Facing the Mother Wound: A Letter of Healing for Daughters and Sons
Dear beloved one,
I am writing this note to you, daughter or son of a mother.
If the mother experience you’ve had in this life has been a
perfect one, this letter is not for you.
This letter is for those with a mother wound. A mother loss,
mother pain. Mother scars.
Which, I would say, is all of us, actually.
Why? Because mothers are human; there is no perfect parent.
There’s always a gap between what we expect or needed our mother to be and what
our mother can actually provide for us. Even with the “best” mother.
Mothers mother within a life context. What was your mother’s
circumstance when you were born? Was she living with mental or physical
illness, financial stress or poverty, marital or relational challenges,
addiction? Was she very young, or in older years? Did she have several
children? Was she very devoted to her career? Under a lot of stress? What was
her relationship like with her own mother?
How old were you when you realized that your mother – who
you might even consider your hero – was just another imperfect human being
trying to figure out life as best she can, just like you?
Maybe you didn’t get to know your mother; maybe your mother
is a question. Or a compilation of brief stories other people have told you
about her.
Maybe you do know your mother and still, she’s a “question,”
like a puzzle you can’t figure out, or something very far away.
One of my teachers says that our relationship with our
mother is our most significant relationship in life, that there is a spiritual
umbilical cord that tethers us to our mother forever in continuous
relationship. That it will always be a connection we have inside, and that we
can work with that cord, transform it, shape it – whether our mother is alive
or no longer in the physical, whether we are in actual relationship with her or
not.
For most of us, that invisible cord of mother connection
will have some pain in it, some loss or wound, like most relationships but
this one cuts much deeper. One of the most important things we can do is to
realize that no other relationship can address that wound or substitute for
it.
Most of us will try to do that, find a substitute; the
mother wound is so painful and so potent that it will send you out in the world
searching for a balm to heal it without even realizing that’s what you’re
doing.
But what you (hopefully) discover is that doing that is like
trying to make a rectangle fit into a circle. Except, imagine that your
rectangle is the only one like it in the whole world. Not only will the circles
not match it, but you could search the world over and you’ll never find a match
for that specific shape.
The mother place in us is an extremely specific shape. Even
the most amazing friend, partner, spouse, or child will never be a replacement
for or solve what you need in that area. Neither will even the most fulfilling
job or achievement, success, or anything else. We need to talk about this
wound, say this tenderly to each other more often:
Trying to get those other circles to perfectly fit this
particular rectangle will only make you experience double the heartbreak. Your
pain will be multiplied, and you’ll become drained of your power.
Even the healthy ways you try to love yourself must be
done with the knowing that those things won’t make that wound or pain
completely disappear. The best you can hope for is to become very familiar with
it; let your heart become known to yourself in that area, and allow
yourself to grieve in the presence of God. Light will inevitably come to shine
in that dark place through the comfort of the Holy Spirit, and the wound will
change – not go away, but change.
Even the healthy ways you try to love yourself must be
done with the knowing that those things won’t make that wound or pain
completely disappear. The best you can hope for is to become very familiar with
it; let your heart become known to yourself in that area, and allow
yourself to grieve. Light will inevitably come to shine in that dark place, and
the wound will change – not go away, but change.
 |
| Sunset on the Sea, John Frederick Kensett |
The work is to grieve. Let yourself become aware of what is
real and true for you as far as your mother story. Some people will need to
grieve a few times, some will need to do it for years, and some will need to
reach out for support because the well of their mother pain is quite deep and
maybe even ongoing. Whatever you need, it is okay.
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One of the hardest things about the mother wound is that it
can feel like a place where you’re all alone. Precisely because it’s so unique
to you and it’s not something that can be easily addressed. Here’s the good news. The mother wound is a doorway straight to a relationship
with God, if you allow it to be. It’s a pathway to the revelation that not only
are you not alone, you are in fact profoundly companioned, sustained, nurtured,
held, and nourished. By what? By God and by all of life. In ways that might
surprise you, if you let them. Marion Woodman, Jungian analyst and scholar of the divine
feminine, said, “Individuation begins with the painful recognition that we
are all orphans. And the liberating recognition that the whole world is
our orphanage.” Individuation is the process by which you become your own
person. It’s about forming your own identity, being who you truly are – which
is a sacred, spiritual process. It’s the journey to your inner light. Woodman
says that its starting point is the recognition that we are all orphans in some
sense. And that freedom comes when we realize that the world is full of
resources that can nurture us. That we are “orphans” isn’t the end of the
story. This is good news for mothers, too. The courage to face these truths opens you to the revelation
of God as mother, and that will manifest as an actual experience in your life
of being mothered by the sacred. If you look for it, you will find it,
because it is already there. The Great Mother who birthed you forth in your
mother is still holding you in the womb now. May Light shine ever brightly on your pathway, Tiffany |