How To Heal The Mother Wound

"I believe not only that trauma is curable, but that the healing process can be a catalyst for profound awakening—a portal opening to emotional and genuine spiritual transformation." - Peter Levine, Phd

Every mother-child relationship is one-of-a-kind, even among biological siblings, which means that no two mother wounds will ever be exactly the same.

Naturally, the road to recovery will look different for everyone. The tools that helped one person heal their mother wound may not help you heal yours—and that’s okay.

Thankfully, healing the mother wound isn’t about following a “7-step roadmap” that worked for someone else. It’s about finding what works for you.

As someone who works with mother wound clients every day, I’ve witnessed hundreds of individual recovery success stories—each as unique as the clients themselves.

For instance, while there certainly were some similarities, the set of tools I used to help a 34-year-old trauma therapist heal her emotional mother wound was ultimately different from the set I used to help an entrepreneur stay-at-home dad heal his identity mother wound.

Had I tried to pull out the same set of tools I used years ago to heal my own mother wound, all I would have done is wasted these clients’ time and delayed their recovery.

So in that same spirit of helping you reach your healing goals, here’s five effective mother wound healing techniques I think you might benefit from adding to your recovery toolkit. Just take what fits and leave the rest!

1. Accept Your Mother Wound

I figured I’d get the most unpleasant sounding mother wound healing tool out of the way first.

Meet mother wound acceptance.

Now before you scroll down faster than I drive by my estranged mom’s hometown, please allow me to explain!

Accepting your mother wound does NOT mean:

Appreciating your trauma: “I’m grateful I have the mother wound.”
Downplaying your trauma: “My childhood wasn’t that bad.”
Resigning yourself: “I’ll always feel this way, so why bother trying to heal?”
Condoning Mom’s actions: “I was a difficult kid who needed the abuse.”

Instead, all mother wound acceptance really means is allowing yourself to see both your mother wound and your mother wound mom as they truly are.

As physician and addiction specialist Gabor Maté puts it, acceptance is simply recognizing that “things cannot be other than how they are.”

And while it can seem deceptively simple, this direct confrontation with reality can prove to be life-changing when it comes to healing the mother wound.

By acknowledging the reality of our past and present in relation to mom and how she’s acted in ways that have harmed us, we free up much-needed energy to devote towards our healing.

2. Begin a Daily Journaling Practice

Journaling has always been one of my favorite tools for mother wound recovery.

Not only have I used it to heal my own mother wound, but I regularly use it in my work with clients, too.

I’ve seen it so many times: the progress a couple of short mother wound journal prompts can bring to a stalled-out healing journey is truly powerful stuff.

A daily mother wound journaling practice sustained over weeks and months? Simply transformational.

There really is something about journaling about the mother wound that allows us to process painful emotions, memories, and experiences in a way that nothing else can.

Journaling is so effective because it helps us:

Clarify our emotions: Writing helps us make sense of confusing, complex, and even overwhelming feelings.
Release pent-up emotions: Putting our pain about something as taboo as the mother wound into words can be incredibly cathartic.
Identify patterns: Journaling can reveal recurring themes in our relationships, behaviors, and thought patterns that are keeping us stuck.
Empower ourselves: Seeing our growth and insights documented over time can remind us not only of our strength and resilience, but of how far we’ve come.

Since I’m not a scientist I won’t dive into all the science on why journaling is so effective at healing trauma, but if you want to check out the research for yourself I suggest starting here.

If you prefer to journal the old-fashioned way without prompts, all you need to get started is a physical journal or notes app on your phone or tablet.

If you’re someone who isn’t into staring at a blank page and would prefer to use the tried-and-true mother wound journaling prompts pulled directly from my mother wound practice, I encourage you to try Reclaim: A 60-Day Journal for healing the Mother Wound.

3. Validate Your Feelings

When we’ve been taught to dismiss, suppress, or invalidate the way we feel by someone as influential as our own mother—reconnecting with our emotions can seem like a truly daunting task.

What if I can’t stop crying?

What if my anger overtakes me?

What if my shame is a bottomless pit?

While these fears are understandable given what you’ve been through, they’re actually just the mother wound causing you to doubt yourself all over again.

The truth is that Mom was wrong: the simple act of feeling your feelings can’t hurt you. Instead, all sitting with your emotions can do is help you.

And this is true for even the particularly painful emotions we’d prefer to avoid the most—think shame, guilt, grief, and anger.

All of your emotions are signals worth listening to.

I often explain it to my clients like this:

Imagine the most loving friends a person could ask for. These loving friends represent your feelings.

Do you want to block these friends on your phone so you stop getting their texts?

Of course not!

What you want to do is keep the lines of communication wide open so you can continue to know what these loving friends have to say to you.

4. Go to Mother Wound Therapy

“Self-healing” might sound like a lovely concept, but the fact remains that it just doesn’t work.

Unfortunately, the idea that we can heal trauma by somehow pulling up on our own bootstraps is just more repackaged capitalism.

Like all other forms of relational trauma, the mother wound happens in relationships and is also healed in relationships.

As the great Carl Jung once famously said, “We don’t get wounded alone, and we don’t heal alone.”

