40 Ways My Mom Gave Me The Mother Wound

“The single hardest burden for a human being to carry is a lack of nurturance in childhood.” - Steven C. Hayes

I talk a bunch on this blog about the mother wound and how to heal, but I don’t often share the personal details of my own experience. Today, I’m doing that.

While journaling in the second edition of Reclaim the other day, I came across the prompt:

“Complete this sentence: My mother wound is..."

I wrote without stopping. The result was a list of forty ways my mother’s behavior shaped how I learned to see myself, care for myself, and move through the world. Seeing it in black and white helped me stop minimizing what I lived through.

I’m not sharing this to compare wounds or to create a hierarchy of pain. The Trauma Olympics help no one.

I’m sharing this because naming what happened helps me come back home to myself. If something here resonates with you, I hope it gives you permission to do the same.

What is the Mother Wound?

The mother wound refers to the pain or trauma we experience within our relationship with our mother, beginning in childhood and extending into adulthood. It also includes the ways we learned to cope with that pain—like gaslighting ourselves, avoiding conflict, or developing an anxious attachment style.

Not everyone’s mother wound looks the same. Some experienced emotional neglect. Others never felt safe enough to be themselves. Some were criticized, controlled, or made to feel like they could never measure up.

No matter what yours looks like, your mother wound is real and worthy of care.

My Mother Wound Is…

1. Mom making me feel responsible for her happiness.

2. Mom treating me like her on-call therapist instead of her child.

3. Mom making me believe it was my job to parent my siblings.

4. Mom staying silent when other adults hurt me.

5. Mom forcing me to practice her religion instead of letting me decide for myself.

6. Mom telling me too much about her sex life.

7. Mom taking 12-year-old me to Weight Watchers.

8. Mom saying, “Having you kids ruined my body.”

9. Mom making my breast size a topic of conversation.

10. Mom repeatedly taking me to doctors so she could get attention.

11. Mom saying, “You’d be so much prettier if you lost 10 pounds.”

12. Mom saying, “Those jeans don’t do anything for your butt. You look like Grandma Joan.”

13. Mom gaslighting me: "That never happened."

14. Mom teaching me to question my own reality instead of questioning her behavior.

15. Mom saying, “Stop. Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know how Dad hurt you.”

16. Mom doing nothing when Dad said, “You’re sitting like you’re about to get serviced.”

17. Mom saying, “I love you, but I don’t like you.”

18. Mom using religion to shame me for experiencing normal sexual feelings.

19. Mom slapping me across the face at sixteen.

20. Mom pinning me to the garage floor in my Halloween costume.

21. Mom calling me a bitch more times than I can count.

22. Mom screaming, "You're no longer part of this family!"

23. Mom violating my boundaries by coming to my house after I said not to.

24. Mom telling my brother not to include me in his wedding.

25. Mom telling me she’d pay for my college, then changing her mind half-way through.

26. Mom lying to my sister to drive a wedge between us.

27. Mom saying, “At least you know you can get pregnant,” after I had a miscarriage.

28. Mom saying adoption would be “like killing your real baby.”

29. Mom refusing to help me when I was struggling as a new mom.

30. Mom choosing my abusive father over me. Every. Single. Time.

31. Mom driving away and leaving my toddler and I stranded.

32. Mom referring to my baby as "our baby."

33. Mom treating me like a possession instead of a person.

34. Mom armchair diagnosing me to play the victim.

35. Mom not believing me when I told her I was being touched inappropriately.

36. Mom enabling the addiction that has been running through our family.

37. Mom texting, "Don't contact me again."

38. Mom expecting her idea of womanhood to be my idea of womanhood.

39. Mom prioritizing being perceived as a good mother over actually being one.

40. Mom knowing about the work I do now, having every ability to apologize, and choosing, every day, not to.

Final Thoughts

If reading this brings up sadness, anger, numbness, or confusion, that’s not you being dramatic—it’s your body recognizing something true. You’re allowed to feel that. You’re allowed to name what happened. You’re allowed to grieve what you needed and didn’t receive. Coming home to yourself is not a betrayal of your mother. It's finally choosing yourself.