The Mother Wound

 One of the deepest wounds a child can carry

is the mother wound.

A child needs safety.

Nurturing.

Gentle guidance.

Someone who notices when she is afraid.

Someone who listens when she has something to say.

Someone who makes her feel,

You are loved.

You are safe.

You matter.

My mother didn’t know how to give me those things.

For a long time, I thought the biggest wounds from my childhood were the beatings with a belt…

and the walking on eggshells.

The constant awareness of what might upset my mother,

because if she became angry,

my father would become angry too.

So I learned to be careful.

I learned to watch.

To listen.

To anticipate.

To keep myself small.

But today, I see something deeper.

Perhaps the greatest wound wasn’t only what happened to me.

Perhaps it was what I didn’t receive.

The nurturing.

The protection.

The gentle mothering.

The feeling that my needs mattered.

When a child’s needs aren’t met,

she doesn’t simply leave those unmet needs behind when she grows up.

She carries them.

They can shape how she loves.

How she attaches.

How she sees herself.

How much she gives.

How little she asks for.

How easily she believes she is responsible for everyone else’s feelings.

And sometimes,

we spend our adult lives trying to find what we couldn’t find as children.

We look for love.

For approval.

For safety.

For someone to finally tell us,

“You’re enough.”

For me, those wounds became tangled with codependency, addiction, and the ways I learned to abandon myself while taking care of everyone else.

I don’t say that to blame my mother.

I say it because I am finally willing to tell the truth about what the little girl needed.

She needed a mother who could make her feel safe.

She needed to be comforted.

She needed to have a voice.

She needed to know that having needs didn’t make her difficult.

She needed to know that love didn’t have to be earned.

The mother wound isn’t healed by pretending it never existed.

It began to heal when I finally stop abandoning the little girl who carried it.

When I turn toward her instead of away.

When I listen.

When I protect her.

When I remind her:

You matter.