What Is the Mother Wound and Why I Write About It
It was a cold evening at the beginning of 2020 as I stepped out of my car heading towards yoga class while saying a few last words on a call with my best friend. At that moment, completely out of context, I sensed the penetration of the idea that I needed to write this book. But why this book in particular about the mother wound?
Sometimes you look at something for hours, maybe even days or years, until you see the image surfacing up into its fulness. That is the journey of our life and the fractal journeys within it. And this is the journey of women nursing the image of fulness in a patriarchic capitalistic society.
At that moment when the insight about the book surfaced up I felt pierced by the fire of creation. I was consumed by the voices of all the women who had crossed my path over the past two decades, depositing with me their stories, their dreams, their soul yearning for healing. I could see the image of the mother wound surging from behind the waves of lack of trust, hampering, shrivelling any sense of adequacy, desiccating voices that struggle to express what they need and want free from shame or guilt.
The mother wound
is a wound in a woman’s emotional body,
created by a constant lack of support
or genuine appreciation
for her true nature.
Coerced into minimising her presence,
robbed of her autonomy
and made to believe
that her vulnerable magnificence
has no space, she has learned how to step out
of her fulness.
But she can, and she will, step back into her wholeness.
While the mother wound has made dimensions—from the mother earth to the mother archetype—my book focuses on the personal dimension of women who have experienced a challenging relationship with their mother which has left them with a hurt that becomes their responsibility, their burden, and sometimes, as they come to see, their gateway to immense freedom and healing capacities.
Especially women who’ve given a fair amount of attention and effort to healing that pain through various self development and spiritual processes feel that not being able to do it alone or being triggered by the same patterns after all those years means that they have somehow failed and are destined to live with an emotional limp.
Many women are not even aware that the intimacy difficulties, the drive to be the strong one, the sense of needing to care for things alone no matter how many loving people around her, the shame in setting boundaries, people pleasing and more emanate from the mother wound.
My life has not been an exception. Born to a mother with a metal illness I have traversed deserts and lost valleys until I have reached the green meadows of rest and peace, living comfortably inside my own skin.
I have left without saying goodbye because I feared the separation, felt my words evaporate to fumes when I needed to say how I felt, hid behind my shadow lets someone think I’m too much.
So I’m not writing this book in the voice of the expert on the mother wound, nor in an attempt to claim higher professional stance in being human. But from the women’s circle around the bonfire of someone who shares an ancient fairy tale of how we were dragged kicking and screaming down to the dark and moist underfloor of mysterious inner allies only to discover that the stars shine the brightest in dark places.
“What we avoid shapes us
as much as what we face.
Only that what we avoid
shapes holes in our heart
and what we meet fills us
with more than we can imagine.”
My wish is that this book will be a companion to any woman and man who needs it; that it will tell the stories that need to be told with the words that open heart-doors; that it will provide the support, healing and love that every woman deserves.
Shelly is helping women who know their gifts and strength lie in their life story and wounds, yet after all their efforts can't seem to live that reality to the full.
