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.
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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:
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
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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.
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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My mother has been gone for 14 years now. In spite of the fact that I am in my 70s I still miss her presence. Your theme here on Mother’s Day inspired me to write a letter to my mother and it brought her close to me. My life growing up was not always a bed of roses. My mother suffered at times with mental breakdowns and I grew up with many insecurities. In spite of that, I am still grateful for the mother I had. She taught me many things and gave me all the love she was capable of giving. I am grateful for your invitation to write about ‘what came up’ with my thoughts and feelings on my mother. Here it is; ‘Dear Mom, Happy Mother’s Day, If you were here I would show you around my garden. I know you would enjoy the tour. I imagine you, hale and healthy, while I show you all the different beds. I would tell you about each plant, and how they grew from babies. An appropriate theme! I know you would enjoy seeing and listening to the stories. You were always a good listener. Better than me, I think. I don’t ever remember you interrupting me when I spoke, even when I complained and sought your sympathy. That you looked past my petty complaints reinforces the fact that you loved me unconditionally. I would invite you to smell the lilacs, the new roses already beginning to bloom, the heady scent of the wisteria covering the shed. I’d point out that this year I planted lavender and alyssum outside the front door so I could smell them each time I entered or left the house. I would love to share with you these delights and know you would be delighted too. Writing here, brings you close to me. I feel your presence. It is as bountiful and blooming as the flowers, your enduring love. Thank you for being my mom. I do my best to carry on the legacy of your love – to myself, my family and beyond.’
Thank you for this article! I feel the greatest gift and curse of being a mother and mothering is that one’s experience of one’s own personal mother is also the unconscious attitude one carries into the world toward the world, the archetypal Mother. If the mother is experienced as controlling and critical, the world seems controlling and critical. If the mother is experienced as giving and supportive, the world seems forgiving and supportive even in the face of actual hardship and trouble. I learned this most deeply by having my two beautiful daughters. I was raised with a fair amount of brutal physical and emotional abuse even though I also enjoyed an upper middle class life of privilege, and I am far from perfect, so when I failed and subjected my girls to unfair expectations and behaviors because those attitudes mirrored “what I knew” it was my spiritual practice to sincerely apologize and amend my behavior and expectations. This was very hard sometimes, because who doesn’t want to be right all the time? My rewards were empathy toward my own mother (who is objectively quite perfect and also quite mean to the point of cruelty, probably a split personality) and children who trust me and the Mother world to support them even if that support is a process. As I transform my attitude toward my mean mother and the cruel world, my mother transforms into more integrated, understood, person, and the world reveals its many mysterious sides. My girls are thriving young adults, and I am grateful for the opportunity to put my painful childhood to good use. I expect you are a great mother and your child will benefit from all the wisdom you have earned.
Dear Aletheia, my heart goes out to you knowing how hard it can be at times to be a young mother without the loving and caring support of your own mother. I lived through it myself. And even the deep well of self love and the capacity to reparent yourself does not mask the existence of this deep hole the lack of motherly care is still tearing against the natural order of nature and life. If that makes sense. I have accepted reality and embraced my inner strength and growth that has developed over decades of dealing with my family’s transgenerational trauma. Today, I carry forgiveness, understanding and compassion for my mother to whom I have no contact in 6 years +, and I am still grieving. Not the past with the lack of unconditional love and care from her but the status quo of no existing common ground between us to have any form of contact. Thank you for all you do and the best to you being a conscious loving caring imperfect mother of Sage. Lots of love from this part of the 🌎.
Mothers day would usually make me feel angry. Because its presented as a fact, that everyone has an healthy, and everlasting loving relationship with the mother. In what is being presented, there seem to be no room for the exception. That might infuriate me even more, as being bombarded with the chocolates, flowers and fluffy teddybeers that say my mother is the greates and most loving…. bla bla.
As a child, making mothers day presents at school i was not able to write down for the most lovingly…. or whatnot. It didnt felt right or authentic. Yesterday i was reading a similar short article about when you dont have a fuzzy relationship with the female parent. And experiencing heavy emotions is ok. Reading your email is actually making me burst out in tears for the first time about the mother day topic.
With the amount of new learned knowledge and understanding that comes along with the spiritual awakening/spiritual growth, it has become harder and more confusing to acknowledge the feelings and emotions that are actually going on beneath the surface. Because you understand that she did the best with what she learned and experienced herself. She is a victim of a crappy childhood as well, religious conditioning and generational trauma passed on etc.
