Heather* got home from vacation, feeling exhausted and filled with mixed emotions. She had planned the experience for months, including the special places and things she loves to do, with her family, especially her mother. She was especially excited because they were going to her emotional “home” – the place in all the world where she feels happiest. And she was especially excited to share this place with her mom. They had vacationed together before, and it had sometimes been difficult, so Heather was especially careful in her planning, and hopeful that this time would be different.
Heather and her mom enjoyed many of the things they did, and Heather was so grateful to be able to share her special place with her mom. It was also difficult, and Heather felt so saddened and frustrated by the reappearance of old patterns and wounds that surfaced almost from the beginning of the vacation. She was triggered by things her mom said or did; things that weren’t intended to be hurtful, and that wouldn’t have been to others, but they were to Heather. She ended up feeling triggered, hurt, angry and upset much of the time they were together. This colored the entire experience for her as well as the vacation for everyone else in her family.
Heather also felt exasperated and frustrated because she has “worked on” her relationship with her mom – a lot. She admires her and loves her, and they share many things in common; yet she has never felt secure with her mother, probably from her earliest childhood. And this fills Heather with feelings of deep sadness, anxiety, loss and yearning – like there is a hole in her heart that she hasn’t yet been able to heal.
Heather’s mother, Chloe*, loves her daughter deeply, and also yearns to have a happy, secure, loving and fun relationship with her, in the present. Heather was born early in her parents’ marriage, and becoming a mother and learning to be a mom was challenging for Chloe. Unbeknownst to Chloe at the time of Heather’s birth, Chloe had early childhood attachment breaks and childhood trauma that impacted her ability to securely bond with her daughter, become attuned to her emotionally and meet her needs. Carrying and coping with these unknown and unhealed traumas from her own early life, Chloe had to work hard to provide the emotional constancy, nurturing and care Heather needed.
Through the years of Heather’s growing up, there were other challenges too, for both Heather and Chloe, that further impacted their mother-daughter secure bond, and Chloe’s ability to be attuned and provide the nurturance that Heather needed, and for Heather to feel secure, and trust that her mother would reliably meet her needs.
Heather is married now, with children of her own, and echoes of this pattern show up in her relationship with one of her children, whom she struggles to understand, and be emotionally attuned and at ease with. This deeply troubles her, and she works extra hard to be a good mom to this child.
Both Heather and Chloe are emotionally-smart, highly intelligent, educated, resourceful women, who love each other and their families. Both deeply want this pattern between them to be healed and transformed. Both of them have proactively been on a path of personal and relationship healing and growth for some time, including in their relationship. It astounds them that as much as they have healed and grown, though lessened, this pattern was still repeated between them.
What is at the heart of the relationship pain and challenges between Heather and Chloe? And why, with all they have already done to heal their relationship, is it still frequently so painful between them?
The Mother Wound is The Invisible Relationship Injury Hidden in Plain Sight
The Mother Wound is a relationship injury and trauma, which affects the secure attachment and bond between mother and child. Women and men can both experience the Mother Wound, though it is often expressed by men differently than it is by women. It is usually multi-generational. It begins often in a child’s earliest childhood when her needs for nurturance, protection and guidance by her mother, are not well met. It can begin before birth, because the physical and emotional environment of the baby before birth impacts her physical, neurological, and emotional growth and development within her mother’s womb.
The Mother Wound includes multi-generational trauma from previous generations’ Mother Wound trauma that is passed to the child through the DNA. It includes other threads from other unhealed generational traumas that impact a mother’s own ability to feel safe in the world. A mother’s own unmet childhood needs for safety, nurturance, protection and guidance can impair her ability to be attuned to her child, and in turn, to provide a safe, nurturing, protecting and guiding environment for her child. In these ways the Mother Wound is passed on to multiple generations of children, until women, such as Chloe and Heather, step up to heal it deeply in their own lives, heal and transform their own mother-daughter relationship, and ultimately transform the legacy of the bond between mother and child in their mother line.
The roots of the Mother Wound go deep into patriarchal cultural imprinting that devalues women and girls. Since the beginning of patriarchal systems, this cultural imprinting has overtly and covertly centered men’s and boy’s needs, rights, preferences and well-being ahead of women’s and girls’. Patriarchal cultural imprinting presumptively gives men and boys more value and worth in families, marriages, and society. Patriarchal cultural imprinting presumptively gives men and boys dominance and control over women and girls. This imprinting often sacrifices women’s and girls’ universal human needs and equal rights with men and boys, for safety, nurturance, protection and guidance, innate value and worth, and inherent right to personal sovereignty, self-determination, education and Self-development.
For these reasons, the Mother Wound is a core wound, with roots going back thousands of years, and everyone on Earth has some degree of impact from it. It is one of the fundamental ways that the Patriarchy Core Wound™ is experienced, expressed, and passed from one generation to the next.
Healing the Mother Wound is a significant part of the way we heal and gain our freedom from the Patriarchy Core Wound™. Healing the Mother Wound restores women to our experience and knowledge of ourselves as Divine Beings. Healing the Mother Wound individually and collectively as women, is a significant part of the way we are bringing in the change of the Age in which we are engaged.
