Healing the Wounds of Mean Mothering

Part 3: Beginning the Journey of Healing the Woundedness

It’s sad but true that, if we didn’t get the loving mothering, valuing and acceptance we all need and deserve as children, no amount of it coming from outside can reach through the time warp to our wounded inner little ones. Only when the who we are now has developed a relationship with those little ones and is already giving that love to our selves, can others’ love come in to support our current self in that re-mothering process.

The work of healing from/transforming this terrible legacy begins with accepting that, at this stage of life, we must learn to provide for our selves the loving for which we yearn: it’s an inside job. It requires letting go of the hope that what we craved and continue to crave can ever come from anywhere else. As we work at this incredibly difficult and painful letting go, we simultaneously begin turning inward to listen for and to the love-starved, abandoned and neglected little ones within us.

Letting go of the hope of ever getting it from the outside is one of the hardest things we ever have to do. As we let go, we may feel enormous grief at the finally acknowledged, irretrievable loss. We may feel furious for having been ripped off of our birthright and for having spent so many years fruitlessly contorting our selves, looking outward instead of inward for the love and acceptance we need to thrive. These are the feelings that we have held at bay by our continuing to hope.

Allowing, and providing safe space for these storms of emotion as they arise and pass through us, we begin the process of turning inward, of opening our ears and our hearts to the pain of the inner little ones that we, our selves, have continued neglecting all these years. In this practice of sitting-as-two, our grown-up, functioning adult self becomes available to hear and engage with the little ones’ emotions and needs. This is the gateway to developing our capacity to lovingly re-mother these inner little ones, to developing an inner-good-mommy/caregiver.