Healing the Mother Wound: Reclaiming the Inner Mother
I was raised by a very busy single mother, who to her credit kept a roof over her children’s head. When I think about how hard that struggle was I have a lot of compassion for her. She did her best despite the fact that she was a damaged person herself. Like so many women back then there simply weren’t a lot of options and support. She did a lot with a little.
But.
When I try to remember a time when I felt close to her, or truly loved…I can’t. It wasn’t the busyness from her responsibilities that made her inaccessible, though for a single woman trying to raise two kids, that would be completely understandable. It was her lack of interest in things that were important to me, her dismissal of my thoughts, needs, emotions, and her narcissism. She carried the unbudgeable weight of generational trauma that would have required a lot of therapy on her part to put down. Instead through a lack of skill and her own deep trauma, she passed the burden onto me.
The mother wound can be created by many experiences—a mother who tries to manipulate, or control her children, or inherited from generations of abuse, neglect, and unconscious cruelty. In my mothers case, she received abuse from her own father, and spent a lifetime with undiagnosed mental illness which made being close to her impossible. I thought that my legacy was one of rage, resentment and disappointment directed at her and her treatment of me, but as I type this, I realize that it isn’t rage at all. It’s extreme grief—for the nurturing that I didn’t receive, for the impossibility of being friends with her as an adult, for all the memories that we could share but don’t, for the wisdom she could impart but doesn’t posses—for not having a mother at all.
And I know I’m not alone in this grief. But the truth is, the idea of a mother is simply a concept, an archetype of a compassionate, nurturing, person who loves you unconditionally. In reality, mothers come in all different ways. As children, we create an unspoken fantasy of what a mother should be, and many daughters are born to mothers that have the capacity to fulfill this idea of what a mother should be, at least in part. And that is enough. Expressing real love to your daughters, no matter how flawed is enough.
But many daughters like me have toxic mothers that let us down.
Western society places impossible standards upon mothers to be perfect and self-sacrificing at their expense. Despite all the obstacles and pressure many women manage to raise children who emerge into adulthood with a foundational sense of love.
The foundation of those who have the mother wound have no foundation at all. We are left to fend for ourselves with an empty tool box. We become people pleasers because we have no sense of self and are afraid of abandonment which leads to a life-long pattern of self-denial until we actively do the work to disrupt the unconscious behaviors of sacrificing our own needs.
There are days when this wound feels unfixable. It’s just so primal. No matter how much I do the work, there is a part of me that will always be broken hearted because I don’t have a mother who was capable of simply caring about who I am as a person, or as a daughter.
But I have learned that you can change the way you deal with this wound, and I’ve found that in doing so, there are parts that can be healed.
First, with clarity, let’s define what the mother wound is:
“The Mother Wound refers to the emotional and psychological pain carried by those who experienced a lack of nurturing, safety, or unconditional love from their mother. It can also stem from the ways a mother unconsciously passed down cultural expectations, limiting beliefs, or unhealed trauma.”
There are actions you can take to heal.
Much of the work is centered around learning who you are, what your needs are and then fulling those needs yourself. Additionally, learning to process the grief, anger, shame, or whatever emotions come up for you around your mother is helpful too.
Why do this work?
Emotional healing isn’t the only reason to work on healing the mother wound. I’ve found that discovering your true self and expressing your creative voice are tied to this wound. When you nurture the parts of yourself that hold these primal wounds from the love you never received but always wanted, those parts, no matter how much time has passed, receive that love. They drink it in because they are finally getting what they always wanted, and it doesn’t matter who provides it. You can be the mother you always needed. I’ve been on my healing journey for over twenty five years, and I know how possible it is to not only heal the mother wound, but also thrive as a result of doing the work.
Below, I’m listing some resources for you to explore. These are tools that helped me.
The Process:
- Coming into acceptance is the first part—acknowledging that you have a mother wound is key.
- Identify how the wound is expressing itself in you. Rage, shame, guilt, people pleasing, etc. Learn your behaviors that might stem from the mother wound.
- Identify your needs. This is actually really hard for people with this wound because we tend to be people pleasers, and meeting our needs can feel very uncomfortable. Start with simply acknowledging what your needs are. For example, I have a need for quiet and restorative rest. Sometimes I say no to another activity so I can take a nap, or read in quiet.
- Find ways to process your emotions around this wound. For example, when I feel enraged I sit with the feeling, observing how it feels in my body. You can cry, scream, or punch a pillow. What ever it takes to express the emotion in a healthy way.
- Nurture and mother yourself. I like journaling and inner child work for this, because first you have to identify what kind of relationship you want to have with yourself, but once that is discovered you can nurture yourself in the way you wish you had as a child.
Remember to be very gentle with yourself as you do this work. You are very precious and deserve to be nurtured.
Journaling Prompts:
Foundations: Understanding the Mother Wound
- What messages did I receive—spoken or unspoken—about who I had to be to receive love?
- What emotions were safe to express in my relationship with my mother? What emotions were unsafe?
- What did I most long for from my mother or maternal figure that I didn’t receive?
- What roles did I take on as a child to maintain harmony or safety?
- How did my mother model (or not model) self-worth, boundaries, or emotional expression?
The Inner Child Speaks
- If I could speak to my mother as my child self, what would I say?
- What does my inner child need to hear from me today?
- What did I need to be protected from—but wasn’t?
- When did I first learn that being “too much” or “not enough” was dangerous?
- What memory from childhood still holds a charge in my body? What happens when I describe it with compassion?
Reparenting + Reclaiming
- What kind of mother do I want to be to myself now?
- What does my version of inner nurturance look, feel, and sound like?
- What beliefs about myself or womanhood am I ready to unlearn?
- What would it feel like to give myself unconditional care?
- How can I create emotional safety for myself today, in small and consistent ways?
Ancestral + Archetypal Reflection
- What patterns have been passed down through my maternal line?
- If I imagine my mother as a woman, not just my mother, what do I notice?
- What do I carry that does not belong to me?
- Which feminine archetypes (e.g., The Empress, The Crone, The Wild Woman) can help me rewrite this story?
If you wish to explore further with a guide, I offer lots of supportive services.