For all these reasons and more, it is the collective calling and zeitgeist of the time in which we live to heal our personal experience of the Mother Wound, and then be instrumental in healing and freeing our daughters and family lines from it. In doing this, we reclaim our full status and equality with men, entitled by Divine right, to protection, guidance, nurturance and care, and full sovereignty of Soul and Self-development. By healing our individual experiences of the relationship trauma of the Mother Wound, we are each doing our part in restoring the original blueprint of balance, partnership and wholeness to our planet, and bringing the Goddess back.
For each woman who feels the sorrow and deep pain of the Mother Wound, healing it is the Heroine’s Journey that will deeply heal and transform your life, your relationship with yourself and your closest loved ones and friends. It will restore you to yourSelf and full Sovereignty of Soul, and free you to live, love and contribute as the fully Self-expressed woman you are called to become.
The Turning Point of Healing
Chloe has been semi-aware of the idea of a Mother Wound for some time. She has felt deep grief, guilt and sorrow for the relationship pain between she and Heather, and how difficult it was to mother Heather well. Chloe has worked for several years to change the dynamic with her but could never pinpoint the essence of the problem. The turning point of healing between them, came during their shared vacation, when Chloe saw and felt it so clearly from a new, more healed perspective, as it was being re-enacted once again.
When Chloe arrived home from vacation, she too, felt exhausted, and renewed feelings of deep sadness, grief, and guilt. She also felt excited because inside the pain and difficulty of their vacation, she and Heather had been given a gift; and the gift opened the path to healing the hurt that has been between them for so long. The gift is Chloe’s clear comprehension, and insight that the essence of their shared injury is the Mother Wound, and her assured knowledge of the path of healing it – and most centrally, the insight that she, Chloe, holds the lynch pin to healing it for herself, with her daughter, and ultimately, for her family line.
Chloe knows that healing the Mother Wound for herself, and being instrumental in healing for Heather, began with healing her own unmet childhood needs and early childhood trauma – the trauma she had no conscious knowledge she experienced until well into her adult life. Chloe began this healing years ago and it is now substantially complete. It is the healing of these early childhood losses and trauma, plus other personal and relationship healing and growth that brought Chloe to the point where she could recognize the reenactment of the Mother Wound, while on vacation with Heather.
Chloe’s own mother was not involved in her healing, because Chloe never knew her, and much of it came to completion after Chloe became aware that her mother had passed on. This is important to know, because for many women, healing the Mother Wound does not open until they have reached their mid-forties and beyond, and many times, their mothers are not aware of their pain, or involved in their healing journey. You can still heal the Mother Wound with or without your mother’s involvement in your healing.
Chloe is committed to showing up and living fully Self-expressed, and doing the work she is called to fulfill in her family. She knows that bringing healing to her relationship with Heather is one of her most important commitments for this life. Now that Chloe has healed her own experience of the Mother Wound, uses self-care healing practices that support herself when old body memories surface, and sees and understands that the Mother Wound is the essence of the injury between them, she has greater capacity to be emotionally present in a new way with Heather. It is easier for Chloe to be attuned to Heather, interact in a more mindful, conscious way, and step out from triggers that can spark the reenactment of it between them. She can more easily mother with greater emotional presence, nurturance and empathy, in a way that is supportive and meets Heather’s needs now.
This restorative mothering is a significant part of healing the relationship between Heather and Chloe. Through this new way of mothering Heather, Chloe is also supporting and opening the pathway for Heather to engage in her own Mother Wound healing journey more directly. It is ultimately a journey that Heather will need to take for herself, when it opens for her on her own Heroine’s Journey.
Thankfully, the deepened healing that Heather and Chloe hunger for in their relationship has begun.
Do you relate to Heather or Chloe?
Do you feel an injury and heartache from losing your mother at a young age? Was your mother emotionally or physically absent when you were a child? Did you experience childhood trauma or unmet needs as a child, and didn’t receive the nurturance, protection, guidance and care that you needed then? Deep in your heart, do you feel you still need this?
If this speaks to your heart, you’re warmly invited to learn about Freeing the Heroine Within, my two-part Heroine’s Journey Healing Program, for healing your Mother Wound and inner child. I would love to guide you on this journey!
* Names changed for privacy.
© March 7, 2023. Full Moon in Virgo. Debra Brown Gordy, MS MRET.
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Debra Brown Gordy, MS MRET is a women’s trauma and relationship healing Energy Therapist and pioneer in healing the Patriarchy Core Wound™, mentor and teacher, whose work sits at the interface of depth healing, women’s spirituality, and timeless Western wisdom traditions.
From her professional beginning as a marriage and family relationship therapist over 3 decades ago to the present, Debra has found that a woman’s Heroine’s Journey to her True Self to be the path of greatest joy, fulfillment, soul-satisfying love, meaning and highest-level contribution. She is passionate about guiding ambitious, high-achieving women through their Heroine’s Journeys of the inner healing of childhood trauma and the Mother Wound - expressions of the Patriarchy Core Wound™ - that blocks them from the fulfillment they hunger for, to transformation and reclaiming their Sovereign Feminine Souls. Women become free to create the deeply joyful, rich, and meaningful lives and marriages they Desire, while making the highest, Soul-level contributions they are uniquely meant to give the world.
Debra is the founder of The Sophia Women’s Institute and works with clients worldwide. To learn more, visit The Sophia Women’s Institute.
