, a year has passed. For the past year, I’ve only been writing in my journal. Putting my writings out there is a game that I often don’t like to play, or perhaps am mostly afraid to play. A lot has happened in the past year. I don’t even know what to pick to share with you.

I’ll probably just dive a little bit deeper into my story. I’ve been hearing a lot lately, in different versions, that the story is archetypal(like we are), and the story heals.

I recently read the Little Match Girl story in Women Who Run With The Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. In this story, a small girl makes a living in extreme cold weather by selling matchsticks. But no one buys it, and she starts lighting these matches for warmth, and with each match lit, she starts to see/imagine her grandmother comforting her. The night passes like that, and in the morning, she is found dead.

Unsettling, no?

Clarrisa is a Jungian psycholoanalyst, and a cantadora(keeper of stories). Her commentary on this story is what intrigued me. She mentioned how nurturing is different from comforting. And what this little girl needed- was not comfort from her grandmother’s visions but nurture from a real hand. She was clearly in a hostile environment designed to make her starve and freeze.

In her own words,

“The difference between comfort and nurture is this: If you have a plant that is sick because you keep it in a dark closet, and you say soothing words to it, that is comfort.
If you take the plant out of the closet and put it in the sun, give it something to drink, and then talk to it, that is nurture.”

Something about this hit home.

As if my whole life has been comfort-filled and nurture-deprived. Somehow, it feels like the system is designed to make us nurture deprived.

Corporations, designed to say that they care, but make sure that the creative life doesn’t get space to breathe. Exhaust them so much that what is left is only a shell. Who in their right mind would wanna try something new- something of their own, if it means the risk of losing their job?

Governments, designed to rush the economic growth in a way that air, water, people- all become a means to an end. Once again, the comfort of growing with the better economy, only to lose the nurture of quite literally the sun, the moon, clean air, water, and communities.

Families, designed to mold a person according to their own expectations. The comfort of food, shelter, security. But not the nurture of asking, “what do you need?”; saying “We believe in you” and “You can choose yourself without feeling guilty about it”.

For me, personally, it feels like- comfort is all I ever had. And Nurture is all I never did. Funny thing about comfort is that it makes you believe that everything is alright. That you are okay. That apparently, things are alright so why fuss?

And one day you ask yourself, Why do I not feel anything? Why does everything feel like I have to constantly prove myself? Why do I breathe, but don’t feel alive? Why has writing become so hard? What is this emptiness? Why do I never feel enough? What is this constant need to be of significance? Why does dreaming feel futile? Why can’t I dream anymore? Would there ever be love here?

*Silence*

The little girl is dead.

How do I know? It doesn’t even feel sad anymore.

The matchsticks are exhausted.

To be Continued…

Love,
Enide