The Mother Wound is an injury and sorrow perhaps unlike any other. It’s private and deep; many women describe it as an emptiness and aching in their heart they have felt their entire lives. It’s an injury that hurts like complicated grief that comes from carrying an unknown, hidden burden all by yourself. It’s been described as yearning for a “certain quality of love – a nurturing, safe inspiring love – the kind of love we think of as maternal love.”1 It’s an unconditional love that no friendship, romantic love or other kind of love can replace.
As adult women who have experienced the Mother Wound, how do we heal from this injury?
The journey of healing will be personal to each individual woman. It will take time and may be a circuitous journey. Healing your heart from the Mother Wound includes healing your emotional heart, your relationship with yourself, your beliefs about yourself and your world. It includes healing the painful implicit memories embedded in your body from your earliest beginnings, and rebalancing your nervous system, teaching your body you are safe in the world, you are wanted, you are cherished and that you belong here. Healing your heart from the Mother Wound is the foundation of healing your relationships with your spouse and children, and creating deeper, more satisfying relationships in all areas of your life. It’s the foundation of stepping fully into yourSelf, so that you can fulfill your highest potential in your life and your work in the world.
If you experienced the injury of the Mother Wound in your childhood, all other healing and growth you have achieved since then ties into healing this injury. In fact, all your other healing and growth has been preparing you for some time to begin healing your Mother Wound directly. Taking this direct healing journey is the personal work of your lifetime, that will make the biggest difference in your life, for you and for your children and grandchildren after you.
how do you begin Your Heroine’s Journey of healing your Mother Wound?
The general process involves these steps, that are not necessarily taken in a linear order:
While this is a generational trauma that is passed from mothers to daughters through generations of women, the healing always begins with you as a daughter – healing your heart from the injuries you experienced from your own childhood needs for nurturance, protection, guidance and card not being well met. We begin by finding and healing the original events and experiences in your life of when the Mother Wound injury was caused. This includes events and experiences with your mother that may be known to you; many will not be known consciously because they happened prenatally, or early in your childhood before you developed conscious memory. These are still imprinted in you, though, in your body. These memories are called implicit or body memory and can be accessed with the deep healing approach of Energy Psychology that I use. This approach is gentle, and supportive, loving and kind, facilitated in love and light, through love and light, with the support and assistance of the spiritual dimension, including Divine Mother.
This is healing work of the most, sacred, profound nature, as we work together to heal the child inside of you, who was injured when she was so small. It’s the most joyful, profoundly sacred healing work I have ever been entrusted to facilitate. It is like attending a birth and we approach it in this sacred way.
Healing the generational traumas and patterns that were carried through your mother, and that were similarly imprinted in you. This is a similar process to the healing we do for your personal experiences of injury.
Finding and helping you connect with your Inner Mother and/or Divine Mother. With this connection, giving yourself the nurturance, protection, guidance and care you needed and did not receive as a child. This is both a process of guidance and support working with me, and a process of learning self-care and self-nurturing practices that will be supportive and empowering for you to use through out your life, as you grow in your relationship with your Inner Mother.
Healing opens in layers. This is a circuitous journey through healing that weaves through time, as we follow your inner map guiding us step by step through the healing and restoration process.
Creating a new inner relationship with your mother, when you are ready, whether she is still living or not, and whether or not she is aware of your pain or your healing journey. Many women arrive at this journey of healing their mother wound after their mother has passed from this life, and others never knew their biological mothers. It doesn’t matter whether your mother is still in this life or not, if she is aware of the sorrow and injury you have carried, or able to participate in your healing. You can still heal, and you can still have a new inner relationship with your mother.
Healing your heart of your Mother Wound may be the most significant healing and growth you achieve in your life. These five steps guide you through the beginning of the healing journey. The inner pain and sorrow you feel from this loss can be healed, and your heart can be restored to the joy and confidence that is your original blueprint and intention for your lifetime. Just as deeply important, you will be freed from the deep sorrow of your childhood, to now live freely and joyously in the present. As you heal, your relationships with your children and grandchildren, your spouse and friends and work in the world will be transformed as well. This is the second phase and gift of healing your Mother Wound.
As you do, you will also become profoundly empowered and set free to fulfill your highest purpose in all areas of your life, and to create the highest lasting legacy you came into this lifetime to give. This is the fulfillment of your Great Work that only you can do. This second phase of healing and the fulfillment of your highest life work and purpose comes about because of your personal healing of the Mother Wound.
If this speaks to your heart, you’re warmly invited to learn about Freeing the Heroine Within, my two-part Heroine’s Journey Healing Program, for healing your Mother Wound and inner child.
McDaniel, Kelly. Mother Hunger: How Adult Daughters Can Understand and Heal from Lost Nurturance, Protection and Guidance. 2021. Hay House. p. xv.
© April 6, 2023. Full Moon in Libra. Debra Brown Gordy, MS MRET. All Rights Reserved.
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Debra Brown Gordy, MS MRET is a former Relationship Therapist, now women’s trauma healing Energy Therapist and pioneer in healing the Mother Wound, as central to healing the Patriarchy Core Wound™. A mentor and teacher, her work sits at the interface of depth healing, women’s spirituality, and timeless Western wisdom traditions.
Beginning in her late 30’s, Debra had a series of spiritual experiences that deeply healed and transformed her own life from childhood and relationship trauma. After 2 divorces, she has been happily married to her Beloved for over 29 years.
Now Debra bridges the worlds to help accomplished, ambitious women in their prime to heal their inner child of their Mother Wound so they can have peace with their childhoods, feel deeper inner security and happiness, and create greater harmony, connection, and soul-satisfying love and partnership in their marriages, without reliving all the pain.
Debra is the founder of The Sophia Women’s Institute and works with clients worldwide. To learn more, visit The Sophia Women’s Institute.
