How to allow nurturing into the mother wound
How do we allow nurturing into the mother wound? This is humanity’s 64-million-dollar question. Allowing nurturing to activate our latent ability to genuinely nurture ourselves, our families, communities, creations—and the planet itself—is the tipping point from humanity’s current self-destructive paradigm to a truly holistic, sustainable future.
If there was an easy answer to this question we’d live in a different world.
No easy answer
Translation: don’t expect an easy answer here.
I am groping in the dark. I may have taken a couple of steps more than you, but no more. I see principles, processes, patterns—but I haven’t seen enough datapoints to be even moderately clear on some facets of how to allow nurturing into the mother wound.
This much seems certain:
- The capability for genuine emotional nurturing exists in everyone, no exceptions
- This capability is diminished or destroyed in everyone, no exceptions
- This capability can be restarted in everyone, no exceptions
I use the word ‘restarted’ very deliberately. We’re dealing with arrested development.
Arrested development
This means that a development process that should’ve happened did not happen, or it happened in a stunted and incomplete manner. This stalled process is the mother-child development process, known as the ‘1stcircuit’ in Timothy Leary’s 8-circuit model.
I describe how this circuit became arrested in What is the mother wound?
Despite being stalled, this process is still alive. Not only that, but it’s also trying to complete its natural development arc, like a flower wanting to blossom.
The pain we experience at the core of our being is the stalled mother-child process pressing against the trauma, fear, and shame that inhibits its proper unfolding.
The pain we experience at the core of our being is the stalled mother-child process pressing against the trauma, fear, and shame that inhibits its proper unfolding.
We allow genuine nurturing by tapping into and restarting this process.
Inside & outside nurturing
All the above is fairly clear-cut. What is less clear is whether restarting this process requires nurturing from another person or whether we can do it ourselves.
In my own case the nurturing came, completely unexpectedly, from outside.
In 2018 I worked with a female colleague in a 2-person team. We were both working through trauma and just gravitated into supporting each other. It felt like water in the desert, a handful of drops returning life to a barren land.
I later understood this woman was, in emotional terms, my surrogate mother. My birth mother provided physical nurturing but was too damaged to provide the emotional side.
It wasn’t a romantic experience—anything but. When an arrested development process restarts, all the pain associated with the blockage explodes into your life. All the coping mechanisms you unconsciously developed to deal with it collapse.
Nurturing can come through feeling heard; through touch, massage, or sex. Genuine nurturing can happen within an intimate relationship or outside it. In all cases, nurturing bypasses the intellect and reaches into our feeling centres.
Can we simply provide this experience by ourselves, without any external input? The short answer is that I don’t know. I haven’t seen any definitive instances, though it may have happened and not been understood or communicated clearly enough.
But I firmly believe that ‘where there’s a will, there’s a way.’ If your intent to heal is clear and consistent, you’ll attract the right person or situation.
How to allow nurturing
Trust is a pre-condition of allowing nurturing to reach us. Trust is a womb-like space that recreates our first experience as a human being. When we develop deep emotional trust with someone, we’re ready to be nurtured by them.
My sense is this is what happens when deep nurturing happens spontaneously.
When we do receive nurturing—by whatever means—we can help the process by connecting the nurturing with the wound. That’s why I use the word ‘allow’—we can consciously create a pathway for the nurturing to do its work.
The wound hurts. The closer we get to it, the more it hurts. Unconsciously, we distance ourselves from that aching part of us. That’s the part the nurturing needs to reach.
When you feel you’re being nurtured—however that may come about—connect with the mother wound, that nameless ache at the core of your being, and let the sweet nectar of nurturing flow into it.
How can you tell when you’re there? Simple. Tears will flow.
The mother wound stems from a deficit in our capacity to feel. Restoring that capacity requires us to be more vulnerable—this is why trust is important. Regardless of our gender, we are literally re-birthing ourselves again—without the mother wound.
As St. Augustine said, “Give me other mothers and I will give you another world.” Through healing the mother wound we will birth that other world.
Next steps
For further resources on the mother wound, both free and paid, please click on this image.
Photo by freestocks on Unsplash