How the Mother Wound Impacts You
How the mother wound impacts you is the focus of this post.
You and your mother were one organism until you emerged from her womb. Everything she felt, you felt. Everything she lacked, you lacked. Everything she feared, you feared. It's almost impossible to step into your full feminine power without healing your mother wound.
Here's how an unhealed mother wound affects every area of your life:
WORK: You seek validation and worthiness from busyness and productivity.
When our mother didn't "see" us or validate us when we were little, we look to the outside world for affirmation. One of the easiest places we turn to is our work. By trying to be perfect at what we do, doing more than others, doing it faster, staying busy, being The Reliable One, we seek to feel more worthy. The hardest thing about breaking this pattern? We live in a culture that values and promotes busyness, overdoing, and exhaustion as badges of worthiness.
FRIENDSHIPS: You project your desires, needs, and expectations on your female friends and feel disappointed when they go unmet.
What we didn't receive from mother we seek from female friendships. We "prove" what a good friend we are by taking care of our friends' needs. We crave the closeness and acceptance we didn't receive from mother, but we're super sensitive to being rejected or excluded. When our friends are unable to meet those needs, we're quick to feel disappointment and hurt.
PARTNERSHIPS: You expect your partner to fill the emotional and intimacy needs you didn't receive from your mother.
We have a tendency to become clingy in romantic partnerships and feel rejected when our partner is, for any reason, unable to meet us in the intimacy bubble. It creates a feeling of unsafety and we're triggered. Or we may pull in a partner who is emotionally unavailable. Sometimes we attract a wonderful partner but because we're so sensitive to and primed for rejection that we become hyper vigilant about their motivations and behaviors.
DREAMS: You carry the voice of your mother inside you, the voice that constantly told you you weren't good enough, so you don't believe you have a right to your dreams.
She criticized you constantly. She was mean. She was violent. No matter how hard you tried, you were never good enough. If I'm not good enough is the voice you're carrying inside you, you don't believe you have a right to create anything worthwhile or have dreams of your own. Disengaging from your mother's critical voice is crucial to finding your own.
If you've had a challenging relationship with your mother and feel ready to heal it, I invite you to check this out.