The Mother Wound
My relationship with my mother was always complicated… for both of us. It started long before I was born. Much of our time together existed in the shadows of her unhealed relationship with her mother… who likely and maybe unknowingly experienced it with my great grandmother and the woman that replaced her… my great step grandmother. In truth, intergenerational trauma is the culprit for many of the complexities mothers and daughters face.
As an adult, I understand so much more, but as a child, it was extremely confusing. I had no idea what healthy relationships were because they were rarely, if ever, displayed or demonstrated in the home I grew up in. Healthy relationships involve healthy boundaries. My entire family system had no boundaries so most of the relationships within that system were wildly dysfunctional. The chaotic situation that I found myself in was led by the mothers. They all poorly (or strategically) picked damaged and complacent men that certainly contributed to the patterns set forth generations prior. But these were also men that they felt could take care of them financially without needing much love or nurturing… a skill that the women in my family rarely displayed.
My parents met through a friend in the summer of 1968. They were in their early 20’s. Although they were very different, they complimented each other in many ways. My mother was beautiful and had a personality that was larger than life. My dad was more reserved and never pushed back. She was college educated and working on a Masters degree — he was a high school graduate who safely followed in his father’s footsteps and worked in the heating & cooling business. She loved adventures — he enjoyed fixing up old sports cars. They both came from homes with an alcoholic father. She wanted to save the world — he wanted to live a bigger life. Both had just come out of other relationships. Their courtship was fast, they married after a few months and less than a year later my mother was pregnant with me.
My parents’ mothers, my grandmothers, were very different from each other as well.
My mother’s mother, Mom-Mom, was a survivor — never formally educated, but smart as a whip and well put together. She was tall and very thin. There was a certain elegance in the way she dressed… and the smell of Estee Lauder’s White Linen perfume always lingered in her wake. She had a very dominant personality and cared more about quality than quantity. She fought for all that she had and shared her opinions about everything… often. She was known by some to be very cold and calculating. Her home was immaculate. She typically controlled people with money — I think it would be fair to say that she learned that trait from her stepmother. Mom-Mom’s biological mother died when she was young. Her father remarried, then left by the time Mom-Mom was 10. With no other options, she went to live with and work for her stepmother, my (wealthy) Grandma Ruth. She met my Pop-Pop in her late teens. They married shortly after they met, then, started a family of their own. A few decades later, Grandma Ruth came back to Mom-Mom, penniless. Mom-Mom took care of her for a few years before she passed away when I was 16. I didn’t like her very much. She hissed when her needs weren’t met… and she wasn’t very nice to Mom-Mom. She never felt safe to be around.
Mom-Mom gave birth to 5 children. Her first born child, a son, died very young. My mother never knew him. The loss was rarely discussed. My maternal grandfather, Pop-Pop, was a handsome, quiet man. He was also a suspected womanizer… but that didn’t seem to bother Mom-Mom as long as he was discreet, the family had what they needed, and the country club bill was paid. I don’t think she and Pop-Pop actually liked each other very much, but they stayed together. Duty and responsibility were important to them; so were the optics.
My father’s mother, Grammy, met her husband, my fraternal grandfather, Poppy, when she was 14. Young and uneducated, she became a housewife who found herself in an abusive marriage for most of my dad’s childhood. She had four children. My dad, third born, was her only son. He was always close with his mother and tried to protect her. I found her to be gentle, soft spoken and kind, but she always seemed sad. She and Poppy never really cared for my mother. They thought she was trouble. Mom-Mom and Grammy knew each other but were never very close. Their differences outweighed their commonalities.
I came into the world on a snowy December morning in Baltimore, MD. My parents had done everything they could to prepare. They knew they were having a girl…my mother could “feel” it. An overnight bag was packed, the crib that my dad built was all ready for me in my beautiful and carefully planned nursery. Pretty outfits and cloth diapers filled my small closet in a light pink and yellow space attached to my parents room. Madame Alexander dolls were all lined up on thoughtfully decorated shelves. Soft toys and blankets were placed in perfect places — all as directed by Mom-Mom.
After months of consideration and thought, my mother decided to name me Sara Tori. My name was important to her. My middle name was Poppy’s middle name … my mother hoped this gesture might ease the blow… Grammy really wanted my dad to have a son.
