I want you to take a moment and think about the kind of relationship you had with your mother.
What did it look like? How did 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. 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. And today we’ll explore how to do that.
What is the Mother Wound?
I have always had a very strained 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 household, and reverence because she was so self-sacrificing. 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. 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. I could always sense this lurking disappointment and resentment bottled up within her. I believe a part of her felt like she was a failure, so the only area she could excel in was child-rearing. This was only amplified by her strict Christian beliefs which traditionally dictate that a woman’s place is the house, not the art studio.
As I got older the admiration and affection which I held towards my mother became tainted with anger, sadness, and even disgust. Although she was extremely generous with her time and effort, her emotional coldness was distressing to me. She made it very clear that I was the child and she was the parent. There was no equality or middle-ground on which we could meet. The only time when I ever felt like my mother’s friend and confidant was when I did everything she wanted me to do, like a perfect little daughter.
These days, I don’t speak with my mother except via text message a handful of times a year. She made it very clear to me that leaving the Christian faith and allowing myself to love Mateo was a severe betrayal. Yet despite the animosity between us, she still reminds me that “my family loves me” which in truth a part of me wonders whether such words are written with a Christian agenda in mind, or out of real sincerity.
Our Mother Wounds are traumas that pass down from generation to generation that have 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 specifically focus on our mothers.)
If you suffer from the Mother Wound you will experience the following problems:
- (For females) constantly comparing yourself with, and competing against, other females
- 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
- 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 permission on an unconscious level to truly live life
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. 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 mother’s angst.
Where Does the Mother Wound Come From?
Women have lived under patriarchal reign 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 important that we realize that no mother can be perfect, no matter how hard they try, and use this knowledge to generate 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.
Inner Child Journal:
Go on a journey through the mountains and caves of your heart. Befriend, heal, and nurture the broken child within. Go to the root of your pain and transform old patterns. This is intense and powerful work!
You may like to ask yourself, “What damaging beliefs and expectations do I have about my mother which 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 and 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.
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 big 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. 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.
So share with me below: what was life like with your mother? Do you still carry unresolved pain from your childhood, or are you in the process of healing the Mother Wound?
I was in rock bottoms basement last February. This spiral had started and stopped over the past several years. I knew I couldn’t go on and I had to figure this out. It actually started when I saw myself as a child, tears streaming down my face, emotions of worthlessness, sorrow, and fear. I started with that. I went to therapy, she just listened to me ramble and said very little. I walked on my job of 3+ years after waking up at 2 am and a internal voice said, “what are you staying for, get out before they damage you.” Walked into work that morning and handed in everything and walked out. Then starting asking why whenever I felt uncomfortable. My marriage was failing and I had stopped being a mom to my son. That sad little girl kept nudging me. It was long and brutal but the last 2 weeks all the dots started connecting. Yesterday I was exhausted, during a nap had a dream. Basically, I was dragging myself around by my ponytail and every time the one being dragged tried to say something the one dragging knocked her out. At the end, I finally got free and was going to join my people. When a woman, sorrowful, warm, loving, stepped in, grabbed my hands, looking me up and down said “Lilith where have you been?” Spotted my new wrist tattoo while rubbing it said, “oh baby it’s so dark.” I started to try and explain it to her and she said “I know baby, I now. Don’t worry your home.” I woke up confused but filled with love and wanting to try. I had never heard of shadow work or healing your inner child. I did this through initiation. The dream was so vivid and I couldn’t let it go so I googled and landed on shadow work and healing your inner child. Today I can recount the dream in vivid detail and still have that feeling regarding the mother figure and finally feel free. Thought I would share
I have been having the hardest time of my life . My whole world shattered and I’ve been relearning everything . I couldn’t understand what was happening or how to tell others til today when I real about awakening and it brought me to shadow work which I’m finding very interesting as I’ve been through a lot of other extensive ways of trying to irradiate it instead of work with it . The mother wound is a big one and I’m hoping to find true healing & freedom through identifying and working with it . I have been cutting people out of my life permanently at a fast rate who are unhelpful to my process which now realize is called a spiritual awakening or ascension.
I hope you’re feeling a little better since you wrote that comment Grace – spiritual awakenings can feel devastating, but they are such a beautiful and profound opportunity to find your true path in life. Sending lots of love ♡
I was adopted at birth, in the 70’s, when the only kind of adoptions were closed adoptions. I think that creates a mother-wound of a different kind? My own mother (the one who raised me) was often stressed, and she did expect to be respected, but she was also loving, and willing to teach things, and warm, and I don’t feel like I’ve been deeply wounded by her, I just know that she isn’t the person that gave birth to me, and that wasn’t really a subject that was open for discussion. It’s just how are family was. So of course there’s a huge hole where the “other mother” (as it’s so perfectly worded in Coraline) is. And that hole is a wound that is difficult to fill, let alone stitch closed so it can heal, but I’m working on it.
