I want you to take a moment and think about the kind of relationship you have with your mother.
What does it look like? How does it feel? Do your thoughts drift to the good times, or do they dwell on the bad times?
Our mothers were pivotal players in our development as children, and they formed the very foundation of our emotional and psychological growth.
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To this very day, our mothers continue to influence us both through our deeply ingrained perceptions of life and through our feelings towards ourselves and other people.
But although our mothers may have tried their very best to nurture us, our relationships with them may have been laced with undercurrents of shame, guilt, and obligation.
In fact, we may continue to carry unresolved grief, fear, disappointment, and resentment towards our mothers long into our adult lives.
This deep pain is usually the result of unhealed core wounds that are passed on from generation to generation.
If you possess the Mother Wound, it is vital that you learn how to treat, repair, and reconcile those broken parts within you that still yearn for your mother’s love.
Healing the Mother Wound within you has the potential to transform your life and improve your relationships tenfold.
Today, we’ll explore how to do that.
Before we begin, if you need more support on this journey, I explore this topic much more deeply in my Healing the Mother Wound Journal:
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Here’s a description of the journal:
Is your mother the source of some of your deepest rage, grief, and shame?
Do you have a broken, strained, or nonexistent relationship with her?
The mother wound is one of the deepest, most traumatic, and haunting sources of pain we can carry in life.
But how do we heal it and move on from this wounding?
Through the power of gentle but fierce reparenting, the Healing the Mother Wound Journal can help you to befriend your inner child, give yourself the love you’ve always wanted, and release the burden of emotional pain.
Features of this journal include:
- 40+ journaling prompts and activities exploring the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual dimensions of healing the mother wound
- Lush images with quotes
- Healing mantras
- Oracle/tarot card spreads
- Book recommendations
- Gender-inclusive
- Printer-friendly (low ink usage) PDF version
- 100% editable format PDF version
Now on to the article:
Table of contents
What is the Mother Wound?
I have always had a complicated relationship with my mum. As a child, I remember the great fear and reverence I felt towards her; fear because she was the primary disciplinarian in the fundamentalist religious household, and reverence because she was so self-sacrificing.
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As an artist, she was (and still is) extremely skilled in watercolor and oil paintings, yet she was never able to actualize her dream of becoming a professionally paid artist despite how brilliant she was and still is.
These dreams further dimmed as she kept giving birth to children, and eventually, it became a rare occurrence for her to pick up a pencil or paintbrush.
While I may be wrong, I could always sense this lurking disappointment and resentment bottled up within her because of these lost dreams.
As I got older, the admiration and affection that I held towards my mother became tainted with anger and sadness.
Although she was extremely generous with her time and effort, dedicating her time exclusively to raising me and my siblings, her emotional coldness was distressing. Growing up, she made it very clear that my role was to obey and conform to her, the all-knowing parent, and the faith. There was no equal middle ground on which we could meet.
The only time when I ever felt valued and worthy was when I did everything she wanted me to do and fit the role of the “good Christian girl.”
These days, I don’t speak with my mother directly except via text message. While my heart has softened towards her through the years, and I appreciate all she did for me growing up, she made it very clear to me that leaving the Christian faith and allowing myself to love someone outside the faith (Mateo) equals severe betrayal.
By leaving the faith and “living in sin,” I have effectively excommunicated myself from their religion and, ultimately, her daily life.
As you can see, the Mother Wound occurs when we have a fractured, distorted, or broken bond with our mother figure. This is a trauma that can be passed down from generation to generation and has a profound impact on our lives.
When left unresolved, we pass on the wounds that our mothers and grandmothers before us failed to heal. These wounds consist of toxic and oppressive beliefs, ideals, perceptions, and choices.
Finally, our children repeat the cycle, harming their own children and their children’s children with centuries of unresolved pain. (Please note here that our fathers carry their own wounds, but in this article, I want to focus on our mothers specifically.)
9 Signs of the Mother Wound
If you suffer from the Mother Wound, you’ll likely experience the following problems:
- Feeling insecure around women in general.
- Sabotaging yourself when you experience happiness or success.
- Possessing weak boundaries and an inability to say “no.”
- Self-blaming and low self-esteem that manifests itself as the core belief: “There is something wrong with me.”
- Co-dependency in relationships.
- Minimizing yourself to be likable and accepted (aka, people-pleasing).
- The inability to speak up authentically and express your emotions fully.
- Sacrificing your dreams and desires for other people unnecessarily.
- Waiting for your mother’s validation on an unconscious level to fill the emotional hole within you.
Mother Wounds are developed at a young age and are bound by the belief that “I was responsible for my mother’s pain,” and “I can make my mother happy if I’m a good girl/boy.”
The truth is that we weren’t and still aren’t responsible for our mother’s pain – only she is. We also can’t make our mothers happy unless they truly decide to be happy.
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Yet, unfortunately, as children, we were not aware of this, and on a subconscious level, many of us still believe that we are the culprits of our mothers’ angst.
Where Does the Mother Wound Come From?
