Do All Mothers Love Their Children? The Answer No One Dares to Say
- Mar 27
- 6 min read
Updated: Mar 28
There's a question that rarely gets asked out loud, because the answer feels too dangerous: Do all mothers love their children? When I posed it to a room full of mental health professionals last week, the response wasn't shock — it was laughter. The laughter of relief. Of something finally being named. Because the truth is, love and care are not the same thing. Your mother could have loved you and still filled the house with a silence that taught you to disappear. She can have loved you and still laid her desperation on your small shoulders until love became something you had to earn, manage or survive. If you grew up with that kind of love — present but incomplete, real but insufficient — this post is about what that does to you, and where healing the mother wound actually begins.
That's the question I was asked in a workshop I gave last week to a group of mental health professionals about healing mother wound ambiguous grief.
My first, immediate answer was: "No" — and the whole room burst out laughing.
It was the laughter of relief.
Something hidden was finally acknowledged. The societal taboo was cut open by naming what so many of us have felt in our flesh and bones.
It's an important question to be able to ask. And my clients know that no question and no feeling is out of place.
The Myth of Maternal Instinct
"Can a mother not love her child?" It's an idea that for most feels inconceivable.
The notion that all women possess a maternal instinct—and that something must be wrong with you if you don't—is a man-made idea.
There are many reasons a mother may be unable to love, or to show love, and to name a few.
🍒 Some women are forced into motherhood because it remains a social expectation
🍒 Women with narcissistic personalities may be unable to love or show love
🍒 Postpartum depression or grieving the loss of a pregnancy or a child before you came into the world can numb a woman’s feelings
🍒 Unresolved childhood trauma or being controlled or abused by her partner leaves little room for her to be present
🍒 Being trapped in an unwanted marriage or having her own passions suppressed to become a domesticated woman can turn love into something dutiful
When Love Is Present, But Care Is Not
Missing out on a mothers' love can be one of the greatest heartbreaks in life.
Yet many of my clients — and many of the undermothered women I know knew that their mother loved them, and still their needs went unmet. Still, they felt deprived of the mother they needed.
Your mother can love you and still fill the house with a silence that taught you to disappear.
She can love you and, at the same time, lay her desperation on you so heavily that love gets buried under the weight of feeling it’s your role to save her.
My mother often told me she loved me.
She was a heavy smoker, and I had sensitive lungs from a young age, which made me often cry in desperation, begging her to stop smoking in the house.
She neglected me in many ways, physically and emotionally. Her love meant nothing in the face of absent care and connection.
This gap between love is present but care is absent led me to have trust issues, where I couldn't trust people's love and compliments.
Even love can't undo the damage caused by repeated outbursts of unexplained anger, chronic neglect, being cast as the family's "good girl," or being made your mother's confidant, robbing you of your childhood.
As young children, hearing from every corner of the world that mothers' love is the golden key to a good life, you set out to seek the love that will fill the hole, patch the scar on your heart, and complete you.
This is how you can end up with:
🍒 A partner who loves you deeply, yet somehow still behaves like a child—leaving you to do the emotional heavy lifting in the relationship
🍒 Loyalty to people who can’t give you even a fraction of it back
🍒 Clients who praise your work but, at the same time, are unable to respect your boundaries when it comes to your time or your payments
🍒 Friends who love a good night out with you, but when you’re in a dark place, are nowhere to be seen
🍒 An enmeshed relationship with your mother that, from the outside, looks like closeness but deep down you know it’s a one-way street, you caring for her (watch out for the next blog post on enmeshment and false closeness)
What "Almost Love" Does to Your Relationships
The mother wound is a rupture in our relationship to ourselves, others and life, rooted in a complex relationship with our mother.
This relational complexity cannot be simplified, and like the Beatles suggest—all we need is love.
We’re hardwired biologically to be in a safe, emotionally responsive, and guiding connection—that’s where the mother wound repair begins.
When I’m working 1:1 with women on healing the mother wound, I offer a bespoke process and a space to feel genuinely cared for, so you can build a safe and satisfying connection with yourself and others, and finally:
🍒 Trust yourself and your decisions
🍒 Decentre your mum from your life and feel guilt-free to live the life you were meant to live
🍒 Stop spreading yourself thin to please everyone and feel confident choosing the people who won’t stop loving you when you say ‘no’
🍒 Drop the burden of feeling responsible for people’s feelings and disappointments and reclaim the energy you've been pouring into managing others
🍒 Clear your mother’s harsh voice from your head and feel an unapologetic self-love
Where Healing the Mother Wound Begins
Love is a beautiful thing, and I want you to have the fullness of it.
I want you to know, down to your bones, that you are easy to love.
If that’s you, wanting to feel loved, cared for, and your needs truly acknowledged by the people in your life—NOW rather than later—I want you to know I have new spots open for 1:1 healing the mother wound.
We’ll start with a free call where you’ll:
🍒 Sense firsthand how the depth of healing you wish for is held in care and in genuine connection
🍒 Get a taste of my bespoke process—one that centres around your needs, your desires, and your rhythm
🍒 Receive clear next steps for your mother wound healing to achieve the relationships, the confidence, and the emotional freedom you’ve been craving for far too long
“Before I started working with Shelly in her one-on-one healing sessions, I was really frustrated with various behaviors...but despite trying therapy, Reiki, meditation, and various modalities, nothing seemed to help. From the very first session with Shelly, I experienced a shift that honestly felt unreal — the benefits were immediate…a deepened sense of confidence, a feeling of truly belonging, and the ability to recognize and understand what I’m feeling in my nervous system. Her work is truly unique and powerful. I would recommend her without question to anyone ready for real transformation.” - T.A.
You can spend years understanding why your mother was the way she was—and still wake up bracing for her call.
Understanding lives in the mind. The shift of healing the mother wound happens in the body. This is what my clients experience, and I'd love for you to experience it too.
P.S. If this landed somewhere real in you—if you recognise yourself in the "almost" love, in the loyalty that goes unreturned, in the love that was present but the care that wasn't—then you already know this work is for you. I have new spots open for 1:1 mother wound healing, and I'd love for one of them to be yours 👉 Book a call here
P.P.S. I was a guest on The Feminine Rebel with Natty Frasca, where we went deep on the mother wound and what healing lack of maternal love actually looks and feels like 👉 Have a listen.
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If you need more reassurance that you & I can make a genuine difference to healing your mother wound, here's something you'll enjoy:
Learn how to stop making an effort to fill in a hole in the heart with healing the mother wound in my private podcast BirthRite. Add your details below, and you'll get immediate access to your free episodes 👇
Shelly is a trauma-informed, certified Hakomi therapist helping women who've had a complex relationship with their mother discover the hidden impacts of the mother wound 👉 so they can recentre back into the life they're meant to live
