Stop Trying To Forgive Your Mother: Here's How To Put Down Your Mother Wound Emotional Weight
- 2 days ago
- 6 min read
When you finally stop trying to forgive your mother, you're not haunted by guilt or anger. On the contrary — you find the genuine relief you've been looking for because you've put down something that was never yours to carry. In over a decade of working with women on healing the mother wound, this is what I've seen again and again: the shift doesn't come from trying harder. It comes from the moment you stop. This post is about what becomes possible in that moment — and why stopping trying to forgive your mother might be the most honest thing you've done for yourself in years.
REGISTRATION TO THE WORKSHOP OPENS THIS FRIDAY, APRIL 17
First 8 women to join within 24 hours receive a FREE 1:1 with me
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The Stone You've Been Holding Too Long
The biggest shifts come with the smallest change of perspective.
Healing the mother wound focuses on gentle, yet profound shifts that yield big changes.
So let’s imagine for a moment that the urge or aim to forgive your mother is like a beautiful stone you found on a stall by the sea, and you want to take it with you as a memory of a touching moment.
You hold on to that stone for a long while in your hand, because it’s special to you and you don’t want to lose it.
Your hand begins to get tired, and you’re afraid the stone will slip, so you tighten your grip.
After a short time, those tight fingers get sweaty and yearn to release.
But your thoughts are saying: “You shouldn’t! This is really important. Just a little longer and you’ll get there.”
The longer you hold tight to it, the heavier this stone begins to feel, and you’re no longer sure why it’s so important.
Suddenly, you ask yourself: "Why hold on so tight? I could just put it in my pocket.”
That’s what it feels like to let go of an idea that was never yours to carry.
And that’s the shift that happens to women on the journey of healing the mother wound—a sudden, unexpected shift into doing something so small, choosing an option that has always been available, only habits and ideas got in the way of noticing the possibility of relief.
Why You Can't Force Forgiveness
If forgiving, understanding or accepting your mother has become a habit you bounce back to, if it’s an idea you cling to and no longer know why, or what would happen if you shift away from it—this message is for you:
You can’t force forgiveness into your heart as if it were a heart implant, commanding the heart’s rhythm.
And you can’t offer anyone—let alone your mother—something that you don’t have within you to voluntarily give.
When I work with women on healing the mother wound, I never tell them what their healing should look like.
I’m not in the business of telling women what they should aim for or even what it could look like “if only….”
Healing the mother wound is about restoring agency and inner authority.
The rupture of agency and inner authority is at the origin of the mother wound.
The mother wound is a rupture in your relationship with yourself, others, and life itself, rooted in the rupture in your relationship with your mother.
To heal the wound, you need a path that returns what was taken: tools, perspectives, and encouragement to repair what has always been your birthright — inner authority and agency.
What the Mother Wound Actually Needs to Heal
The moment you stop trying to force forgiveness, you are no longer the daughter who has to earn validation, acknowledgment, love, or inner peace—you are a woman choosing herself.
When you stop trying so hard, you’re in a counter act shifting from:
🌻 Feeling like you’re betraying your mother if you’re not able to give her this grace of forgiving her, to untying the knots in your heart so you can become loyal to what you feel you deserve to receive for yourself, others, and life itself.
🌻 Working hard to get her to understand how you were hurt—to accepting a reality where she might never take responsibility for her behaviour, freeing you to invest your efforts in people and projects that matter to you in life.
🌻 Beating yourself with thoughts like "I should know better"—to letting go of the habit of making yourself small in front of the people whose belonging and appreciation you've been working so hard to earn.
When you stop working hard on forgiveness, you finally give yourself the permission to feel what you really feel. And that’s an act of kindness towards yourself.
And if you want to process some of those feelings so you can forge your own private way to restore inner authority and agency, my new workshop is designed with you in mind.
When you join the waiting list, you’ll be the first to the get an email when registration opens on Friday, April 17th, and you could be one of the eight women who receive a bonus 1:1 session with me.
After joining, you'll receive a link to book your session and a short form so I can prepare for you specifically.
This session will be shaped by the immediate, small, and significant shift you’d like to initiate, and it could look like:
🌻 Releasing some of the harshness and self-criticism you absorbed from your mother’s attitude towards yourself so you have more space to trust that you can still accomplish your goals with much less self-beating
🌻 Gaining clarity on the guilt that drives you to try and forgive, understand, or accept your mother so you can finally feel free from guilt when you choose to prioritise your me-time
🌻 Laying the foundations for building emotional safety so you can finally see it is possible to initiate the identity shift you’re craving when you feel secure within yourself
What Happens When You Stop Trying to Forgive Your Mother
I've been working with emotionally aware women on healing the mother wound since 2014.
I know this work from the inside —I lived it before I practised it.
What I've seen, again and again, is that when a woman stops organising her life around her mother (even if she's only in her mind and heart) and starts centring on herself, everything shifts. Not just the relationship with her mother — the relationship with herself, her work, and the people she loves.
The workshop is where you taste what that shift feels like — in your body, not just your understanding. The 1:1 is where we take that feeling and follow it into the specific place in your life where it matters most.
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, 11:30 am – 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)
In this workshop, you’ll be offered 2-3 somatic practices to:
🌻 Gain the energetic shift that comes from restoring emotional safety that lets you focus, guilt-free on your own life
🌻Discover some of the habits and patterns that keep you looping back into trying to understand, forgive or accept your mother, so you can U-turn towards yourself
This is a great space for you if:
🌻 You’re done centring your healing process around your mother’s wish-list and ready to recentre around your life force
🌻You want to gain a first-hand experience of the immediate shifts somatic, Hakomi work offers so you can integrate your insights on the spot (rather than try to apply later what's in your notes).
NOT READY FOR THIS NOW?
NO PROBLEM!
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
