Healing the Mother Wound

Some time ago, about two or three years ago, when I was doing deep work on myself, I had a dream.

In the dream I can see my mother holding closely a small baby dressed in a white gown and a white hat. I am a silent observer. Suddenly she stands up and says to me, to the observer, almost from nowhere, “Everyone has some psychological issues.” Then she walks away.

The baby is no longer in her hands.

It was hard for me to understand that dream back then.

Was that really little me she was holding? Was it her running away again from taking responsibility for her behaviour?

Was I happy when I was a child? Yes.

Was I feeling seen and nurtured? Clearly not. But then sometimes I was.

I remember a time when my existential suffering became unbearable and a deep wounding started creeping into my everyday thoughts, my life, and my relationships. I was just becoming a woman then. A lost teenager who needed guidance.

In many teachings, in modern psychology, in Jungian perspectives on the psyche, and also in older wisdom traditions and esoteric psychology, it is often said that an unhealed mother wound can create a split in the psyche.

Mother wound healing means reaching the roots.

It is important to speak about this split that happens when we completely reject our mothers. When we cannot separate ourselves from our mother’s wounding, we may begin to see her wound as part of our own. Yet rejecting that part of ourselves often increases the damage rather than allowing light to enter the cracks.

Healing the mother wound is not really about forgiving her for what she has done wrong, or for what she may not have been able to give you in terms of nurturing love and kindness.

It is about forgiving yourself.

It is forgiving yourself for the fact that you had to build that protective self, that inner shelf of separation, in order to keep yourself safe.

It is looking at that judgemental voice within you and saying: enough. I understand that I tried to keep myself safe, but now it is time to let go.

Letting go, surrendering to what is, without attaching endless stories to it, is one of the ways we begin to remove the chains of subconscious co-dependence from others.

It is the way we free ourselves from the responsibility of believing that we must become a certain way in order to feel loved.

When we begin to look through the lenses of a clearer mind, we can see that authentic self which is not afraid to emerge. Not because we forced change, but because we allowed the wounded part to express itself and to be seen in its raw shape.

Our job is to live each part of our self expression, as only love can transform it.

So if you feel wounded, lonely, or hopeless, put your hand on your heart and let your body tell you the story.

Healing often begins in that simple moment of tuning into your body and listening to those tiny whispers within that simply want to be heard, gently and without the distractions of the mind.

When we allow ourselves to pause in this way, something softens.

The wounded parts that we once tried to silence slowly find space to speak.

In that quiet listening we begin to reconnect with ourselves, not through force or fixing, but through compassion and presence.

And sometimes this is where the deepest healing of the mother wound begins.