Feeling Stuck? 5 Thresholds for Under Mothered Daughters
- Shelly Sharon
- Aug 17
- 7 min read
Women who’ve been under mothered often tell me they’re feeling stuck, but what they’re really doing is standing at a threshold—a pivotal moment between the life they’ve known and the life they sense is waiting. Every woman’s journey with the mother wound is unique, yet over the years I’ve seen the same five thresholds appear again and again. These are turning points that invite us to step forward from feeling stuck in old patterns inherited by the mother wound. In this article, I’ll share what each threshold looks like, the challenges it brings, and how recognising where you are helped under mothered daughters I’ve worked with.
Working with under mothered women—daughters who were missing on safety, guidance and nourishment they needed from their mother—has led me over the years to identify five thresholds that women while there’re calling it: feeling stuck.
I love the word threshold because it clearly names the existence of two worlds: the one you’ve just exhausted and the one that you already sense is waiting for you.
What often happens, even if we feel a strong calling beckoning us to cross a threshold, is that we don’t know how to do it or we’re bound to the old reality by fear and deeply rooted habits.
My work if essentially helping women cross that line.
A non-pathologising language
When you replace the language of trauma, breakdown, disorders, depression and other pathologising terms to ‘threshold’, you open up far more possibilities for understanding life events as opportunities for expansion.
It also allows you to weaken the fixing-mind or the inadequate self-belief.
Being able to identify which threshold you’re at makes it easier to enlist the help you need and also to feel encouraged. Feeling encouraged on your journey towards self-accomplishment opens you up to self-compassion.
I’d like to describe for you each of these thresholds, what characterises them and the particular challenges and needs they threshold present, so you can come out of feeling stuck in the old and the familiar and open up with curiosity and excitement to the new.
The five thresholds to coming out of feeling stuck
Waking up to the fact that your relationship with your mother—or that her mothering—was not “normal”
Living with awareness but thinking there’s nothing you can do about it or not knowing what to do
Beginning of healing your mother wound
Deepening the journey of healing your mother wound
When your mother is closer to- or has passed away
1.Realising the Truth
The first crack in the old story, the coming-out of normalising
Genevieve had been following my Facebook posts when she suddenly woke up to the fact that her childhood was not “normal”, at least not in the way she had once believed.
She did feel sad, angry or shocked by many of her childhood events—like the evening when the family went to the cinema, but somehow Genevieve upset her mum, who then left her (at the age of 10) to find her way him alone at night after the film.
But back then, and throughout childhood, Genevieve rewrote many moments like this as “normal.”
Like many under mothered women, she normalised these situations. The overwhelmed of being emotionally abused and neglected turned her survival skills on—turning down the volume of her fear, numbing her need for guidance and rewriting her sense of safety, so she could think: “it’s not ideal, but I can cope.”
She left her relationship with her mother tucked away as a secret. Only her partner was privy to.
When she woke up to the truth of things, holding her early life experiences an untold secret was one of the challenges she faced.
Realising the truth thresholds involve mainly:
Reframing ‘normal’, especially in the context of mother-daughter relationship
Constructing or expanding the emotional vocabulary
Learning to contain overwhelm with compassion and skill
Legitimising the arising needs of the moment
2.Navigating the In-Between
The limbo feeling between knowing something about your mother wound and taking an action
This threshold can be difficult to distinguish from the first. What helps is noticing the frame of mind or nature of your thoughts. The common ones include:
“My mother did her best, I can’t complain”
“There’s nothing I can do. I can’t change her”
“If I’m not going to help my mother, who will?!?”
“I’m old enough; I should move on”
“It wasn’t that bad”
While there’s a small grain of truth in each, their purpose is not to tell a truth but to lower the uncertainty of not knowing whether the mother wound can be healed, or to reduce the volume of the emotional pain.
This threshold isn’t necessarily linear. You can land here after years of personal growth or therapy—like Kim had.
Even thought Kim had therapy since her teens, it was her business coach who sent herms way, seeing that the mother wound was holding Kim back from her capacity to expand and hold space for others’ personal and spiritual growth.
Perhaps the biggest challenge of this threshold is the fear of becoming like your mother ,which can lead to a state I call effort-ing—being entangled with unbalanced, excessive efforts to secure acknowledgment, validation, care, appreciation, love and meaningful presence in your own, or others’ life.
Efforting is reinforced by massively unsupportive, toxic masculine messages telling us to “snap out of it” and “stop asking for too much”.
Crossing this threshold means replacing those patterns of thoughts and states of mind with ones that provide internal validation of our needs, feelings, experiences and wishes.
