How to heal your mother wound

Not having an emotionally available, caring parent is a living nightmare for any child and I can’t imagine anything worse than being wounded by the person who should take care of a child’s physical and emotional needs.

As a child, I had a weird relationship with my mother. She always told me that we depended on each other and should be friends, but I never thought she was trustworthy. She used to invalidate my feelings, I never felt that it was safe to share my thoughts and feelings with her because she either acted like it was nothing or she went straight ahead to tell my dad about everything I had shared with her even when I asked her not to talk about it with anyone because I wasn’t comfortable with it. She was supportive of my hobbies only when they served her. When I was a teenager, I used to go to a private school every Friday to learn different art techniques and I also had lessons with a vocal coach who taught me different singing styles. My mom was happy with these as long as I made art projects in her style and sang the kind of songs she fancied. The latter was the hardest part because she has always liked dark, depressing poems and songs, so trying to please her was extremely hard on my mental state.

When I finished secondary school, I packed my stuff and moved to a city 300 km from my parents to study English at university. She wasn’t really happy about it as she and my dad are both engineers and I was training to be a “stupid language teacher” (Who needs to learn a foreign language anyway?). It was a few months before my final exam when I had a lot of free time – I had already submitted my thesis -, so I decided to go to therapy. My therapist wanted to involve my mom who could come to therapy every week due to the distance, so she wrote a letter to the therapist, sharing her feelings about being a mom. It was that letter that shed light on the fact that she never wanted me and motherhood was always a nightmare for her.

After university, I moved back to their place. Fast forward to 2016-2017. When I became a mother, things got even worse, so I decided to go to therapy a second time. I had severe post-partum depression and a horrible case of impostor syndrome, both of which I wanted to overcome without medication as I was breastfeeding. I found a wonderful therapist and although the inner work was uncomfortable and often painful, it was worth every moment. Though the therapy was over, I kept working on myself to heal my mother wound.

If you experience the following, you might have a mother wound:

• trust issues
• low self-esteem
• self-doubt
• depression/anxiety
• difficulty setting boundaries
• inability to self-soothe

Therapy helped me defeat trust issues, depression and impostor syndrome (self-doubt). It took me a few more years to set boundaries for my parents and stop them from violating them. I have also learnt to self-soothe and although I still have moments of anxiety, but I’m getting better at dealing with the negative thoughts.

How can you heal your mother wound?

• Go to therapy. You won’t only express your pain, but you will also learn to process what had happened to you.
• Develop and practice self-awareness. Knowing yourself better will increase your self-esteem and improve your emotional resilience.
• Practice self-love and self-care. Take care of your needs, go on solo dates, walk, have spa nights or whatever your body and mind need. Loving yourself is key to setting healthy boundaries, not taking things personally and being more balanced.
• Become your own mother. It includes taking care of your needs, expressing your emotions and if you have issues like binge eating or impulse shopping, practice self-discipline.
• Forgive your mother. It doesn’t mean that you have to reconcile with her, though it can be an additional benefit of the process. If the relationship is salvageable, that’s wonderful. If it’s beyond repair, forgiveness will still give you peace of mind.

To wrap this post up, I would say that self-love and self-awareness are the keys to being more balanced and emotionally resilient. Don’t wait for the people who hurt you to apologise or try to better things. Start the healing process from within.