Birthday Reflections on Core Mother Wound Beliefs
Dealing with a mother wound will often land you at least one core belief you’ll repeatedly meet throughout your life. This can feel diminishing and you might thing, after all the efforts you’ve made, what else can you do? Can this really change?? My birthday reflections on core mother wound beliefs and how they changed for me can give you a sense of the healing process and why you don’t need to be intimidated by life-long mother wound beliefs.
Yesterday I celebrated my birthday, and my birthday reflections on core mother wound beliefs led me to notice something encouraging.
Robert and I agreed to not get each other BD gifts but to wait until the summer. Our plan is to go for a spectacular journey in Scotland this summer and we want to make sure we save the money we need. We could give each other something in Scotland, we thought.
But as I came out of the shower in the morning, getting ready for the day, I was flooded with emotions.
“Will he bring me flowers nonetheless?!” I thought with dread. He knows I don’t care much for BD gifts but that getting flowers for my birthday can make or break me.
I’ve agreed to not having gifts but my inner world cares very little about my earthly agreement.
Old, familiar demons of being forgotten, feeling that I don’t matter, popped their heads up and before I managed to catch up with the spin of the story I brushed my wet hair with tears in my eyes.
Nothing had yet happened. The day hasn’t yet had a chance to disappoint. Robert hadn’t even had the chance to see me this morning. But my inner world was already taken hostage by an old belief system.
Do I matter?!
As Robert and I sat for breakfast, I shared some of my birthday reflection of that moment: “I’m amazed how these old BD demons can come up so quickly. No matter how many times you proved them wrong I’m still afraid that you’ll forget what matters to me”.
My core mother wound beliefs led me many times before to relationships where I wasn't seen and my needs where not met.
Now, there was something new.
I’ve never before been able to just speak about my BD experience and share it as if I’m telling some fairytale that happened somewhere far away in a thick Norwegian forest where demons lurk behind hoary old trees and fairies wait for their moment to sprinkle fairy dust and make everything OK.
Little shifts like that are significant moments of change.
When we’re facing familiar wounds from the early days of our lives it’s natural that we’d want to be completely free from their suffering.
This often means that we’ve tried so many things to resolve the pain of these core wounds, made every effort we could towards healing them. When they resurface it can feel so frustrating, even leading to despair.
The intensity of very familiar “issues,” as we tend to call them, life-long mother wound habits or limiting beliefs, hardens our focus, and we neglect to pay attention to small shifts.
“What else can I do?!” we ask in a quiet, despondent voice.
The answer so often starts with “there’s nothing else to do. You can rest now.”
It’s demanding to be faced with patterns and beliefs that stick around like a stubborn stain. Rest can be a foreign idea to our driven, western mind and you might wonder if there's an end to the mother wound.
So committed are we to figuring things out that we cannot afford to allow Rest to be one of our tools for healing.
In my work with women on healing the mother wound I’ve seen many small yet significant shifts in mother-wound core themes. It can look like this:
Seeing the triggers as they are being activated instead of being taken over by them completely by surprise
Developing a capacity for asking for help rather than staying alone with the pain and the suffering
Moving from despair or frustration to curiosity about what could be possible, how things could be different
Noticing more available support or desired experiences
Being able to share small bits of inner experience instead of bottling it up or pretending that everything is ok
There are many examples of big, really life-changing shifts in my work that you may well have read about in previous blogs. But I wanted to give you here some examples of the small shifts that make up the irreplaceable stepping stones to the big ones.
Rather than trying to blow old demons away, we find the capacity to turn towards them with curiosity and interest. Doing it together with an enlightened witness, as Alice Miller calls the skilled companion, takes away some of the anxiety and allows us to make sure we don’t miss those priceless little shifts.
In my case, at one time I envisioned a tiny, ugly little creature with a long beard, round belly, his face bright red and battle-scarred. But I discovered a soft spot in him where he can be tickled and made to burst out into the most delightful laughter.
Another such creature had a gaunt body and haunted eyes, and you can easily tempt him into sweetness by offering a warm bed covered with flowery flannel sheets and blankets.
The core mother wound beliefs often entails some life-long themes that we will meet repeatedly over the course of our life. The resurfacing of themes cannot be a measure to the “success” of your healing. The little shifts are a more significant and promising aspect of dissolving the inflamed pain around them.
Shifting our insistent mind from getting things done, figured out, resolved or accomplished to a light curiosity, our old demons reveal something universal:
Healing starts with Rest.
The kind of Rest that allows flow to show us what’s needed right now.
Rest that teaches us about healing more than doing and figuring can ever achieve.
Rest that is kind to the soul and a companion to our heart.
Rest that is an evergreen companion, available at any given moment, even when all else seems to have been exhausted.
.
As I finished a session with a client this morning, that coincidentally or not brought up the theme of Rest, I received a call from my father.
“Hi dad”, I said. “ I didn’t forget”, my father replied.
It doesn’t matter any more, I thought to myself. I’ve been forgotten for many many years. Left on my own, neglected, abandoned.
I wasn’t thinking this with any kind of resentment. Those big emotions were processed long ago.
I have long since discovered the magic spell.
I stopped making an effort to be remembered.
I turned to the little one inside me and told her: “You matter to me. You can rest now”.
My birthday reflections on core mother wound beliefs led me to witness how satisfying the process has been for me and my clients. The importance of counting little shifts as meaningful and impactful is something to really take to heart. And when Rest becomes part of your healing the mother wound journey, no matter the therapy form you're choosing, it will deepen the transformation of core mother wound beliefs.
If you’re dealing with life-long core mother wound beliefs, if you’re finding yourself feeling that you don’t matter, I invite you to schedule a free call with me. We’ll explore how you can heal your mother wound and what could be possible
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Shelly's helping women whose relationship with their mother left a negative mark and want to become un-limited in their personal or professional life
