Mens Retreats
A JOURNEY OF COMPASSION FOR MEN
The Wound of Mother
Is one of the most primal wounds for all human beings.
The place that many may realise exists for themselves but find challenging to go there, let alone overcome and heal as it impacts so deeply and starts so very early in our development, creating a deep vulnerability, even a sense of abandonment even if your mother was seemingly loving and present.
It starts InUtero, when still in the womb of mother. It starts before conscious thought and weaves through the very foundation of our lives. It starts as an energetic response to mothers’ energy, to her thoughts, to her experience of life at the time. It's right here in response to her energy that we develop our mechanisms for coping with not getting our essential needs met, ie we begin to suppress our connection to what our essential needs are.
This happens through no direct fault of mother. It happens as a direct result of the impact of societal constructs on women, on your mother….. The unrecognised and invalidated suffering of mother impacts the energy of the wombs we are all birthed through. While InUtero we literally steep in, infuse in these energies.
The emotional, energetic and physical fears/pain of mother being infused into our energy field as we are gestating and our coping mechanisms to these constructs forming in relation to our mothers coping mechanisms to her own suffering.
These energies shape and mould our relationship to her as mother, to her as other, to the feminine and to life itself.
It imprints our energy field beyond an attempt to free ourself with a shift in mindset, or a vow to do things differently, or even to simply stay away. Even for those who have had a seemingly ‘good’ childhood and ‘good’ relationship with their mothers, it is often that the imprints are so suppressed and they have continued to allow the imprints to shape them in their relationships and life choices until they wake up one day and have to break themselves out of the box they have put themselves in…. the mid-life crisis.
It creates a deep seated sense of unease, even disease….. feeling unsettled or unfulfilled or invalidated, even though on the surface your life may look like you should be settled and fulfilled. You may have tried talk therapy or counseling which may leave you with a good intention at the time but before
long the same old same old creeps back in, leaving you with a distrust in your ability to heal. The reality here is not that you have done anything wrong, it’s that you simply haven’t gone deep enough to get to the source which is where true healing and true freedom happens.
The good news is that this can be healed. We can heal and reclaim our deeper nature, our true nature by removing these constructs from our field. We begin by healing the coping mechanisms as they were formed InUtero in relation to our mother. We begin unravelling from any enmeshment, learn to set clear boundaries and realise our true nature from a place of clarity and inner space.
How does it show up in our lives?
Emotionally shutdown….. What is referred to as the ‘Mother gap’ is the gap you relentlessly try to fill through your relationships or career goals but can never be truly satisfied as they are not designed to fill that gap.
Abandonment wounds - anger, rage,shame, inadequacy, invalidation.
Inner child wounding - Strained relationships with your mother/father, your intimate partner or your own children as your inner child needs are projected unconsciously or consciously on to them, but no idea how to begin to break out of the cycle.
Intimacy shutdown - Strained ability for sincere intimacy in your relationships, including your relationship with yourself and life itself. …. and the list goes on.
The Inner Mother
A poem by Jeff Foster
If abandonment is the core wound
the disconnection from mother
the loss of wholeness
then the most potent medicine
is this ancient commitment
to never abandon
yourself
to discover
wholeness in the whole-mess
to be a loving mother
to your insides
to hold the broken bits
in warm open awareness
and to illuminate the sore places
with the light
of motherly
love.