It’s almost like, as if the pain and emotions are not allowed anymore because of the understanding is here. As if there is no space for the both of them at once.
It is causing this limbo of not being able to feel hurt, sadness or anger for not being loved and cared for.
The wish for a ‘mother’ figure a gave up long time ago, due to realizing there is a likely chance she will never change.
There is still this part of me that just want to be held, comforted and taken care off. Being safe and accepted in someone’s presence and just appreciated for my existence.
Being able to let my whole armour, guard, castle walls down, dont have to take care of e-v-e-r-y-thing alone! and just allowed to Be.
You point out something intriguing, Evelien, that the more time you spend on the spiritual path, the harder it is to cling to the role of “you’re bad and I want to punish you.” More empathy and understanding develops, which also has the impact of diminishing the anger and resentment (which is born of a two-dimensional, black-and-white thinking perspective). Rest assured that the anger and hurt is still there. I’ve found that the inner teenager carries a lot of this rage. I recommend that you explore the topic of reparenting, as that can help you to touch the rage and grief within. Lots of love <3
Thank you for the positive and profound words of wisdom. This has meant an abundant new ways of searching and looking into this topic. Much love and light to you on your growth path of being a Mother. I salute you. Blessings to you Sallyjane Vosloo
Thank you Sally for your kind words. Much love to you 💜
Hi, thanks for this contemplation about motherhood in general. Makes me think about how I feel about my current relationship with my mother.
I went through many stages, including blaming her and not seeing how she influences me, trying to help her heal her wound and so on before I decided to fully put myself on a pedestal and stop talking to her. It was a bold move since I still live with my parents but will be moving out in a few weeks. But I managed to rewrite the toxic beliefs about myself and about how I should behave and what I should be to be enough for my parents. I started to set boundaries in absolitely every relationship in my life which led to breaking contact also with other relatives.
It was hard but I’m finally feeling the effects of my choices on my mental health and life in general. I feel like I’m finally starting to live my life again. I’m meeting new people who share similar experiences and are able to spread love instead of hatred.
But the situation I’m in is still super chaotic. I still experience guilt, sadness, rage or tons of other emotions. I’m slowly deciding that breaking contact with the majority of my relatives wound be the best choice. It takes a whole lot of strenght to do it but internally I feel it’d be the best thing I’d ever do for myself. I’m still learning to trust the process and also to trust the world. Because that’s what my parents were the most scared of: uncertainty and the world itself. It’s chaotic but trusting the process is the key here.
Good luck on your journey!
Something I want to share that i only learned in 2023, while i had to cut contact in 2013.
“All the knowledge you need is within”
Sometimes it takes a short pause, a moment to check back in with yourself before the answer becomes clear.
Since i learned this, and start trusting that eventually i would know what to do, it has become easier to trust my insincts and the process. 🙏🏼
Thank you, this is what I’ve heard of already from some people. But it’s nice to hear that from even more people :D.
Thank you for this wise reminder, Evelien!
What you’re doing is courageous, Tery. I know because I’ve experienced it too. It sounds as though you are stepping into your power and making a decision that will enrich your mental and emotional health. Keep trusting the process and your own inner voice of wisdom. <3
Thank you Aletheia, it really means a lot :)
U are right on about the Mother Wound. All of them I personally have experienced in my life! I’ve did a lot of self reflection and healing. I personally practice Buddhism which has taught me to take responsibility for my life and my own happiness! Having the type of mother I had is my karma from my past existences of life. So in essence for me to transform my life I must look at life in its totality not just the present. Anyway not to say I am perfect now or my feelings about my Mother and things that happened between us will ever be understood totally, I now can say I don’t have resentment or hatred towards her nor do I truly love her. Yet I am grateful to her for giving me life and quite honestly helping me to become the human being I am now. See without me having to deal with all of these feelings that I had to deal with from having her as a mother I would not have had the qualities I inherited from her to challenge my purpose in this life and help others to do the same. Also quite frankly I would not have run into Nam Myoho Renge Kyo , the Mystic Law that enables me to transform my negative karma, use my good karma and attain Enlightenment just as I am in this lifetime!
