Living in Portugal, I experience two Mother’s Day every year. The Portuguese Mother’s Day honoring occurs one week prior to the celebration in the US.
The first one goes unnoticed by my family — they don’t live here, so it doesn’t register in their thoughts. The US Mother’s Day is celebrated with a video call, wishing me a happy day.
Truth be told, I don’t need that call. I’m pretty much the same with Valentine’s Day, Easter, Thanksgiving, and many other holidays. My interest in connections that are emotionally vibrant and intimate is not tied to Hallmark Holidays!
Beyond my personal ambivalence about Mother’s Day, I am deeply aware that the day is fraught with the unresolved mother wounds that dominate mainstream culture. Out of respect for those navigating that wound, I chose not to publish this on or around Mother’s Day.
When Mother Wounds Dominate Experience
Mothers are a big hairy deal, aren’t they? They heavily influence their children’s identity, self-esteem, self-awareness, authority, self-love, self-judgment, boundaries, sense of safety and belonging, and so much more.
Each woman’s ability to mother her children skillfully and lovingly is shaped by the relationship she had with her mother. Her mother’s ability to mother her daughter was deeply influenced by the relationship with her own mother. And so forth.
It took me years to figure out that I had a GIANT mother wound to resolve, and it took me quite some time to complete (I hope) the task.
I’ve reopened the wound repeatedly, and continued the work to evolve and heal each time. I’ve learned a lot about myself as a woman, a mother, a friend and a practitioner/teacher.
Over the years, I have mentored several women as they resolved their mother wound, supporting them as they let go of the story, shaking off the debilitating beliefs and emotions that the wound imparted.
Excising mother & mother figures
Alicia had a very difficult relationship with her mother. Her mother is a narcissist with limited education, a bad temper, low ambition, and frequently conveyed that her daughter’s role was to meet her needs.
As a result, Alicia struck out on her own at a young age, severing contact with her mother.
Several years after graduating from college, she married happily, began raising several children. She lives a life that is the polar opposite of what she experienced as a child. She consciously nurtures her children and supports their uniqueness.
You would think that she had it all.
From the outside, she did.
However, the invalidation and lack of nurture she experienced with her mother tainted virtually every relationship she had with older females.
Older women were unknowingly expected to fulfill Alicia’s unmet, unconscious needs. The unstated goal: to heal the festering mother wound, fill the gap, provide Alicia with the care and nurture she did not receive.
When a women failed to meet these unstated needs, she was excised.
Mother figure after mother figure fell by the wayside. A new mother figure would be seduced into the role, and the cycle continued to repeat itself.
Eventually, with the help of a therapist, Alicia recognized that her mother wound had scarred over, creating a sweet, almost childish demeanor on the outside, and a cold, unforgiving rage on the inside.
Healing the Mother Wound
When she came into my practice to dissolve the pattern, she was looking for a more effective way to relate to herself and to other women. Her neglect and abandonment story was embedded in the first, second and third chakras – those that are tied most directly to early experiences.
As she learned to identify and clear the energy in her chakras and aura, to acknowledge and release the toxic, stifling patterns, she began to resolve her mother wound.
Over time, she stopped holding the older women in her life accountable for meeting her needs. She understood that the childish demeanor and internal cold rage were a honeytrap — set up to lure in women who would take care of her, only to be ‘killed off’ when they failed to meet every need.
She organically shifted her demeanor from saccharine sweetness to authentic kindness. The rage dissolved as she embraced the responsibility of meeting her own needs. The tendency to judge and discard others migrated into genuine facility to nurture herself, and her relationships.
A mother wound need not set the tone for the rest of your life. Rather, it can be a powerful catalyst for letting go of old stories. It can support you to consciously create a life that resonates with who you are, what you value, and how you’d like to relate to yourself and others.
Lends new meaning to the idea of a Happy Mother’s Day! 🙂
