The mother wound

Photo by Victor Malyushev on Unsplash

Today I read - from Holistic Psychologist - that, as children, our neurological state gets synced up with our mothers, from the gestational period and when we’re infants.

And, between that, and as a result, how we feel about ourselves, and talk about ourselves, also has a direct impact to how she feels about herself and talks to herself.

We model it - in relationships, self-esteem/value, self-identity, etc.

I buy it - especially though, for daughters, who emulate their mothers.

Though I’ve read and heard similar things to this before, and have even written about them, this gives me pause.

Because…

My mother was the an amazing mother - I owe my life and where I am now - what I have, my education, my world travel, my immersive cross cultural experiences, my profession, my nice life - I truly believe - I owe it all to my mother.

Because she was two parents and she tried so desperately to give me what she did not have.

Though she struggled to do so - because she didn’t have the economic means and was co-dependent and yolked to my father -

I can’t imagine what my childhood and my life would have been like without her. If it had just been my father. I don’t know if I would have -

Gone to college.

Moved away.

Pursued and done all that I’ve been able to do.

If she were here, still alive and reading this, she would have said - it was all you.

But that’s not true.

Even my father, sometime during my childhood, said to me once -

“Can you imagine if your mother weren’t here? If was just me?”

Pretty profound for an active alcoholic and someone who didn’t prove to be very self-reflective until his final years, when sober.

But I was thinking about this - the mother’s role and the mother’s wound today, as I read the IG post from the Holistic Psychologist.

Many of us have some versions of ‘mother wounds’ - some worse than others.

Obviously, because mothers are human beings and fallible.

But it did say - those with a mother who is emotionally lacking are at a much greater risk for developing an auto-immune disease. (Again, I thought about my mother, and her own psoriasis—an auto-immune disease—and also her chronic pain, which I think was also an undiagnosed auto-immune disease.)

And again, auto-immune diseases are ones in which the body revolts on itself.

But - much like the wounded inner child, we can re-parent ourselves, with tending to our mother wounds.

I think some of my aversion to dating now, and relationships to me - though I identify as straight - is largely because of this -

Part of my healing is to recognize that I sought some degree of comfort and purpose, identity, within relationships. Even when I wouldn’t admit it, and even when the relationships were bad. Not fair to me.

That mirrors my mother and her marriage.

My mother wanted a lot better for me, much more than she had.

But - we learn what they do, over what they say.

And my mother knew this. And I know it truly terrified her.

That’s why she tried so hard to over-compensate by building up my self-esteem and getting very angry at me and frustrated when I married young.

And though I did go forth with the marriage, and I shouldn’t have gotten married off when I was so young, and still didn’t know myself, so I shouldn’t be taking on another person, when my pre-frontal cortex wasn’t even fully formed - (And wouldn’t be until 4+ years later) —

I chose my ex-husband for how different he was from my father -

But, ironically, I ended up with someone I led -

Different characteristics but, much like my mother, in that she led the family in the practical matters - having insurance, working in positions she may not have enjoyed but it was needed for her kids and for economical survival - often because my father would simply not do a job he did not want to do.

I often times balk because I can’t even imagine how hard my mother’s life must have been - her horrific childhood, being abandoned by her own mother at 13, with an abusive stepfather, then shuffled to relatives and foster families.

Yet, and I tell my dearest friend this, I still would have chosen her as my mother -

Because of her love, her heart, her altruism.

I have grown to realize that - sadly, not all children grow up with mothers with that type of character.

Though she was flawed, and though she was unwell/unhealed, and transmitted some of that onto me -

It was not her fault. She did the best she could.

This is also why I grow especially defensive toward those who try to attribute any shortcomings in me to her wounds.

I have learned to take accountability - that is adulting and healing and sobriety -

If I own my own mistakes and my own person, others - from outside her experience, and my own, don’t get to sit from self-appointed judge table - eyeing but ignoring the log in their own.

Because now, I am of sound mind, and willing to self-reflect and heal myself. To own my faults and to work to improve myself.

I do not desire to point the finger at my mother, or my father, for that matter -

Or any of my family line -

Because it is useless. Non-productive.

It would only serve some function if I intended to stay in the same spot, which I do not.

I intend to power on, full-steam ahead.

I have no place for stagnancy any more.

I wouldn’t be here if I did.

The ability to reparent ourselves and the tend to our mother wounds, through behavioral therapy, self-reflection, counseling, tracing intergenerational patterns and trauma — all the means -

They are all wonderful tools we have at our disposable now. In this age , with endless books and resources to read. If you have a willingness to grow and evolve.

My mother was paralyzed in this way - she could not do so.

I don’t think it’s because she wasn’t intelligent enough to do so -

It was because she was unhealed, traumatized, untreated -

And, mainly - it’s because she had internalized the belief that she was not worth it, on her own, divorced from a man.

She did her best to help me to understand, though, that I was, worth it, enough, to evolve.

I look at so many others, who I grew up with, whose entire lives are catering to a man. Having a man take care of them. The financial prospects and stability may be better for them than so many dysfunctional, poverty-stricken families in Panama, NY, but -

I am tending my mother wound - picking over scabs, realizing they aren’t scars that have grown over, with old skin - they are opportunities -

For a much better life than she had, and one that I never imagined I could have, either, to be honest -

Living, defiantly, single and childless, and declaring that -

That’s okay. I am enough. I have enough.

And I will be okay with this status.

It has taken years, of victim, to survivor, but now, five years later, 10 after the first suicide, I realize -

My life purpose and who I am - doesn’t have to be defined by men, by my childhood, by my dysfunctional family, and intergenerational traumas, - it’s what you do with it -

So, I instead choose to tend my own garden.

And as I do, as I am healthy and growing, I will draw forth the right kind to my garden - in friends, partners, people in community -

But, you know what? Even if that takes awhile—

I have learned to sit and enjoy my own garden. My own journey.

In solitude.