Women have lived under patriarchal rule for centuries. Religion and society, in particular, have been instrumental in perpetuating the myths that women should:
- Stay at home and give up their ambitions as child-bearers.
- Be the primary caretakers of the household.
- Constantly serve others and their needs, while giving up their own.
- Hold it all together 100% of the time because that’s what “good mothers” do.
- Utterly deplete themselves in order to support their families and raise children.
As a result of these intense and super-human standards, women abandon their dreams, lock away their desires, and smother their needs in favor of meeting the cultural ideal of what motherhood “should” be.
This pressure is suffocating for most women, breeding rage, depression, and anxiety, which is then passed on to their children through subtle – or even aggressive – forms of emotional abandonment and manipulation (such as shame, guilt, and obligation).
This forms the Mother Wound.
But it is important that we understand how much our mothers have gone through in the face of these oppressive ideals and expectations. It is vital that we realize that no mother can be perfect, no matter how hard they try, and use this knowledge to cultivate forgiveness.
Finally, it’s important that we learn to humanize our mothers in a society that strips them of their humanity. No mother can act in a loving way 100% of the time. The sooner we embrace this reality, the better.
Healing the Mother Wound – 3 Steps
Many women these days speak about embracing the divine feminine, which sounds nice in theory, but without confronting and healing the Mother Wound, this is nothing but another fuzzy ideal and form of spiritual bypassing.
As a woman who carries a very deep Mother Wound, I have experienced just how lonely and saddening it can be to feel the emotional and psychological absence of your mother.
Although I still have space to improve, I want to share with you three tips that will help you on your healing path:
1. Learn to separate the human from the archetype
We briefly explored the archetypal mother above: that of the selfless, giving, completely nurturing woman who diminishes her own needs in favor of her children’s needs.
In reality, mothers are human beings with flaws and issues. The more we expect them to live up to society’s expectations of the “perfect woman,” the more we deprive them of their humanity.
You may like to ask yourself, “What damaging beliefs and expectations do I have about my mother that cause me pain?”
Common beliefs and expectations include, for instance, “my mother should always be emotionally available,” “my mother should be my best friend,” “my mother should never get angry at me,” and so forth.
2. Give up the dream that your mother will be who you want her to be someday
Stop waiting around to receive the love, support, and validation of your mother. Remember that you can never change who she is, nor do you have the right to – that is her responsibility.
As you slowly learn to relinquish your hope that she will be everything you ever wanted her to be, you can allow yourself to grieve her absence.
Experiencing grief is a vital part of the healing process, and in my experience, it can last for years. But allow it to happen. It is ultimately good for you. Journaling, art therapy, and physical catharsis are powerful ways of processing this grief.
3. Find your inner source of unconditional love
While you may not have received unconditional love from your mother, you can find it within yourself.
A huge part of my own healing process has been learning how to re-parent my inner child.
Learning how to love myself has revealed to me a deep well of endless love that supports, cherishes, and wants the very best for me at the core of my Self. This very same source of love is within you as well.
As you slowly dissolve the limiting beliefs and perceptions you have about yourself and the world, you will find it easy to transform your desire for outer support to inner acceptance.
The Final Product …
Healing the Mother Wound within you will transform your life. You will be able to set better boundaries, establish healthier relationships, take care of your needs better, develop empathy for others, trust life more, and feel more comfortable in your skin.
Remember, if you need help on your path, would like to go deeper than what this article has offered, and get access to 40+ psychospiritual journaling prompts, integration tarot spreads for healing the mother wound, and more, see my Healing the Mother Wound Journal!
Share with me below: if you were to heal the Mother Wound, what would transform in your life? Also, if you have any wisdom to share with those suffering from this wound, please comment below. You never know who you may help!
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This article is so timely and so well-received by my open heart & soul. Every thing you say is true or has been true for me. Born in Pakistan in an extremely patriarchal society, the mother wound developed early in childhood as a result of emotionally cold mother from whom the messages were ‘not good enough” (got 96/100 in Math in Grade 4 – Mom sat down with exam paper at home with me to see which ones I got wrong! in front of my four cousins which of course, left me embarrassed and perplexed), ‘something wrong with me”, etc. 7.5 is the score out of 9 in the 9 Signs of Mother Wound. I couldn’t do anything right whether during childhood or in my teens and beyond. The only support and vital one was my dear father who made me feel safe, protected and encouraged me to express myself in various ways: through education, reading, art, social issues, etc.
From him I learned and incorporated into myself compassion, non-judgment, acceptance of various creeds and respect for others’ beliefs, open-mindedness, honesty, integrity, to be brave in a society where speaking out as a girl wasn’t the brightest idea, but I did it anyway, etc. etc. I stood up for those who couldn’t speak up for themselves. I confronted random men in public to their faces and told them what I thought. My light-filled soul-self was rebellious, questioning things my mother said about how I should behave when I was a teen, speaking out religious hypocrisy.