One way to ensure you’re not spinning your wheels trying to heal your mother wound alone is to bring in a professional.

I know from the thought of starting this process can feel overwhelming, but it doesn’t need to be.

Not only do you have time to decide, there’s nothing to say you need to continue with the first person you try.

Fact: Most mother wound survivors try an average of three therapists before finding the right fit.

Now depending on your personal preferences, you might prefer to work with a psychotherapist, counselor, or coach.

Whatever you decide, two things are more important that the title a professional goes by or the modality they ascribe to:

How you feel when you’re with them (often referred to as rapport): You can’t heal in the presence of someone you don’t feel heard, believed, or understood by.
They’re experienced in helping people successfully heal the mother wound: You’ve already been your mom’s guinea pig so why pay money just to be someone’s training wheels all over again?

To begin your search for the right person for you, I recommend googling “mother wound therapy,” “mother wound counseling,” or “mother wound coaching.”

Once you find a few websites, take a few minutes to visit any active social media profiles or blogs to see if the mother wound is a topic they post regularly about.

If they’re posting, but they’re not posting about the mother wound, the chances that they can help you heal your mother wound are slim.

5. Join an Online Mother Wound Community

Therapy isn’t the only way to harness the power of connection when it comes to healing the mother wound.

If 1:1 mother wound wound support is outside your budget or if you’re already seeing a therapist you connect with, another way to support your recovery is to join an online mother wound community.

Healing the mother wound can feel extremely isolating (hello, societal narratives around moms and motherhood), and sometimes the last thing you want to do is engage in a public space: Does Mom or nosey Aunt Susan know I follow this social media account?

And then there’s the whole having a dedicated space to connect and share with people who get what you’re going through from the comfort of wherever you happen to be thing…

Beyond the much needed sense of community—now you know you’re not alone with this mother wound stuff!—other perks you’re likely to find in online mother wound communities include:

Exclusive content: Social media just isn’t nuanced enough for everything some people want to share on the mother wound. Thankfully this is where online mother wound communities come in.
Educational resources: These can range all the way from mother wound self-assessments to journal prompts to checklists to how to guides (bonus points when they’re printable).
Recommended reading lists: Who doesn’t want to know which books are worth reading so they can save themselves the time (and money!) of reading the ones that aren’t?
Therapist-led Q&A sessions: If expert guidance is what you’re after, look for online communities that include the option to submit your questions directly to a counselor who specializes in the mother wound.

When I was healing my mother wound nine years ago, online mother wound communities weren’t a thing yet, but younger me would have benefited so much from one.

Lucky for you it’s 2024, and finding an online mother wound community is as easy as searching “mother wound Patreon,” “mother wound Mighty Networks,” or “online mother wound resources.”

The best online mother wound communities are run by people who have personal experience with healing the mother wound themselves, many of whom are mental health professionals as well.

6. Set Boundaries With Mom

Healing the mother wound doesn’t mean changing your mother—believe me I’ve tried!

While we can’t change our mother wound moms, what we can do is redefine how (and even if!) we engage with them.

This is where my favorite B word comes in: boundaries.

As you probably already know, I’m someone who needed to go no contact with my abusive and emotionally immature mom in order to recover.

Just like how some mother wound healing tools are right for some, but unnecessary for others, boundaries aren’t one-size-fits-all either.

Boundaries you might want to consider having with your mom include:

If you’re still in contact with her: Limit time spent together, avoid triggering topics, or meet in neutral locations.
If you’re estranged: Don’t respond to unwanted communication, and avoid pressure from family, friends, and even partners to justify your decision.
If she’s passed: Set boundaries with family members who idealize her or avoid activities that reopen old wounds.

Remember, boundaries are not about punishment even if your mom interprets them that way.

Healthy boundaries are simply acts of self-love and self-preservation, two things you’re entitled to as a human being.

7: Practice Self-Mothering

In a nutshell, self-mothering is the art of giving yourself the care, love, compassion, respect, and validation your mother can’t (or won’t) give you.

Said another way, it’s about becoming a gentle and nurturing mother to yourself.

Since we can never go back in time and give ourselves the mothering we missed out on—the mothering we always needed and deserved—I prefer to avoid using the term “remothering.”

Three ways you can nurture yourself in the present with self-mothering include:

Speak kindly to yourself: Replace harsh self-talk with compassionate reminders and affirmations.
Honor your needs: Rest when you’re tired, take breaks when you’re overwhelmed, and give yourself permission to say no.
Let go of self-punishment: Acknowledge that you did the best you could with what you knew at the time.

Ultimately, self-mothering is a lifelong practice that can transform the way you relate to yourself and take your mother wound healing to the next level.

Final Thoughts

The road to mother wound recovery isn’t linear, and it’s never one-size-fits-all.

Only you can know if mother wound acceptance, journaling, allowing your emotions, seeking professional support, joining an online mother wound community, setting boundaries, or practicing self-mothering are the tools you’ve been searching for.

Remember: healing from trauma is not about perfection or speed. It’s about progress, self-compassion, and finding what works for you.

You’ve already taken the first step by reading this blog post. Keep going—you’re worth it.