When the day finally came, my mother was in labor for 20+ hours. I was her first and only biological child. She had several miscarriages before conceiving me. **I learned through interviewing people after she died that some had suspected that she may have been pregnant when she and my dad were walking down the aisle. Some felt that she had intentionally “trapped” him.
I was born after an emergency cesarean delivery. Moments after my birth my mother was rushed into surgery for a hysterectomy. She stayed in the hospital for a week. My dad later told me that I didn’t even nurse her breast before I left the hospital.
Not long after I was wrapped in a sterile blanket, while my mother was still sedated, Mom-Mom made the decision to fill out the paperwork. She named me Elaine, after her best friend. She thought that name suited me better.
Mom-Mom took me home from the hospital and took care of me while my mother recovered. She typically handled situations swiftly. She was known to be rigid and could be very insensitive at times — but on this day, I’m sure she thought she was helping. It upset my dad a bit — but he was young and had no experience with newborns so she easily convinced him that she’d take better care of me than he could. He didn’t have a strong, supportive, back-up team.
Mom-Mom was my first parental attachment…she was the first mother that I knew outside the womb. I stayed with her for over a week before my mother was well enough to come home… and even then, she continued to help care for me often. As I grew older, I sometimes spent weeks at her house. I always felt safe and taken care of when I was with her. She and Pop-Pop paid for my private school until the fourth grade when I started at a new public school in my neighborhood. I didn’t see Mom-Mom for a while after that.
This was their pattern… Mom-Mom wanted to handle and/or control things and my mother was usually left feeling insufficient and defeated. Then she’d get angry, and cut all communication off for a while- until she needed something.
As I grew older, I witnessed their sparing often. Mom-Mom was very critical of all her daughters. Her bar was unattainable to most. She repeatedly told me that my mother was a horrible mother…but that I was always going to be ok–because I had her.
Mom-Mom said lots of mean things to my mother, oftentimes in front of me. This pattern of behavior demoralized and humiliated my mother which further triangulated our bond. I can remember several occasions when Mom-Mom told my mother that she was fat; that my dad was going to leave her; that she was a terrible mother; that she was a bad housewife; irresponsible; selfish, etc, etc, etc.
The intense confusion laid on my young soul began almost immediately. I needed what we all need: a mother — I just didn’t know who exactly that was supposed to be. All of my maternal connections seemed unpredictable. Never really knowing who was in charge, I tried to please all…a pattern that stayed with me for most of my adult life. I became an enabler and a rescuer. A fixer. A codependent, people pleaser. My behavior was especially relevant with older women that I admired and respected. Sometimes it was a friend’s mother, sometimes it was a supervisor or a mentor.
Even when my mother was physically present, (when she wasn’t working, in school or traveling around the world “helping” others) she was rarely emotionally attuned and/or available. My mother unknowingly broke contact with me the day I was born… she didn’t have a say in the matter. The shame cycle (for both of us) started then… we were never able to fully recover. I grew up always feeling that I had done something wrong…often wondering why my mother didn’t love me… or wondering why I wasn't enough.
I read somewhere that we get our identity from our fathers and our self worth from our mothers. My situation was a perfect storm — with me emotionally centered in the eye. It didn’t really matter what was “said” to me, I took on the patterns that I observed with regard to how the “leadership” in my family treated each other and themselves. I adopted their behaviors thinking that they may love me more if they could see how alike we all were. Many years later, I learned that this was actually a thing…this instinctual behavior had a name: negative-love syndrome. A condition which, according to the Hoffman Quadrinity Process, is a constellation of attitudes, behaviors, emotions and moods central to neuroses, consisting of negativity, low self-esteem and inability to love.
It’s fascinating; their outside voice became my inside voice. I never learned how to regulate my emotions because I was always playing whack-a-mole with theirs. High highs and low lows… I never knew what I was going to get. “Fight or flight” was my nervous system’s normal… and oftentimes, it still is.
It’s cellular. Some say it begins in the womb. I say it began way before then…but, in my first few formative years, programs had been installed. I had no self worth… just like my mother. In order for me to continue along on my healing journey, it’s been important for me to understand how it all happened.