“without me having to deal with all of these feelings that I had to deal with from having her as a mother I would not have had the qualities I inherited from her to challenge my purpose in this life and help others to do the same” – well said, Jim, and very insightful. There is a term: “the sacred wound” which describes what you speak about here so well. Thank you for sharing how you’ve managed to approach healing this wound. :)
Difficult. My mom grew up in the 1930ies/40ies in Germany, her father being a devoted Nazi. She had one younger brother (not alive anymore, my mom is, though, she’s 94. I am 61). She grew up to belive that girls are inferiour, her father (my grandfather) used to say that girls should be seen but not heard. Means girls were not allowed to raise their voices or speak up for themselves. Girls were there to serve the men. My mom then married my father quite late, which in my eyes was the biggest mistake she could have made. He was broken, too, by the war and everything, and didn’t know any better than to blame it all on her. And, being brought up the way she was, she took everything from my father without complaint but grew fatter and fatter. Eating was the solution for her. In my teenage years I wished they would divorce, and despised her for her weakness, though she was always kind to us kids and did whatever she could for us to have a good childhood. She started her life 10 years ago, aged 84, when my father finally died. At least she did, I feel relieved that she doesn’t have ro bear my father anymore, though it was her decision to stay with him. And she got more relaxed and more and more herself.
I myself haven’t been a good mother. Being single-parent, very often I was too tired and exhaused to meet the needs of my kids. They have both had their issues, it was hard for them, my son has stopped contact to me. He is right, I haven’t been a good mother.
Family in and of itself is a difficult thing. To this day I don’t know how to deal with this. Glad to have a partner now who has made similar experiences.
One has been enjoying nourishing food at home with family without the burden of mom cooking and serving. The other has been loosing control of mom’s insistence that I always be around and near her during her insecure times.
Enjoy the feast and your independence :)
This is so spot on! One of the biggest side effects for me was love addiction where you keep falling for unavailable people so they can reject you. This is because subconsciously you equate rejection with love and so you are trying to rewrite the script by finding an unavailable person who won’t reject you. In general, unlearning a lot of core beliefs about love was a big and necessary task for me. It was such a massive undertaking, I’ve written a book about it :) I’ve done a lot of healing and I am starting to let go. I just don’t want to harbour all of these negative feelings anymore. I am in my 40s, it’s time to let go and accept what is. I have drawn my boundaries by going minimal contact but I’ll see if I can expand them from the place of love and give her what she could not give me – unconditional love.
“This is because subconsciously you equate rejection with love and so you are trying to rewrite the script by finding an unavailable person who won’t reject you.” – you explain this so well, Lola. Congratulations on your book, too 💜
I have been on the journey of healing my very deep mother wound for many years and there were times It felt like it was all consuming and I would never get through and see light at the end of the tunnel. My mother was trying to live her own unfulfilled dreams through me, making me her puppet without own sense of self, denying me own needs, emotions, aspirations…when I hit rock bottom in my own adult life and started searching for my truth I discovered how very deeply I had been traumatized by both my parents and for a long while I was defined by it. I couldn’t shake the victim mentality for the longest time. It was the most painful process to learn self accountability and start to heal the wound of self worth through slowly finding my sense of self, self love and self worth on a basis of self compassion. I would never have succeeded without the love and understanding of my husband and son. The integration of all wounded inner child parts is an ongoing process with many layers but it is possible and rewarding and for me one of the experiences in life with the greatest opportunity for growth imaginable.
Thank you for sharing your journey of healing here, Susanne. What you write about the victim mentality is so true and something I’ve had to face directly too. Taking self-accountablity and moving from victim to survivor/healer is key. I appreciate you posting this!
I still have a very tumultuous relationship with my mother. She showed no emotional support, no love quite frankly at all, she didn’t like me at all. She only showed love and affection to my brothers. I was never good enough. Always compared me to them and still does to this day at 44 years old. She treats me like a 5 year old. It’s quite sickening. She’s selfish and everything is about her. I refuse to talk to her on the phone anymore will only text. She lives an hour and a half away thank gosh so I only go there a couple times a year so my kids can see her only because they ask to. If the behavior was in the past, childhood trauma I could move past it but it’s still happening that’s what I’m having a hard time with. That’s what I’m stuck moving past. She just doesn’t care to change no matter what I say.
I’m so sorry to hear this, Erin. May you find peace in this healing path 💜