The mother wound is the trauma carried by a mother to her children, causing adverse effects on their emotional well-being. What are the reasons, symptoms, and coping methods for the mother’s wound?

Our personalities and lifestyles are shaped by our interactions with our parents, especially our moms. The mother-child bond and all that it implies can be a tricky area when it comes to our mothers. In this relationship, so many emotions can be intertwined, including love, regret, adoration, and sensations of being supported, controlled, or forgotten. Grief, disappointment, or animosity toward our moms can have a detrimental effect on our emotional health and our capacity to raise our own children in a way that benefits them

The mother wound is the cultural trauma that a mother carries and passes on to her children, along with whatever dysfunctional coping techniques she may have employed to deal with her grief (with daughters generally bearing the brunt of this burden). Even while moms are frequently portrayed as unchanging providers of impeccable direction and constant support, their identities are always considerably more nuanced than that. 

Negative beliefs, decisions, and parenting techniques can be transmitted down via the matrilineal line if the wound is not healed, inflicting new suffering on every generation. Think of mothers who continuously put themselves last, downplay their own needs to serve others, struggle to maintain an appearance of perfection, or try to control their children in the name of “love”.

If the trauma is not healed, it is passed on to the following generation. Here is all you need to know about the mother’s wound.

Understanding the Mother Wound

The term “mother wound” refers to the generational grief brought on and passed down between mothers, daughters, and grandmothers due to being in a patriarchal society that oppresses women. A loss or a lack of mothering is the best approach to understanding the mother’s pain. This is usually an issue in the mother-daughter, or mother-son relationships carried down through the generations and is a reflection of our parenting style and experiences. It examines how current codependency behaviors may be connected to missing pieces in the past, albeit it is not a precise diagnosis.

Children who feel divided about wanting to live out their absolute truth but are worried that doing so will be seen as a rejection of their mother’s teachings may suffer guilt as they age. Unconsciously, they may react by creating survival strategies to adapt to their environment to win their mother’s affection and, ideally, get the support of others. But bending over backward to appease another person doesn’t deal with the underlying societal training; instead, it perpetuates the mother wound cycle. It fosters a fundamental mistrust of your own needs, feelings, wants, intuition, and understanding of reality by separating you from your true self.  In addition to having deeply ingrained thoughts about the need for control and perfection, people with mother wounds frequently feel lacking in connection with others and incomplete.

When adults experience a mother wound, they frequently reflect on their early years and can recognize problems like:

• Never feeling accepted or loved.
• Emotional difficulties in communicating with the mother.
• Always striving to perform better or be perfect to capture the mother’s interest and win her approval.
• Hesitation to seek solace or security from the mother.
• Constantly attempting to be flawless to have the mother’s approval.
• Feeling the need to be the mother’s protector, caregiver, and shelter rather than the other way around.

The presence of the mother wound, if not healed, might lead to codependent patterns of relationships growing up.

How to cope with the mother’s wound?

Acknowledging negative emotions like anger and resentment while also realizing that we might need to forgive our mother are two steps in the healing process for the mother’s wound. Even though staying stuck in our negative emotions may briefly make us feel better, in the long term, we actually lose. Here are some methods to help you cope with the mother’s wound:

Make some mental room for yourself.

You need to distance yourself from your mother as a first step. Not physically but intellectually and emotionally. When moms don’t raise their kids properly, it might be difficult for them to develop a distinct sense of who they are as people. This might have hindered you from establishing the mental separation from her that is required to develop a broader viewpoint. Spend time by yourself getting to know your thoughts, preferences, dislikes, and other characteristics. Realizing your distinct identity will emerge naturally during the process. You will learn more about yourself as you routinely try new activities and gradually recover from the scars of the past.

Don’t Blame Yourself

You might believe that you are to blame for how events transpired. If only you had done some things differently, you might also wonder if the outcome would have been different. If something was your fault, it might be acceptable to raise these questions, but you know deep down that it isn’t. With practice, you will comprehend that your mother’s behavior was entirely unrelated to you. It wasn’t because of something you did wrong. And it was most definitely not because you weren’t sufficient.

Become more self-aware

If your mother was unloving or highly critical, you might have picked up on this behavior early. Perhaps you aren’t even aware of this. Even if you are, you might be hesitant to face all the emotions and feelings you have held in for so long. You didn’t have the reinforcement you required to grow in self-awareness without your mother’s criticism. Therefore, you must learn to communicate with your emotions. Spend some time pausing to acknowledge your feelings. This will help you remove any animosity you may be harboring and fill you with empowering feelings to pass through this.

Accept what happened

Instead of perceiving reality as it truly is, we frequently see it through the lens of our preferences. You may have wished or regarded your mother as a kind and caring parent when you were younger. Even though you experienced the exact opposite, you might still be clinging to the belief that she will one day change and shower you with the affection you deserve. Your childhood emotional wound continues getting reopened by it. I am aware that accepting who your mother actually is might be painful. But if you want to continue living your life, you must do this. Remind yourself that while the pain is momentary, recovery is lasting.

To ensure that we don’t pass on this pain to our children, we might decide to take the necessary steps to heal our own mother’s wound. Although it’s a difficult path, it marks the start of our healing and the end of the cycle of generational trauma.