Hi Julie, I hear you. And yes, being adopted and not knowing your birth mother is absolutely a mother wound. I hope this article has inspired you with methods to handle this wound moving forward. Lots of love ❤
YES this is me. I never felt I was allowed my emotions, and also felt responsible for her bad moods. She was controlling and cold and also hysterical.
Issues like having friends that were energy place holders for proud patriarchs. Although they had nothing to show up for themselves they read books about war, seem to know it all and are in fact little boys wanting to return to the womb of a woman/mother figure. The child on the potty I would call it. It is very distracting to work with the masculine energy in oneself, for this is the Wound of Adam. The Womb-Man. The One who did the job without Eve and had no real woman beside him anymore, but only a fantasy woman whom he could shape and wish for. Here form and creation (where Adam is a form builder and eva or Isis is the Soul/spirit) controlled womens spirit, crushed it into a thousand mirrors of reflections.
One big issue I encountered was that because the Old Adam with his Womb-Man Void (space where he hides and stuffs everything he thinks is his) keeps Spirit (fantasy woman/mother/angel/whore) of women so tight, that this spirit shatters. when women go into self reflection this can exactly be a trap. For they have the feel that they are these shattered reflections. Then they try to heal these reflections and paste them together, trying to become ‘whole’ again and ‘wholy’. But the truth is that they are not reflections at all. These reflections are to do with the Adam Wound who as a dark void, reflects the stars of heaven but is a God Glass Ceiling, instead of a firmament of Stars. So he keeps the’stars’ firm in his hand and when women identify with the archetype of isis of eve, then they are part of the fantasy woman creation, reflections instead of flesh and blood. Then they become part of his story instead of their own real story. And even identifying with Eve or Isis is not the real thing. These ladies represent stories of creation and they are not the same as your Sovereign Creative Energies. Besides in these times, we are not longer continuing the old stories and ways, so this empty chapter has a look alike void same as Adams Void. It is about becoming real in this life, for this has never been done in eons.
And for a long time that was safe for women (also men who suffer in their feminine energies or in incarnations where men were also women) to rather be a reflection in good and bad through the eyes of Adam, for then they did not have to feel their bodies and the pain.
Breathing deeply brings in the non archetype spirit of the breath and this makes you feel the body instead of holding your breath so that the adam guy is also in the illusion that you can be captured at all. Somehow women find it safer to delure themselves as much as they do men. That is how powerful we actually are. Especially, since it was Sophia who created the man who was on earth a ‘spitting image’ of the Yang, Sun male energy she fell out of to come and start the ‘game’. But then the ‘spitting image’ became a spitfire dragon, spitting on his own reflection for not being real. And since women were not real…….they spat on that too. It is about loss of bodily consciousness.
Ofcourse women have suffered and still do! But so do men and actually we have to step out of their dreams about us and leave behind the medical and cosmetic mirror, and start living. to start living does not mean go shopping all the time or to drink your head off in cafes. To actually start practicing for real, to breathe, to be, to act. From a reflection, into an image that is animated, going through that animated image (not animating others, now you re animate yourself) into True Presence. Into ANTAHKARANA.
The God Glass Ceiling was once the Dream of Divine Masculine and Divine Feminine. We started to call them Father/Mother. Dreams are made of images. And the Divine Feminine came down and created, leaving her counterpart in the heavens. When she created Adam, the shaper of form, it became the maker of form which is totally different.
Some types of religion have intercepted the true interpretation and only called this dream: Father. Therefore form became a sin. Being on earth was a ‘mistake’. Like a mis take in a movie scene. Since Genesis we got stuck in ‘Take One’ from the movie and the One who takes, does not form, but takes, makes and breaks.
Now that the Divine Feminine has returned it is her job to become real. No longer a reflection as earlier described. To make the dream for each of us come true. We no longer then are avatars, but we then ended the game of old creation ourselves. And then we ARE. And this has not been done before. Many thanx by the way for your beautiful article!
Beautifully presented written work on an ugly experience. 3 years no contact and still trying to work through, beyond and up from the past. Thank you for your wisdom so elegantly articulated.
I watched my mom get physically, mentally and verbally abused. I at a young age tried to take some of her hurt and pain away. She never went to any form of counseling. When my parents were divorcing I told the jury I wanted to live with my dad. Our roles have always been reversed. She was a chronic alcoholic and addict. It wasn’t until recently that I found I was holding onto things that happened to her inside of me. For me it is about acceptance and forgiveness. Also, finally allowing myself to know I have nothing I need to prove to my mom. A lot of things would be said while she was drinking that left me feeling like I had to gain her approval. I have come to terms with all of these.