If I didn’t have my father’s loving presence, not sure if I ‘d still be here. Being born in a muslim family where my maternal grand-parents and other maternal relatives were very conservative and religious – complete opposites of my father – I was often scolded or berated by mother for not being a practicing muslim girl. I made the conscious decision in my late 30’s to renounce Islam and instead became a ‘spiritualist’ incorporating into myself either beliefs or practices from Buddhism, Hinduism, and Sufism to some extent.
By this time I was living in Canada after my studies and work in the U.S. Told my parents about my switch from being a muslim to a spiritualist and dear mother blew a fuse. But I stayed the course and was comforted in my decision by my father’s love and support. I could go on with countless examples but suffice it to say, I have lived with the mother wound for a long time.
But once I began my inner journey several years ago, I worked on discovering its nuances and layers and gradually started to see results between mother and I in terms of having set strong boundaries with her. ‘I am an adult and if you want to speak to me about whatever, you’re going to be respectful towards me. I demand that. And if you can’t or don’t want to, then please don’t speak to me.” Harsh words perhaps but I needed to do it and say it. After repeatedly telling mom the same thing each time she veered from speaking respectfully to me to outright accusations, and disrespect, I evolved within a little more, the wound closed a little tiny bit more.
Now, even though she lives here in her own home very near me, my boundaries have borne fruit. While I was doing this inner work on mother wound, I also began to reflect on her life prior to marrying Dad. I began to feel softer more compassionate towards her. The emptiness is still there and probably will be always, but I make sure I help her out, am respectful when speaking to her with a sense of compassion. She and I only talk about superficial things which is how it’s always been. I used to watch my girl friend in high school and their warm friend-like relationships with their mothers and think to myself ‘wow, this is so nice.” I’ll never have that myself. And she will not change and that’s okay. It’s me who needs to change to accept the truth that I will not ever have a warm, loving mother-daughter relationship and that that too is okay.
You’re so right when you say “Many women these days speak about embracing the divine feminine, which sounds nice in theory, but without confronting and healing the Mother Wound, this is nothing but another fuzzy ideal and form of spiritual bypassing.” Without confronting and healing the mother wound, the divine feminine remains in the shadows, out of reach.
Also, forgiveness is a potent spiritual tool that when done with humility and sincerely always brings inner peace. That’s what I did in the last recent few years for Mom. I have forgiven her. For a past that can’t be changed. But the present is mine to shape and create in positive ways. One of the by-products of the mother wound for me has been recurring self-doubt. For years I would be self-confident and then suddenly doubts would creep in playing the same old messages subconsciously about I’m nothing, a no body, not good enough….etc.” But I’m working on it these days :) Thank you for this deeply re-assuring article.
Thank you Im not really sure where to start, its all so complicated. I have a deep well of anger and sadness and disappointment about my mother We always talked through whatever issues we had snd I thiught we had a good rel6. We were always very close. I ignored, forgave, etc, the times when she would dangle the carrot in front of me snd then oull the rug iut from under me and leave me in a lurch. And I never knew she was saying one think to my face and behind my back she was talking smack about me to my siblings, her friends , and God knows who else. I began to get an inkling when I moved in with her to help take care of her in her old age. I walked in on her telling my brother all about my problems and the medicine I was taking, very rude not to mention breaking the Hippa law! And I walked in on her talking smack about me to the housekeeper and when tried to help her into the bathtub, ehich the housekeeper had asked me to do because she was unable to lift her, my mother tried to get me to leave and when I didnt she asked me if anyone had ever told me I was worthless. She eventually betrayed me in such a way that I could not deny it anymore and I stopped having any contact with her. She died shortly after that and the only thing I felt was anger that now I cant even go tell her off for what she did. That was 2 years ago, and I have not been to her grave, I have been working thru the anger snd oain and have been able to finally grieve a bit and feel sad Mostly I am confused and feel like everything I ever knew about life is a lie and my whole world is upside down. Also, I am realizing that the relationship I am in with the man of my dreams 🤨 bears scary resemblance to that with my mother. I have been in substance abuse recovery to know that this is just another stage of growth but it sure doesn’t feel like it to the core of my being I have to tell myself every day this is a feeling mot a fact, and just keep walking. I did not want to write all this snd feel ashamed and guilty to be talking about my mither this way, and to be “dumping” negativity on whiever is reading it. The only reason I am doing this is because I think it may help me and possibly someone else.
Thank you very much
Angela Bianca
Thank you for your vulnerability, Angela. I hope you find a way to express your grief and anger 💜
Considering the mothers day topic recently, i received multiple newsletters in my inbox about the topic. One of them was from dr Nicole LePera with a book recomendation.
Mother hunger by Kelly McDaniel.
Wanted to drop that here for all the people out here struggling with the same or similar struggle.
Lucky for me, the book is translated to dutch :D (and a bunch of other langauges) so i will definitely see if I can get my hands on a copy. Already started crying (again) by only reading the description of the book.
Beautiful! Thank you for sharing this Evelien – I recommended Mother Hunger in the ‘book recommendations’ section of the Healing the Mother Wound Journal along with a bunch of other wonderful reads. The name speaks to something primal 💜