It's Not About Forgiveness — Healing the Mother Wound Without Forgiving Your Mother
- Apr 10
- 6 min read
There's a piece of advice that follows undermothered women everywhere — from therapists, from family, from society at large, who've never had to endure what you have. "Forgive her." "She did her best." "You only have one mother." I never had a goal to forgive my mother. What I wanted was to put down the weight. This is the story of the day someone pushed forgiveness on me anyway — and what I said when I finally had enough.
Before I get into it, I’d like to invite you to a new workshop:
It’s Not About Forgiveness
For women who’ve spent years trying to understand, forgive or fix their relationship with their mother — and want to find what's possible when they centre around themselves instead.
So, one day, while I was already living in a different country, building my new life with my new husband, I came back for a visit to my homeland.
I took the opportunity to book a shamanic journey in the hopes of getting unhooked from the mess my mother was able to dump on me even from thousands of miles away.
Even though I had heard throughout my life the comments (which sometimes felt like commands) to forgive my mother because she was sick, to understand my mother because she had a tough life, and to accept my mother because I have only one—I never had a goal to forgive my mother.
It was just not something I aspired to.
All I really wanted was to get rid of the burden my mother placed on my shoulders:
🌻The heaviness of her depression floating throughout our two-bedroom flat during my childhood
🌻The poverty we suffered because she couldn’t hold down one job, blaming it on others — nothing was her fault
🌻The unpaid bills I had to cover, the calls I had to make for her, and the crises I had to manage from across a continent
But the first time I engaged directly with the idea of forgiving my mother was on that shamanic journey.
It was as if the woman injected the idea into me like a sedative — a small, almost unfelt poke in the skin while you gradually become less conscious and more susceptible to ideas.
She said I could bring with me anything I wanted, so I brought my brand-new camera, the fanciest I’d ever had, with a big lens for amazing resolution. I was proud of it.
The woman kept asking me, “Why is it important for you to take photos?”
At first, her questions landed like genuine curiosity.
Then, when they repeated, they began to feel like a sprinkle of doubt, dampening my clear vision.
Eventually, when she became relentless, I began to feel really angry, and invisible, just like I felt in childhood.
Before you speculate, that this was some shamanic trick that brought a huge aha moment to my healing journey — let me stop you.
With great relief, we came to the end of our journey and sat to enjoy the sunset on the soft, golden beach sand, between a few rocks.
The woman suddenly suggested a resolution for my troubles with my mother and said:
“You should forgive her.”
My jaw dropped.
She continued with a solution:
“How about you put a bill in an envelope and send it to her every month?!”
For a moment, I began to feel my body drowning in the same desperation I felt in childhood, when people completely ignored my suffering as a child and suggested I forgive my mother.
For a moment, I could feel my throat choking from a familiar despair and helplessness — how could she, too, suggest that I should do exactly what I’ve wanted to be rid of in my life?!
But I got lost in those feelings just for a moment.
I thanked her for the day, and added:
“You know nothing of what I had to endure and have no right to offer me a solution I’ve never asked for.”
I took my camera — with the same level of pride I came with — and left.
Telling a woman with a mother wound that she needs to forgive her mother, understand, or accept her is no spiritual wisdom or healing advice. It is trapping her back in the same prison she lived in as a girl.
Forgiving, accepting, or understanding someone else’s needs and emotional limits are beautiful qualities.
But there is only one big, fat problem with the idea when it’s forced on a girl who’s been undermothered:
It was never your emotional load to carry.
These comments from family, society, and perhaps directly from your mother, blur the lines of responsibility.
You might have, at first, ignored these comments telling you that you should forgive your mother, understand, or accept her, because they’re confusing at best and infuriating at worst.
You might have even tried to forgive her so you could move past the hurts but realised that you ended up with the same resentment.
And I want you to know that to heal your mother wound, you don’t need to forgive.
Perhaps, like me, all you ever wanted was to be relieved of the emotional burden that your relationship with your mother has placed on you.
And that can be achieved in infinite ways.
I want for you too, to find the resolution that works for you, so that you no longer spend more than a moment or two before responding to the comments you’ve heard your whole life with the inner authority
I know you deserve.
The mother wound is a rupture in our relationship to ourselves, others, and life itself, rooted in the relationship with our mother.
The mother wound rupture widens when dismissive, sometimes abusive comments, place the responsibility of forgiveness, understanding, or acceptance on the daughter while disregarding her needs.
So, if you want to discover how that becomes possible, the workshop I’m offering is just right for you.
YOU ARE INVITED:
It’s Not About Forgiveness
A Relational and Somatic Workshop for Undermothered Women
Who’ve spent years trying to understand, forgive, or fix their relationship with their mother
And want to find what's possible when they centre around themselves instead
🌻 Happens on: Friday, April 24th, 5:30 to 7:00 pm CET
(4:30–6:00 pm BST, 11:30am – 1:00 pm EST)
🌻 Registration opens on: Friday 17th
🌻 Early bird bonus, limited to 8 women: Sign up within the first 24 hours and receive a FREE 1:1 WITH ME
(to be used by May 15th at the latest)
This is an online, live workshop where you’ll:
🌻 Gain a first-hand experience of what it’s like to drop the emotional burden of forgiving your mum and centre on what your healing needs
🌻 Find out which beliefs or habits that stand in your way of moving beyond forgiving
🌻 Experience, in a tangible, felt-sense way, what happens when you recentre your healing around your own feelings
🌻 Restore a sense of emotional safety—perhaps for the first time—so you can feel grounded in your mother wound healing
P.S. If you’ve spent years trying (and failing) to forgive your mother because everyone told you that was the answer, this workshop is for you. There may be another way forward, one that begins with you. Sign up for the workshop to discover what becomes possible when you centre your healing around yourself. 👉 Join the waiting list
P.P.S. If you already know you’re ready for a more personal space to heal the mother wound, Recentre is my 1:1 coaching offer for women who want support centred around their needs, their feelings and their healing. 👉 Book a call here.
P.P.P.S. I was a guest on Make More Money Podcast and we spoke about the reasons undermothered daughters cross their your own boundaries, what's needed to stop doing that and what will make you more visible with much less efforts 👉 Listen to my conversation on Make More Money
NOT READY TO BOOK A FREE CALL?
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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