As I grew older, my mother tried to be my friend. She began coming into my bedroom at night to talk… sharing inappropriate thoughts and feelings that she had about my dad and others. Sometimes, she asked me if she could “borrow” money — always clear to point out all that she had done for me so that I would then feel that I owed her.
Oftentimes, I gave her what she wanted hoping that it might prove my value. I learned to be a martyr… sacrificing my own needs to accommodate hers… until I didn't. I got kicked out (for good) when I was 19 for being, wait for it…. disrespectful and selfish. I was upset after I had come home from a semester of college to find that my mother had given my room away to a young homeless couple that the church had asked her to take in. She told me that I could sleep on the family room couch.
It was the first time that I stood up to my mother knowing that I would be better off living with friends. Although my dad witnessed our argument, he said nothing. They divorced shortly after.
I learned about the “The Mother Wound”, or the mother of all wounds, while in therapy in my late 40’s. Later, after an emotional free fall triggered by the blended family situation surrounding my second marriage, I found myself in a complicated but familiar storyline. It was visceral. My body reacted so intensely that I felt as if I had drunk poison. It was toxic. The emotional revolt threw me into a tailspin. I couldn’t sleep. I felt manic. I spit my venom on anyone who would listen. The cast of characters were, in fact, different — but the behaviors I witnessed felt painfully familiar and unsafe.
I needed help.
I participated in an intense seven day retreat with some of the most intuitive and compassionate people I had ever met. There, I learned that I had unknowingly and quite surprisingly spun into a deep well of feelings that I didn’t expect or understand at the time. I now see that the position I found myself in was actually a gift… an emotional vortex for me to explore. Many of my most painful lessons have presented themselves to me in this way. What was once unbearable, later became the catalyst for me to begin to heal all the things that I never fully understood about myself.
The Mother Wound is the pain, wounding, and trauma that’s carried by a mother and inherited by her children, with daughters facing the brunt of this wound. My mother had a significant amount of unresolved trauma in her own childhood that stunted her growth as a person. She was raised by a woman who’s affect was cold and calculating and I was raised by a woman who had the emotional maturity of a teenager. These women fought over the position of “mother” to me… so, I never experienced the unconditional love a child should receive, but instead received the brunt of their anger towards one another. We were all blindly navigating the journey as best we could with the tools that we had.
After several years of doing my own personal work, I now have the capacity to reflect on things differently. My learnings have been surreal and have created an opening for me to consider a more evolved and compassionate perspective– for myself and others.
Over the years, I’ve begun to realize that I had unknowingly taken on much of the dysfunction of the trauma of the women in my family: their shame, their controlling behaviors, their patterns, their need to stand out, their need to achieve, their need to be loved.
The Mother Wound is a common phenomenon that presents in many families… just varying degrees of depth and dysfunction. The situation often leads to addiction and other self sabotaging behaviors. In my case — that was true. I certainly didn’t plan to grow up and be a highly functioning pill popping alcoholic who closet smoked a pack of Marlboro reds every day… but that’s what happened.
I’ve learned that the mother doesn’t consciously know that it’s happening and the daughter unknowingly carries the heavy burden. Most times, and in my case, the daughter never feels that she has their mother’s approval, acceptance or love, so she seeks it out in other ways. The Mother Wound also presents difficulties in the daughter relating to her mother (and others) on an emotional level. That was also true for me. My mother and I were oil and water… fire and rain. I was the sunshine in her darkness…until I wasn’t.
The replacements came quickly. By the time I was five, I had four adopted siblings… ironically, my first sister, who arrived from Korea when she was two, was named Sara. By age 15, there were 16 of us. I felt as if I was barely visible.
My mother and I never really liked each other much. I rarely invited her in, so trying to relate on any level was always difficult for us. For most of my childhood, she was a celebrated LCSW/family therapist. She later became a PhD… so it wasn’t uncommon for her to continuously tell me how I was feeling about most things. She was incapable of ever admitting any wrongdoing in any situation.
I became a fully scripted programmed pony that she would bring out, as a prop, when she spoke to others who yearned for a family through adoption. As the ringleader of our family circus, she made sure that we all had our scripts. My script was that I was a happy little girl, with lots of siblings, whose needs were entirely met.
