Living With The Mother Wound

I once believed that grieving was something people did when they were mourning the loss of a loved one who had recently passed. But over the years quite precisely 2022, I realised that there are many things we grieve in adult life such as the ending of relationships and friendships and so forth. Grief and the process of grieving was something that showed up in everyday life for many of us. They say grief comes in waves and it really does. Some days the waves hit harder than others.

To be honest…I’ve had a strong feeling over the past few days to write about this not to shy away from this topic and even when I have written about other things, and not this there has always been this internal nudge/reminder to not steer away from using my voice to tell my story. Whilst I might have gotten away with not doing this in the past because of my fear of being seen, I no longer can avoid this.

Over the years I’ve come to realise how the death of my mum has affected the way I give and receive love. I couldn’t see how my overbearing grip or attachment/expectations in my friendships with other women would become problematic because I expected them to show up as a parent would (although I never knew/nor understood this at the time).

I knew that I cared for my friends but I wasn’t quite able to show up for them as affectionately as I wanted to. Yet in my connections with women, I would overcompensate for the lack of/void that existed internally within me. To some extent, I was mirroring the very thing I was trying to heal and cover up.

Bell hooks notes in All About Love that “Severe separations in early life leave emotional scars on the brain because they assault the essential human connection: The [parent-child] bond which teaches us that we are lovable. The [parent-child] bond which teaches us how to love. We cannot be whole human beings-indeed, we may find it hard to be human — without the sustenance of this first attachment- JUDITH VIORST”.

When I first came across this quote in 2021, I was gobsmacked at the accuracy and also at how it described my circumstances. In all honesty, this is not to sound all doom and gloom but life truly isn’t the same. As stated above this bond teach us that we are lovable and this is not to say without this bond you aren’t loveable or there aren’t people in your life who won’t love you but there is a void/a severance that marks the heart eternally. And when I turn inwards to reflect on how this severance affected my life, I see how in my younger days I felt a lot of anger that I didn’t vocalise and as I grew older those feelings turned into confusion and unanswered questions.

There were moments where I would want to share those heavy inner thoughts with those around me, I just couldn’t overcome the discomfort and tension that I felt. I knew something was wrong but couldn’t bring myself to ask for help. Why did so many emotions boil up when I would see other women with their mothers? Why did I feel a longing that I hadn’t experienced? Why did I feel so much confusion, anger, jealousy, and sadness and loneliness when I saw mothers and daughters bonding? Perhaps my inner child wanted to make sense of not having this…maybe it was my own internal projections. One thing I knew for sure was that this loss was a wound that I’d live with for life. Now this is not to say it’s a death sentence to live with but it is a heaviness and internal void that is hard to live with.

Like many other people who have experience this type of loss, I began to ask myself why it had to be me and why my mum…and till this day this is not something I speak about openly. But I’ve gradually come to understand that I’ll never truly have answers to all of my unanswered questions but one thing that brings me solace is finding her memorabilia and asking questions about her.

I used to think that grieving was something people did when they were mourning the loss of a loved one who had recently passed. But over the years quite precisely 2022, I realised that there are many things we grieve in adult life such as the ending of relationships and friendships and so forth. Grief and the process of grieving was something that showed up in everyday life for many of us. It is true when they say grief comes in waves and it really does. Some days the waves hit harder than others and in 2021 that delayed grief really rocked my internal world.

In hindsight, I can say that not processing nor talking about how and what the death of my mother would mean for me as a girl child who was growing up quite quickly began to cause me inner turmoil. I can’t say specifically when this process began for me as I do believe it has been a full-on journey but one day, I was forced to confront the hurt that I had supressed. Overtime, I have come to understand that not having my mum physically in life is an inner wound that honestly will never go away, even if there are loving and supportive people around me. Finding ways to acknowledge that it does hurt and not allowing the pain to not engulf me is one thing that keeps me going.

In turning inwards, I had to be real with myself. If you don’t already know by now, I am interested in Astrology and I do believe that there are certain transits that force you to deal with things you have suppressed. In 2021, I was forced to confront this void and that’s the best way to describe the internal emptiness that hits unexpectedly at times. When you least expect it, grief shows up at your door and it hurts. I have countless journal entries to evidence this. There are days where I have longed to be hugged and surrounded by my mum. There are times where I think about how life would be if she was still alive or me asking for advice about a particular situations, dealing with heartbreak, or simply bonding.

So many unanswered questions and so many pent-up feelings. When I came across the hoodhealer in 2020, I began to understand how an unregulated nervous system caused by supressed emotions and trauma can show up in your life as PCOS/inflammatory & autoimmune diseases. Essentially, she argues that the root cause of PCOS arises from not feeling safe. As someone who has been diagnosed with PCOS when I began to piece the pieces together what she said really made sense. As someone who believes in alternative healing and holistic forms of healing, I do belief that as humans we store trapped emotions and grief in our bodies and it is a wish/desire of mine this year to embrace reiki healing and one day become a reiki healer too.

I’ll probably do a part 2 where I go into more depth about the things that have helped me if I am able to do so. But one thing I will note is the reel I saw on Instagram last night, where a psychologist said that speaking about your trauma doesn’t actually heal your trauma which I can kind of understand because even after speaking some of our problems with a loved one the problem still remains. But I also believe that there are some things that we have to experience in life to help others and therefore I hope this post provides you insights into my life and wish that you also find ways to overcome whatever silent battles you are going through.