Mother Wound
Welcome to Takeout Therapy. I'm Rebecca Hunter, an anxiety specialist private practice therapist, and total mental health geek. Stick with me for the next few minutes, and I'll teach you what you need to know to have emotionally healthier and more peaceful way of life. I promise a little free mental health education can't hurt. We should have had it much earlier, but It's never too late to learn.
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Let's dig in. Well, hello there. I hope this episode finds you in a contemplative mood because I'm gonna dig in today and just kind of do a little bit of a stream of consciousness about a subject that never isn't talked about. In therapy. That's double negative.
We always talk about mothers in therapy. So today, I just kind of feel compelled to discuss the importance of acknowledging the mother wound. You see, some of us get mothers that we are close to, that we bond with. That we can be ourselves with that validate and see us. Some people get mothers like that.
Other people don't. Other people get mothers who are hurt. And wounded, and maybe haven't done their personal growth or exploratory self growth work. In order to figure out like what their wounds are. And so some people get wounded mothers.
And wounded mothers sometimes cause wounds. And we call this and therapy the mother wound. Right? And and also if you are a mother. This is a very important concept to understand not so that we can further be hard on ourselves and shame ourselves.
But I think it's an important concept to understand because it helps us understand ourselves. And with an a good dose of self understanding, we get into some healing. And I gotta say, The mother wound is one of the most important painful points to heal. If you're interested in doing any personal growth work. Because here's the deal.
Like, it doesn't really matter. Well, I mean, not it doesn't really matter. But, like, let's take it out of the context of, like, good mother or not great mother. And just can we just put it in the context of healed, mother or unhealed mother? Right?
Because even if we look at ourselves, if you're a mother, Are you ever gonna be all the way healed? Is anyone ever all the way healed? What am What what does that even mean? Right? And so when we're thinking about our mother, and how to integrate this person that raised us with all of their unreflected stuff, their projections, their trauma, their history, their personality, their nature, their nurture.
Right? Like a mother comes to the job, fairly innocent, fairly innocent, but healed or unhealed is the question. I think having children has been the biggest personal growth project of my life. And if I hadn't done it, maybe I would have done the work a different way. Maybe not.
I don't know. It doesn't matter. I don't look at life like that. I just say, this is the experience I've had and this is what it means to me. But also, there is the mother wound.
And I have made peace and healed my mother wound in so many ways. Because, like, my mom wasn't easy just to let you know, but she wasn't in the category of healed. She was actually deeply unhealed. And not at peace at all. And part of my wound that I've had to contend with is that she handed me that bag.
And I took it, sure, because we take the bag that our mother hands us when we're children because we're children. And then when we grow up, We get to open that bag. The bag our mother gave us. We open it up and we look inside and we say, what's in here? And do I even want any of this crap?
And we start to see ourselves in that process. And we start to separate ourselves out from our mother in order to figure out like and who am I? Or maybe not even who am I, but maybe who do I wanna be. When we start to gain an understanding of the fact that there are parts of our mother that are perfect. And a part of our mothering that is perfect and a part that is so deeply flawed that we can't even see it.
It's both. It's all of the things. Right? And so if you, like me, have that mother wound that you are interested in healing. It's really important hold space for the humanness of the mothering experience.
For the fact that so many people don't do any healing work before they have children, which is fine, but then they have to do it during. Which is hard. And it's fraught with problems. Right? I tell you all this.
Two Just let you know that the mother wound is real and it's a thing and we don't have to put our moms in bucket, so like bad mom or good mom. But just to understand that all moms are humans. And in the raising of the children, we just pass on our humanness. Whatever that looks like for whatever mom at whatever time. You know, we only get the amount of development that the mother has done.
And it's painful a lot of times for people. The experience of their mother is painful. And one of the things that I always try to tell people when they're working to heal their mother wound. Like those hard parts of ourselves that came from our mother, those hard hurts in us that are because of our mother or with our mother. Those things belong.
Those are all part of any relationship. Because we are separate people and we can't be everything that each other needs us to be as painful as that is. We're not excusing bad behavior. We're just on understanding ourselves in it. It's not about, like, making excuses for the mother wound so that that tries to heal it.
No. That never works. Right? But what does work is just like bring it in and see it for what it is. It's just wounding from growing up.
And healing it is all about knowing that there's wounding. Healing hurt. The first step is to see what hurts. And from there, it's all yours. It isn't anybody else's to contend with.
The mother wound is this elusive background noise for so many people. It's our mother is an important role in our life, whether we like it or we don't. At certain points of my life, I liked it and at certain points I didn't. And maybe you felt the same. So hopefully my little monologue about the mother wound has helped you see a tiny glimmer of truth about your mothering or your relationship with your mother or maybe even your mother's relationship with her mother.
Because that's a whole other episode, isn't it? I hope this helps. Just brings a little light to maybe a place that didn't need to be quite so dark, my friend. Okay. I'll see you again next time.
I'm so glad you joined me today, and I hope it was helpful. Always make sure to get the appropriate level of help for your unique situation. Check out the resources at takeout therapy dot kong, and hopefully you can find something there. As always, thanks so much for showing up and doing your work, which in a way changes the level of emotional development, in your community, in your town, and even in the world, yeah, it's kind of a big deal. This podcast is intended as education and prevention, not medical goal or mental health treatment.
See you next time.
