The Mother Wound
As we continue on the journey of healing your inner child, it is important to address the role your parents played in the shaping of your worldly perceptions. I always start my clients with their mothers and what role they played in their upbringing. There are a number of reasons for this. Personally, I believe the mother's wound is the most important wound to address because any disconnection from her represents a disconnection from the feminine within ourselves. When we cannot accept the feminine and masculine aspects of ourselves, and hold them with love, we cannot truly embrace the whole picture of who we are. By working with and healing the wound created by the relationship with our mothers we can begin to learn what our true needs are and be the mother we truly need to ourselves. Our mothers also represent the connection to our own internal emotional worlds. If there is pain there, it blocks our ability to clearly navigate and feel our emotions, making it nearly impossible to heal the other wounds we carry.
By definition, the mother wound is the internalization of our own mother's unhealed trauma. We are carried in our mother's body for nine months, the first nine months of our worldly experience. Our first thoughts, feelings, and perceptions are experienced directly through her lens. As we know, trauma colors our everyday life so any of her trauma still clouding her reality is what we are going to internalize. For this reason, everyone has some sort of mother wound. It isn't necessarily about assessing "how severe" it is, but rather seeing where it manifests and nurturing ourselves there. Our mother's job is to teach us how to unconditionally love, nurture, and accept ourselves. Many of our mothers had this intention, but her own limitations stopped her from being able to show up for us in exactly the way we needed. Here are some ways the mother wound may manifest in your life
Resentment of the Feminine
The feminine represents the ability to just be, feel, and receive. If this was never modeled or offered to you, you may find yourself resenting the qualities of it. We cannot exist without the feminine, for it is what nurtures and allows us to be supported in the masculine(productivity and achievement). The denial of the feminine is extremely common in the world today, which is why there is so much burnout. We are taught to perform and never recharge. The resentment of the feminine can look different in everyone, but one way is the inability to "just be" or judgment of people who do so. A distaste for people who are emotionally healthy and can express themselves freely is also indicative of this. It shows that the natural and purposeful sharing and expression of emotion make you uncomfortable. This can also look like the denial of emotions in yourself and others, seeing them as weak or a waste of time. It may be because your mother didn't value and honor her emotional states so modeled that her value came from staying busy and ignoring her feelings, rather than just existing, as humans need to.
Another example of resentment of the feminine is the fear of being "too much" whenever any emotion or opinion is expressed. This is another behavior that we learn through how our mothers showed up. Perhaps she did express emotion and was criticized for it, but didn't stand up for herself and pushed it down. This taught us that if we express anything we will be overwhelming for others. Something else I also see is teetering between overwhelming emotional outbursts and emotional vacancy. Emotions are a natural part of life so if we aren't taught how to work through them we learn the push them down until they explode out of us.
A fear, hated, or resentment of motherhood or children may also come with a mother wound. This is a more severe expression of it, so slightly less common for people who didn't have extremely traumatizing childhoods. Subconsciously, we become so jaded and hurt by the way our mothers showed up that we are not able to see the joy children bring into the world due to our deep jealousy of what we did not receive. Of course, there are plenty of people who do not want to be parents for completely healthy reasons, but when it comes from a place of hatred and lack of respect for those that do that is where the problem lies. Motherhood is one of the most self-sacrificing and loving things someone can do so if there is a lack of respect for a woman that chooses to do that with her life is true resentment of the feminine. If there is a distaste for children it could be because it reminds you of just how painful your childhood was. There is also the possibility that you feel too inadequate and fear that you may hurt your children the way your parents hurt you. It all comes back to how hurt you are. You aren't broken or bad. That part of you needs nurturing.
Poor Boundaries
This particularly relates to boundaries around self-care. We need to create those boundaries in order to show up for others wholeheartedly. When we are constantly giving to others without any care for what we need, we are actually abandoning ourselves. If our mothers did not model this behavior for us, we can feel unworthy and not entitled to prioritize it in our lives. It can look like the inability to tell people you need time for yourself, caretaking at your own expense, the inability to say no, and people-pleasing. Another common behavior that goes along with this is mirroring or altering our own beliefs to mirror the beliefs of those around us.
Codependent Relationships
Our parents model to us what relationship dynamics are so if they were codependent we will model our own relationships after that. If we had a mother who constantly gave in to appease others it is likely that you do that as well. This can look like having a constant need to meet others' needs or basing all of your self-worth on how "happy" the other person is. This need to be needed comes from a fear of abandonment. We don't believe we are worthy of love for just being us so we learn that if we can secure ourselves as "valuable" to others then we won't be abandoned. This can create an extremely cruel inner dialogue, "If I don't do X, they won't love me anymore.
Unhealthy Relationship with Food and Our Bodies
We unfortunately live in a world where women are taught that in order to be loved or valued they need to meet a certain beauty standard. The message this sends to the subconscious is, "My body is not worthy of nurturing; only when I fit into X size can I nurture myself." Women are taught from a young age to betray the cues of their bodies in order to maintain a certain look. Something that we need to understand is, your mother's relationship with food and her body will be yours until you choose to heal. Our mother's job is to nurture, but how can she be truly attuned to us if she wasn't attuned to her own needs? This can manifest as negative self-talk, obsession with food or physical appearance, excessive exercise, restriction of food(or binging), the constant need for external validation, and connecting all of our self-worth to what our body looks like. It is all from a disconnection from what our body needs to feel nurtured.
Lack of Connection Our Intuition
Many of us had mothers who betrayed their own sense of intuitive wisdom. This taught us that we can't trust ourselves. This can manifest outwardly as a need for validation of all thoughts, ideas, and beliefs, fear of success because of our perception that it could make others feel small, self-sabotage, looking for others for direction, and the constant search for approval and validation of your own feelings.
Negative Relationships with Women
This can manifest in a few different ways. One way that I see to be extremely common in women-to-women friendships is the constant comparison and competition between each other. This can look like insecurity around other women as well. For example, you could only want to be in friendships where you don't feel threatened by them. An inability to trust women can also follow a mother wound. You may find yourself trying to connect with others through gossip rather than vulnerable common ground.
Something else that is extremely common is the idolization of a female figure in your life. This could be with a best friend or romantic partner. Due to your feeling of not having the mother you needed, you build up the idea of a female in your life. You shower her with love and attention and become to best friend or partner you imagine she wants you to be, betraying all your needs and beliefs. Inevitably you become exhausted with this and resentful, or she feels that you are putting too much pressure on her and exits this relationship. These relationships will repeat themselves and feel heart-wrenchingly painful, not because of your attachment to her, but because it is triggering the pain created by your mother.
