If you have a Mother Wound or are in the process of figuring out whether or not you do, then this blog post is for you.

While you will cope with the effects of your Mother Wound forever, the hardest stage of healing is in the beginning. Once you’ve identified your Mother Wound, you have to take the time to understand how it shows up in your life and how it’s affecting you. This will create the foundation from which you can develop healthy coping strategies and start moving past your trauma.

Below, I examine three key ways your Mother Wound might be impacting your daily life and share the alternative, healthy way to move forward.

Impact vs. Infect

At the start of your Mother Wound healing, you’ll spend time looking back on your relationship with your mom. These memories link to some of your present-day unhealthy behaviors. While there is a clear thread between the way your mother engaged with you in your youth and the struggles you face now, you have a choice when it comes to how you engage with these facts.

Ask yourself: are the stories you’re telling yourself about your mom (the memories and your feelings around these memories) helping you get better or bitter?

The title of this post is how does my Mother Wound impact my daily life. When I use the word impact, my intention is to create a deeper, positive meaning.

Impact is to fuel. Infect is to dampen.

The life you live is a life you create for yourself based on the stories you tell yourself (the impressions and interpretations you have of your experiences). You can choose to let your Mother Wound impact – fuel – your growth, or you can choose to live in the story that your Mother Wound is infecting you – dampening your daily experiences.

Personally, I chose to let my Mother Wound have a positive impact, let it fuel my healing journey instead of letting it infect my existence.

3 Ways Your Mother Wound Impacts Your Daily Life

1.   You Follow Your Mother’s Instruction Instead of What Feels Good

Your mother’s outdoor voice is your indoor voice. The self-critical, judgmental voice in your head isn’t one you created all on your own. It’s your mother’s voice – her opinions, judgements, and criticism – that she shared out loud with or around you as a child.

Now, that voice exists in your head, and in the same way that you aimed to please your mother as a child, you now struggle as an adult to please that voice – what you think is right – even when it doesn’t feel good to you.

My catchphrase is “follow what feels good.” What I mean by this is that in order to be in the truth of your abundant awareness – to exist as your true self – you have to get out of your head and into your body. Like I said above, the voice in your head isn’t your truth, it’s a blueprint crafted by external influences.

When you follow what feels good, you exist in awareness and can interpret things and experiences for what they are. The more you exist in and listen to that truth, the stronger your relationship with and trust in yourself will be.

2.   You Use Judgement in Place of Discernment

If you live according to the voice in your head, chances are you live in fear of judgement. Like we said above, the voice in your head isn’t yours. It’s the criticisms and judgements of your mother, locked into the narrative voice of your mind. As a child, you grew to check and correct yourself based on the anticipation of what your mother would say or think about you.

As an adult, you’re hypervigilant. In most interactions you dedicate a majority of your time to mentally checking, critiquing, and judging yourself than you do experiencing your environment. Sometimes, you might even project that judgmental voice in your head onto someone you’re interacting with and create the story – the fear – that they see through you.

Essentially, you don’t feel safe in your body because you aren’t living in it. You’re living in the story of your mother’s instructions – what you think is right – instead of the truth – what feels good.

This ties into what we discussed in the previous section: you have to get out of your head and feel into your body. When you exist through the lens of judgement, you are wrapping yourself up in your surroundings. When you exist as the awareness that you are, you separate yourself from your surroundings. This separation allows you to discern your experiences without getting wrapped up in them and usually results in a much freer, positive outlook.

3.   You Lack Self-Preserving Boundaries

One of the key symptoms of a Mother Wound is a lack of healthy boundaries. This stems from craving your mother’s love as a child and being willing to accept whatever form of love she was able to give, whenever she was willing to give it – even when it had a negative impact on your life.

Now, as an adult, you lack boundaries because you’re afraid that if you set them you’ll push people away and never receive that love again.

Well, I’m glad to tell you that story is NOT true. Yes, setting boundaries to preserve your happiness and peace might push some people away. Those people are usually the ones taking from you and not pouring back into you, they’re the people who don’t love you for your inherent worth and value you based on what you give them (and those are not people you need in your life).

Setting healthy boundaries will create space for you to love yourself. And in loving yourself you’ll have a better understanding of how others can love you. Friends who stand by you through these boundaries are the friends who truly value you, and the friends you make in the space you create with these boundaries are the kinds of people worthy of walking into your life.

So, if you have been living in the story that you have to prioritize the pleasure of others over your own, know that that is not true. Start by prioritizing your pleasure, learn what feels good and follow it. By providing that foundation of love for yourself you won’t have to live in fear of losing it from others. You will always be able to give it to yourself while you patiently discover those who can offer it to you as well.

Key Takeaways

Once you identify your Mother Wound, you have to understand where it comes from and how it affects you if you want to move forward. If you struggle to follow what feels good, don’t feel safe in your own body, and prioritize the peace and pleasure of others over yourself, those are signs that you have a Mother Wound.

I know that explaining what it means to “follow what feels good” and sharing the healthy alternatives to these symptoms doesn’t solve your struggles right now. That’s why I’ve created the Abundant Living Gurukul, a collection of paid and free resources to help you navigate your Mother Wound healing.

I also lend my direct guidance through 1:1 coaching where I use my own experience healing and coping with my Mother Wound to help you progress through your healing journey quicker and easier.

For more information on what Spiritual Coaching is like, click here.

For more information on my 1:1 coaching program, click here.

And you can always message me here with questions!