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By choosing to be responsible for our own joy we release Mother from being who she could not be.
When I learned this through the journey with my own mother wound, I knew that I had discovered one of the keys to lasting emotional freedom.
This year I released my new book, Transforming Mother Wound—Sacred Pathways for the Wild and Sovereign. In a previous article, I shared an excerpt regarding grief and how it manifests through this particular core wound. It took some years for me to realize that my experience could be turned into something positive and practical.
I was never interested in sharing the nitty-gritty of my story, mainly because I thought it would be such a downer, plus I personally never found talking about it helpful. However, once I’d made my way through the “what happened,” I realized that it was my path to share what had helped me. As an introvert, my way to healing was quite solitary.
Taking care of my mother when she was in her last years gave us the opportunity to make peace through her vulnerability. I could truly see her humanity. Some people said that I could easily have taken advantage of her elderly state…pay her back, as it were. I suppose that would be a natural reaction to abuse or neglect. Perhaps I was lucky to see the softer side of my mother as she became frail, and it never occurred to me to get back at her…that sounds not only horrible but would also have done nothing to break the cycle of abuse. Serving her as she aged and became more of my friend than ever before helped me to find compassion. It allowed me to see her as she was, and not the mother I wished I’d had.
Accepting responsibility for my own joy was the breath I needed in my lungs. It was the turning point where my adult self was able to create my life instead of my devastated inner child.
Here’s part of another chapter from my book, where I discuss how one can release the fantasy of the mother they did not have.
If our experience has been that we made ourselves small in order to be loved, if we had denied our own authenticity in order to feel safe or accepted, then it is our sacred responsibility to love, nurture and initiate ourselves into a life of Self-worth.
A woman who feels unsafe, unheard, and unseen, may sacrifice her child in the same way she felt sacrificed. She may ask her, through conscious and unconscious ways, to abandon her truth.
1. In which ways did your mother or mother figure extinguish your fire?
2. Where in your body do you feel her abandonment?
3. In which life situations do you see this denial of Self re-enacted by your own actions or decisions?
It is common with Mother Wound to practice self-aggression and self-wounding when clarity is lacking. To gain clarity, we explore the pattern initiated by our mother line.
4. Write an intention to love, nurture and initiate yourself into your authentic truth and life, to recognize yourself as worthy of expressing all of who you are, and to love and nurture yourself in your uniqueness.
Allow space for your mother to be herself as you would have wanted her to honor your space. (this can be done through memories of her, if she is no longer incarnated)
Allow space to grieve the Mother you never had, the “real” mother who did not materialize. Letting go of the fantasy mother we expected, we become empowered.
Notice the space that opens in your story when you release the mother you hoped for and accept the experience you had as a path to self-mastery
Grieving the “real mother” and taking responsibility for our own sacred, authentic path re-frames the story and shifts the focus from victim/blame to aligned co-creation.
What would you like to create in your life?
A Ritual for Releasing the Fantasy Mother
>> Write a thank you note to the fantasy mother role which Mother could not fill.
>> Feel all the places where this fantasy mother resides in your body or emotions.
>> Place this letter on your altar and honor the feelings which rise when you think of letting her go.
>> In a safe container, a cauldron on your altar, or elsewhere, burn this letter with the intention of opening healing space where she once resided.
>> Scatter ‘Her’ ashes in a place that feels supportive, a body of moving water is best, or to the wind in your favorite place in nature.
Most importantly, create boundaries in your thoughts, speech, and actions that do not invite her to materialize again, but instead fill the space with a journey onto your sacred path and highest embodiment.
May your journey through mother wound be filled with opportunities for your empowerment.
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