Witch Way Q&A: Healing the Mother Wound
Surviving parents who cause you pain + Reading Group Text
Inside: A Witch Way Q&A About Healing the Mother Wound (subscribers can listen to it by clicking the Voice Over above; plus a Happy Ad to help you write it out; upcoming events; and more!
Dear Amanda,
My childhood wasn't perfect, but it wasn't awful either. I've had my share of childhood traumas and have been working through them most of my life. I'm 54 and I'm feeling pretty good about myself, shadow work, my growth and self-exploration.
Every summer I go home to visit my mom, dad and brother (now living with my parents). It's painful. I've matured and processed the traumas of my upbringing. When I go home, the family dynamic is the same as it's always been. I don't go back to my old self so much as my gut reaction is to get on a plane and fly home as quickly as possible.
It seems the older I get, the harder these visits get.
I love my parents, I know their issues are the result of their own traumas. This is especially apparent with my mother, there is a lot of trauma on that side of the family. I've even done some ancestor work around it. I tried to talk with her about it last year and we didn't get very far. She is not the type to dive into her issues and explore them because they are too scary. To make the situation more complicated she is over 80 and not as mentally with it as she used to be.
I was impressed by your honesty about your relationship with your mother in your book, "Initiated: Memoir of a Witch". I feel like I'm walking around with all sorts of unexpressed pain and conflicting feelings. I love my mother and I'm also angry with her. She's old, and I don't want to scare or confuse her, but I'm also snapping at times because I don't think she sees me as an adult, and I'm holding on to all this unspoken stuff.
I've been carrying these feelings and thoughts around for a long time, just sitting with them, and it doesn't seem to be going anywhere.
Do you have any advice on how to navigate this relationship and beyond? Or at least to be able to survive my week-long visit without creating more bad feelings? One day my mom will be gone, I want to forgive her and feel I was able to have a good relationship with her in her crone years. I want to be supportive and more loving. I'm envious of folks who have loving, demonstrative, close relationships with their moms. I think I'm always mourning the mother I needed and never got.
Thank you for taking the time to read this, and if you chose my question, to answer it. Mother/daughter relationships are complicated as I know you understand.
I always only want to do what is best for all concerned.
In gratitude,
Hailing the Mother Goddess
Dear Hailing the Mother Goddess,
You mentioned my complicated relationship with my mother that I wrote about in my book, "Initiated: Memoir of a Witch." So you’ll also know that in the final chapter I share a trip I took with my mother on a Goddess Tour to Crete.
While I was on that tour, I met a woman who on a long bus ride winding through the mountains where Zeus was said to have been born and nursed by the she-goat, Amalthea, this woman told me the story of her difficult father, and how her relationship with him had driven her to drug addiction, and nearly to prison.
Her father was violent, aggressive, narcissistic - and beloved by the world. One day, at her lowest, after her father had called her a whore, she’d run outside sobbing, and she heard a voice from the sky…
“Why…” It asked her. “Why are you trying to get the love of that man you call your father? I am your father. And I will always, and have always loved you.”
If she’d been a witch, she may have identified that voice as the Wind Indweller, the father god of the sky who gives the breath of life to all things.
I think of this story often because it reminds me of the ways that colonialism has broken our bonds of kinship and left many of us lonely. Hungry for a family where we are safe, beloved, and welcome. Where we always feel a sense of belonging. A family many of us have never known.
The bonds of kinship I’m talking about are not just the bonds we have with our biological parents, but also the bonds we have with the more-than-human world, the earth, the ancestors, each other.
In the nuclear family, you’d better hope you get along with your parents, because for many of us, they’re the only family we get. But, just as often, we DON’T get along with our parents because everyone has been so traumatized, we don’t know how to relate to other people.
While I can’t really advise you on how to “fix” your relationship with your biological mother, since she’s in her 80s, and set in her ways, as you are most likely in yours… I do think there’s healing to be had in making peace with what relationship you have.
Remember, she is not your only mother.
Your mother, who provides for you, who nourishes you, who understands and cares for you, whose body gave birth to yours, and who will be with you even when you die, is the Earth.
You have many mothers.
Your mother is the ocean. Your mother is the bee. Your mother is Demeter and Brigid and Mary.
Your biological mother is just another human. She’s magical, in that she’s the porthole who brought you into the world. But she’s also ordinary, and disappointing, frustrating and endearing just like all other humans.
Before you make the journey once again to visit the ordinary, fallible woman who is your biological mother, you may want to spend some months rekindling your relationship with THE Mother, Queen of All the Wise.
Here are a few suggestions as to how you might call in the Mother Goddess as a witch:
Take yourself on a trance journey (like a deep meditation or active imagination) to the temple of The Mother Goddess. See what she has to say to you. Ask her how you can develop your relationship on a daily basis.
Call your mother every day. By that I mean, CALL IN the Mother Goddess. Do a little research to learn the name of a mother goddess that you resonate with. Learn her prayers, her offerings, and her holy days. Build a relationship with her.
Make art about her, about this. I think of Frida’s painting of the Mother holding her, holding Diego. What I love about art is that it doesn’t ask us to resolve our wounds in order to make them beautiful. Though our wounds may never leave us, they can become our friends.
Once you have created a strong relationship with The Mother Goddess, you might find it rewarding to create a little portable altar to her, that you can take with you when you visit your family. She can hold you there, comfort you, and guide you as you navigate the places where your heart is sore.
My dear, Hailing the Mother, I hope this helps. Remember, you are not alone. The Mother is always there for you, under your feet.
Yours with love,
Amanda
P.S. Forgive me, dear Hailing the Mother Goddess for the time it took for me to answer this message. I treasure both you and this question and I am grateful to you for asking it.
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