3. Beginning the Path of Healing
First active steps with a mid of urgency and vulnerability, hope and overwhelm
My mother wound summit co-host and friend, Marisa Sim, once shared a perfect illustration for the urgency women often feel at this stage.
In the video, a car driving a road with an entire house, layered precariously on its roof, as if threatening to spill over at any moment. Her caption read: “when you just started mother wound therapy and expect your therapist to get fix it all ASAP.”
We’ve all been in that space with something—starting a meaningful education, a new relationship, a creative project—feeling the quickening of potential and wanting to arrive immediately.
Penny was like that. Her highly critical and demanding mother had stolen her childhood, making her the household caretaker for younger siblings. She wasn’t allowed hobbies or friends, and was punished for neglecting chores.
When Penny began Life Alignment Hakomi therapy with me, she felt excitement, vulnerability, motivation, frustration, hope, hopelessness, progress, setbacks—the full spectrum.
Her challenge was pacing—honouring her natural rhythm of unfolding without applying the inner (and sometimes external) pressure to “get there.”
At this threshold, it helps to gather your support network to: encourage you along the way, to reflect back to you the changes you’ve accomplished with your therapist/coach and to offer you encouragement and compassion when you can’t elicit it for yourself.
4. Deepening & Expanding
The refinement, embodiment and integration of deeper and refined sense of self
Women who’ve been around the block with different healing modalities encounter many sub-thresholds in this chapter.
You may:
Already know the value of working on attachment wound with a skilled professional, yet hit a dead end or feel reluctant to open up to someone new
Have gleaned enough evidence that healing the mother wound is possible, yet doubt that more freedom from the hurts of being under mothered is within reach
Feel internal pressure to “know better”, which stirs up shame, guilt and frustration, keeping you from seeking further support
At this point, you’ll benefit from someone who has deeply healed their own mother wound and can meet you at that depth. Somatic, embodied work is often more effective than talk therapy here.
Many women I’ve supported at this threshold are therapists, spiritual teachers, or healers themselves—but not only.
Deborah, a young and inspiring artist, knew that her long-term depression stemmed from her anxious mother, who suffered from CPTSD. She was considering coming off antidepressants and wanted my help in finding a new self-perspective.
Through our work, she reframed her relationship with sadness, so she was no longer afraid or taking not as a default sign for another depressive episode. She also understood her delayed grief—gaining a new sense of autonomy over her health and choices.
If you’re on this threshold and want to have a comprehensive look at the three common mother wound types and what they each need to find a resolution, you can download my video training
5. Embracing the Closing Chapter
The chapter of reflection, release and redefining selfhood
Sometimes, a mother’s passing brings relief. Other times, it brings regret, rage, guilt or shame. Some women feel they want to prepare for that threshold—peeling away more layers of the mother wound so they can arrive to the passing away threshold with more clarity and resources.
We can’t really know what how we’ll respond, but it always brings fresh processing to this pivotal relationship.
Natalie, a psychotherapist in her crone years, who works with people facing terminal cancer, came to me after her mother’s death because she suddenly felt an unrelenting sense of guilt. Our work helped her redefine herself both as a mother to her children, releasing early wounds from living with a narcissistic mother.
Dimitra, an academic in the sciences, supported her mother through recurring depression and the passing away of her father. She used this threshold to clarify the family roles she’d inherited versus those she wanted to create for herself—balancing caregiving with her own needs.
Crossing a threshold is birthing a new selfhood—one that is more coherent, whole and inspired.
We don’t simply “step into a better version of ourselves,” as meme culture claims. We learn to embody forgotten, muted, or neglected parts of ourselves—and discover parts we never knew were possible.
This requires greater self-compassion, stronger self-regulation, and deeper trust in our own inner wisdom.
Crossing a threshold is more than self-improvement—it’s an act of becoming.
Each step brings you closer to a self that is coherent, whole, and inspired, with greater self-compassion and trust in your inner wisdom. Whether you are just realising the truth about your childhood or integrating the lessons of a lifetime, your next threshold is an invitation.
And if you’re feeling stuck or standing at one of these thresholds, know that you don’t have to cross it alone—gentle, skilled support can make the step forward clearer, steadier, and more compassionate.
If you feel ready to explore what crossing your next threshold could look like, I invite you to reach out and book a free
Not sure yet? No problem!
Here are a couple of ways to learn about healing the mother wound:
Sign up to my Museletter for regular, useful content on healing the mother wound
Take my video training on breaking free from mother wound limiting beliefs
Shelly's helping women who've had a complex relationship with their mother and want to unplack the way it impacts their current life challanges so they can become unlimited personally & professionally
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