For the past two weeks, we’ve been talking about the ways we can heal and reparent our inner child. We’ve learned that you can have the most perfect parents in the world, and there will still be ways you’ve been hurt or unheard.

We might not all have male and female parent figures, but we are all designed to receive different kinds of nurturing, and therefore different kinds of wounding, from our mothers and our fathers. Today we’re going to talk about mother wounds.

A mother’s presence is a powerful thing.

It has the strength to uplift and inspire, and the potential to damage and disparage. Any kind of literal or emotional neglect can sow seeds in childhood that take all through adulthood to identify and root out. Like a weed left to grow for decades, it can grow as large as a tree.

For many people, their mother or mother figure is one of the most influential people in their lives. Mothers provide nurturing comfort and provide the most clear role model in a child’s life. When that ideal isn’t met– and it could never be perfectly met– this causes a mother wound. And while mother wounds are probably more prominent (and more painful) between mothers and daughters, all children can experience mother wounds.

We might hear more about “daddy issues,” but a mother-child relationship is the first relationship we experience and is as physical as it is emotional, as we all depend on our mothers to keep us alive while we’re still in the womb.

This is why a mother wound can be painful. It sows doubts not just about our self worth, but our very identity, who can be trusted, and how safe we feel in our world. At its core, the mother wound will cause us to question who we really are… and if who we really are is worthy of love.

When you look at your past, you may have memories of being belittled, misunderstood, or compared to your mother. All these can point to mother wound issues.

As a child, this may have created doubt in your true self versus your perceived self. You may have struggled with confidence in knowing your own mind, or it might have felt like you were simply a surrogate your mother used to fulfill her unrealized dreams.

You might have memories of initial childhood woundings, but when those weeds become trees, they can look very different than you might expect. The mother wound can later manifest as attachment issues, co-dependent patterns, depression and anxiety, disordered eating, and substance misuse.

Here’s a helpful resource I found that lists how your mother wound might manifest.

Paralyzing Perfectionism

Lack of Self Confidence

Self-Sabotaging Patterns in Interpersonal Relationships

A Cruel Inner Dialogue that Belittles and Berates

Lack of Motivation to Start or Complete New Projects

A Deeply Rooted Feeling of Unworthiness

Fear of Becoming a Mother

A Belief That Nothing Will Ever Be “Good Enough”

Not being your full self because you don’t want to threaten others.

Having a high tolerance for poor treatment from others.

Emotional care-taking.

Feeling competitive with other women.

Self-sabotage.

Being overly rigid and dominating.

Conditions such as eating disorders, depression and addictions.

While that’s how your wounds may look in adulthood, those likely stem from these mother wounds in childhood…

Often, you might feel forced loyalty for your mother. Other people, including your mother or other family members, might say things like:

“Look at what your mother did for you!”

“Your mother gave up everything for you!”

“How could you say that about your mother when she had it so much worse!”

“How could you choose to be (or not be) _________ when your mother worked so hard to get you where you are!”

Believing that these shaming messages are true repeats generational trauma that will only serve to hurt your own mom and your own generations to come.

**Forced forgiveness is just as common as forced loyalty.**

Of course, this is because we as a society value repression. People who push their anger down. Who dissociate. Who pretend everything is ok while they silently suffer.

So many people say “don’t be angry” or “anger is bad for you.” Without an understanding that anger is a healthy emotion. Anger lets us know when we’ve been violated or mistreated. It lets us know when boundaries are crossed.

Instead of forcing forgiveness, show yourself compassion. Let yourself feel exactly how you feel. Don’t allow anyone to dictate how you navigate what happened. This process is so, so important for healing.

All of your natural, primal reactions are your soul— your body saying: that wasn’t ok. And not everything is forgivable. Your body knows. Trust it. And you can show compassion without forgiving.

Some things are just unacceptable and admitting and honoring that is healing.

But personally, I like to look at forgiveness as accepting the fact that I cannot change the past. Accepting the fact that what happened happened and there is nothing I can do to change that. So for me forgiveness is more about accepting that a situation occurred that I wish hadn't occurred, or accepting that I didn't receive from somebody what I deserved to receive. For me, forgiveness is accepting the reality that the past cannot be different than it was, and we cannot move forward if we're still holding onto the pain of that past and wishing it was something else. And I’m FINALLY at a point in my life, after much healing work, where I can actually look at forgiveness also as, “Thank you for the experience.” Because I truly love and appreciate who I have become.

“my mother didn’t deserve
what she went through,
but neither did I.

I remember praying for her happiness
because if she was happy,
it would all be fine.

she was anger and sadness and terror.
she let the darkness
overtake her.

I don’t want to be like my mother.
I want to be happy before I die.

my mother didn’t deserve
what she went through,
but neither did I.”

— my father's eyes, my mother's rage

Ultimately, if you hear nothing else I say, you need to hear this: It is not your responsibility to heal your mother.

The truth is that no child can save her mother.

We don’t understand this as a child. We assume every hurt is caused by us and therefore ours to heal.

But the gift of adulthood is that we can recognize that some hurts just are. And we can mourn them on behalf of our mothers and recognize that no child is meant to heal his or her mother.

When we do the hard work of healing a mother wound, the risks are pretty high. Hurting your mother can feel like the biggest risk imaginable if your mothers’ opinion of you has dominated your life. And you will likely have to pull back from your mother or even have a season or lifetime of estrangement in order to find healing.

But here is a helpful list I’ve found of some things you gain when you heal your mother wound.

Most importantly, we reclaim that clarity and peace about who we are, who we’re not, and how we exist independently from others’ hopes and expectations.

At the end of the day, we can’t blame all our flaws on our mother wounds. That wouldn’t be truthful. And that’s because we all have the gift of choice.

We can choose to take the steps to heal our own mother wound and to make sure that we don’t pass on this hurt to our children. It’s a challenging journey, but it’s the beginning of empowerment.

If you have a mother wound, know that there is nothing wrong with you and that you are worthy of love.

Your mother wound is not a reflection of you, but instead something that your mother was lacking in your childhood, and maybe still does now.

If you want to learn how to heal the mother wound, I believe it’s one of the best decisions you could ever make and I’m so happy for you. I would love to share with you step-by-step how to heal the mother wound. Healing this particular wound will change your life in ways you can’t even begin to imagine. Join my program The Path Back to You and receive the entire workbook.