My parents were catholic but not really practicing Catholics. She was constantly pregnant while my father was alive. He died young at 53. Massive heart attack. I think from poor internal heart health and because he was a very angry man. It wasn’t until after he died that I developed a relationship with him. He still does pop into my life. Moving things/tools of his I have moving them around. There was 6 boys in the family who could do no wrong and 3 girls which none of us had any kind of relationship with her. Strangely tho when she became old and developed dementia it was me that spent 4 yrs caring for her. We developed a different kind of relationship then. Like we switched roles. I became the carer/ mother figure and she the child. She is now in full time care and slowly loosing her memories. Especially short term. I don’t know how to make sence of it. I feel more of a bond with her now. I think her failures as a mother helped me become a great mother to 4 daughters. They are all loving caring wonderful women I have a mostly fantastic relationship with them. And they all care deeply for each other where my siblings have no realationship with each other Life is so strange but I’m grateful everyday for my beautiful daughters who have given me 9 beloved grandchildren. So for her lack in a way I’m grateful because it made me the mother I am
Recently lost my mother. One of 9 children, I Knew I was in her way, she loved us all, martyred so much of her Self to be her best. She suffered deep depression & sudden bouts of creativity & inspiration. Always the artist she was the favorite mom on the block. But the everydays sapped her, rushed her. Though all my siblings deny she would say this, I remember Distinctly apologizing for being in the way & her response still haunts me at 58, ‘oh you were Born in the Way’ .
She was so loved. And I’m not sure this qualifies as the mother wound, but it resonates too deep to deny.
I never even considered my relationship with my mom or my moms wounds to have such a profound effect on my life and as im wroting this I m filled with such grief as I can now see my wounds and how they have affected my own daughters. I am unable to finish this whole article as it has hit me so hard emotionally and I am unable to deal with the different emotions all at once. Some kind of instruction would be helpful and I have a good mom but we have a sometimes difficult relationship however she can be one of my very best friends.
This hit me very close to home.
I was fortunate that my mother was good to me and loving when I was young, she had her lil flaws, but she was overall so good. She was everything I wanted to be when I was little.
But as I grew a darker side of her began to show. She lost her father and couldn’t take the sadness so she turned to alcohol. She became so mean to me verbally, so touchy with me as well. I thought it couldn’t get worse until she lost her mother on top of it.
I remember riding the bus home so scared to get off because I knew she would be drunk. I knew she would drink drive with me in the car, or worse, I would have to drive. (I was newly 16)
So many memories, so many things burned into me that I still need to heal from.. I still long for that long, loving mom. But this article was very well put, she is not coming back. The time for healing is now. :)
As a mental health therapist, and age 52, I can’t believe that I’m just now learning about my own path, relationship with my wounded mother (and my own wounds), and the impact on my children. Thank you for introducing this subject in such a compassionate, concise and informative way.
This topic has opened my eyes, l recieved no mother love or care, l had a dreadful childhood, my needs were not met, total neglect. I asked to be put in a children’s home at 15, and from then on formed my own existence. I married had two children who l raised successfully in all areas other than showing love. This has resulted in so much insecurities over the years between myself and my daughter to this day we are estranged we said terrible things to each other, she had a self fulfilling prophesy that l did not want, care about her or love her, but nothing was further from the truth, so l gave up telling her l did in the end l said ok l don’t love you, never realising at the time the impact those words would have for her, even though my mother did not want me or love me. I did not see my mother for 40 years, l wonder if that’s the reason l can’t see my mothers face, it’s just blank. (All this is in brief).
This concept is so interesting and I want to thank you for bringing it to my attention. I’m 50 now and my mother has since passed. She was abandoned by her mother who was abandoned (through early death) of her mother. My mother did the best that she could for such a wounded child, but we did have rough times. I never felt that she loved me. One time she told me she wished I had never been born. It’s funny as a kid how you just reject that and try to rise above it for your self worth. I’ve always felt that I was worthy but I must have rejection and abandonment issues lurking below. How could I not? Shortly after she died, I had a dream where she came through the door of my house to see me and I grabbed for her hand. She withdrew her hand and left quickly. That must have been my subconscious telling me about what’s there. I always thought it was a literal spiritual dream, but I think it was what was inside me. I’m going to continue to explore my inner child. I have no idea where it will take me but I’m thankful for your writing and will purchase the journal. I had a spiritual awakening 20 years ago. It was an awful dark night and I think now (after reading y’alls writing) that the demon that appeared in my face in the mirror that scared the living daylights out of me was actually my Shadow. I burned a lot of ego off back then but failed to follow the Shadow as I had no idea what it was back then. I’m a slow learner. Lol. Thanks for reading if anyone is reading and be well.