We all had our masks. My mother was remarkable on a stage… then, at home, she was unpredictable and suicidal. My dad was a strong supportive partner on a stage, then, at home, a workaholic who skillfully blocked his feelings most of the time. I felt adored on the stage, then, at home, ignored. There were so many ironies. I didn’t truly begin to understand all of the complexities of this dangerous screenplay until I got sober at 29 and started going to therapy as an adult.
The last time I saw my mother she was very sick. She had been diagnosed with breast cancer for the third time… but this time it was metastatic…meaning it had spread to her bones. She was going to die.
No one knew what her plan was… she didn’t want to talk about it. All that she shared was that there was a trust set up to take care of her three dependent daughters (all adopted when I was an adult) and that all of her children “would get something.” I wasn’t concerned about what she may or may not have planned to leave me. I was never comfortable accepting much of anything from her because there were always strings attached. I was there because I was concerned about some of the other adopted children that she had made a commitment to raise. My second husband and I opened our home to one of her daughters from age 14 to 21. We became very close and shared many similarities when it came to how we felt about our relationship with our mother. I wanted to help her… I yearned to be the person I wished I would have had when I was a teenager. I was concerned about how her college education would be handled.
We traveled across the country for what I imagined would be my last visit with my mother. My intentions were clear — I wanted to talk about everything so there would be less drama when she was no longer with us. The pleasantries were quick. I asked how she was feeling … and then I asked what her plan was. We all sat down to talk. She evaded and I pushed. She got defensive. I got angry. The conversation quickly grew tense and things turned pretty ugly. My mother started to cry, the cries turning into screaming, all in front of her third husband and my husband. She felt trapped in every way and I kept pushing. This was generally how we wickedly danced with each other as I became an independent adult… there was always a dangerous emotional power play between us.
It was one of the most painful conversations we ever had. It ended with her telling me that I was just like her mother, Mom-Mom, and that she didn’t believe I ever loved her. She may have been right. She died a year later. There was no plan. There was no trust. She died the way she lived. Everything was a mess. It was really upsetting to me and many of my siblings who had to help handle the aftermath. I didn’t go to her funeral. I was angry. I’m not sure if I made the right decision, but it’s how I felt at the time.
The most valuable (and surprising) thing that has happened while writing this memoir is being able to work through extremely painful feelings that no other method could reach: the grief that I have carried for most of my life; the anger of feeling that I deserved more; a mother who loved me unconditionally and took care of my emotional & physical needs; a responsible and kind mother who knew how to act like a grown up.
Reflecting back, my mother didn’t have that kind of love either… and neither did my grandmothers. Mom-Mom’s mother died when she was very young. Her stepmother saw her as a burden, and then later as her caretaker. I never knew much about Grammy’s mother.
It’s hard to say, but I’m not sure if I loved my mother. It sounds terrible, I know. I’m not sure that she loved me either though… she had such dissatisfaction with her own life. I don’t think she loved herself very much so I guess it’s impossible to expect she could give me something that she couldn’t give herself.
The suicide threats and attempts, several extramarital affairs, her addiction to food, money and adopting more and more children… it was never enough — she was restless and insatiable. Over the years, I’ve tried to have some compassion for her. My mother was a powerful force — she was also a deeply unhappy person with a tortured soul.
Another thing she said to me that terrible day of our last argument was that she felt that I always thought I was better than her. She said that I wouldn’t be who I am if it wasn’t for her. This is one of the only real truths that I ever heard come out of her mouth. It gave me hives and a red face of anger when she said it… but, she was right, she did play a large role in making me who I was for most of my life: an insecure girl with a strong work ethic and serious survival instincts that knew how to dress the part. A chameleon. In many ways, a spitting image of Mom-Mom. My soul is tied to these women. It always will be… but my story will not end the same way that theirs did. I believe that my choice not to have children was part of a karmic promise to break the cycle of my ancestors.
My next post may be about my limited experience with forgiveness… I think about forgiveness and acceptance a lot these days, for I know that both are necessary to move through my grief… and moving through the grief is the only way to move forward, let go and create a new story.
Thanks for reading. I welcome your thoughts and would love to hear about your experiences with The Mother Wound. (or anything else this post made you think about)
I know there is still so much more to say on this topic.
