Healing The Mother Wound with Bethany Webster

Something in your relationship with your mother has shaped how you see yourself as a woman — your worth, your safety, your capacity for love. You may have known it for years without having the language for it.

In this conversation — Part 1 of a three-part series — I speak with Bethany Webster, writer, transformational coach and one of the most significant voices in the mother wound space. We go to the foundation: what the mother wound actually is, why our culture keeps it in shadow, and how to begin.

I explore with Bethany:

— What the mother wound is, defined across three levels: the personal (limiting beliefs and patterns from painful dynamics with our mothers), the cultural (the patriarchal backdrop that creates a scarcity dynamic between mothers and daughters, passed down through the generations), and the spiritual (the existential imprints from our very first days of life — do I belong here? Is life trustworthy?)

— The evolutionary gift: why this wound, so vast in its ability to limit us, is equally vast in its ability to liberate — and how healing our personal mother wound contributes to healing the culture and our species

— The taboo: why difficulty between mothers and daughters is rampant and widespread but not openly spoken about, what keeps the shame in place, and why looking at this pain doesn't make us ungrateful daughters — it makes us healing pioneers

— Why this work is ultimately not about our mothers at all — and what Bethany means when she says we can't embody the divine feminine without healing the unfinished business with our mothers

— Healing the mother wound as initiation — the sifting and sorting of what is mine and what is not mine, and what it means to access our true authentic self through this process

— What happens to the actual relationship with our mother as we do this work — the fear of distance, the grief of the impossible dream, and what becomes possible when we let that dream go

— The mother belief inventory: a beginning exercise that gives us clarity on what beliefs we absorbed unconsciously, and where we may have taken on a limited sense of self that was never really ours

— The transformation of our algorithms of safety — how struggle became fused with being safe for many of us, and what it takes to discover that safety can feel like ease

— A practical exercise for working with the tension in your relationship with your mother right now — and what one tiny baby step toward authenticity can open

And from Bethany, this: "You are revolutionising your own blueprint for your sense of self. I think all else is like preparation for this really big, powerful healing journey."

This is Part 1. Part 2 goes into the parentified daughter. Part 3 explores when no contact is the healthiest option. Find all three wherever you listen to The Sacred Womb Podcast.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:03

Hello and a very warm welcome to the Sacred Wound Podcast, where we talk about all things to do with befriending our menstrual cycle, deeply healing both our feminine and masculine aspects, and how we can indeed utilize our cyclical nature as a natural spiritual pathway that's encoded within our bodies. I'm your host, Melanie Swan, and you can also go to thesacredwomb.com for more information and loads of fantastic free resources. Hi everyone, and welcome to this episode of The Sacred Womb, Womb Wisdom, where I'm talking to Bethany Webster. She's author of womboflight.com and she writes about all things to do with healing the motherline. But I'll let Bethany give you a much better, fuller description of that once I've welcomed her. So welcome Bethany.

SPEAKER_00 1:00

Thank you. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_01 1:04

So could you give us just to kind of set the scene a like a brief description of your work?

SPEAKER_00 1:12

Yeah, sure. I'd be happy to. My work is focused on helping women to heal the mother wound. And this work really came out of my own journey of having a mother wound myself and working on it for, you know, over a decade, almost two decades now. And yeah, and throughout my whole journey, I was really stunned to find that the more I healed my own mother wound, the more I felt reconnected to life itself, the more I felt that I was located in my body, the more connected I felt to the earth and to all beings. And I was looking around for information on wow, you know, this mother wound, which is really a taboo in our culture, it's really a doorway into realizing our full power, our full potential. And so I just started writing about it and sharing about it because I was so passionate. And the more I started talking to other women, the more they asked me for more information. And then I got invited to do talks and workshops. And so it's really just been an organic journey. And a lot of my work has gone viral. And I think there's something about right now where women are really feeling called to address this issue of the mother wound, you know, painful dynamics with their own mothers and how they hold us as back as women. So it's a really exciting time, I think, to be a woman and to be doing this work. Um and what I've found through the work that I do just in my own life, but also with the women I coach in my practice, that there's a real link between healing the mother wound and really um stepping into our truth and being able to access our potential, to feel our desires, to say no to things that don't serve us, and um to really expand our capacity for pleasure and good things.

SPEAKER_01 3:15

Yeah, yeah, absolutely agree. And that was um just wanted to let everyone know that was why I contacted you actually, because I was um I was kind of at my computer one day. I don't know if anyone else feels like this, but just feeling a little bit mmm, like something was sticking. Couldn't quite get what it was, but I just was out of sorts, you know. And um uh a friend of mine, Lorraine, she posted one of your posts up on the Facebook page and it was the parentified daughter. And I started reading this, and I was like, you know, oh great, great, yeah, makes sense. And then I got to the bit where it said it's about uh when struggle becomes mother, and I just popped. I just went wow, okay. Thanks so much for that, by the way. It really popped something for me, and I went on to read the article and then I reread the article a couple of times, and I'm getting goosebumps just as I talk about it again, and I was like, ah, okay, and I could really feel the truth in it and the authenticity in your writing, and know that you know if you write like that, you've done your work and continuing to do your work. So um I was like, Oh, I've got to talk to this woman, I've got to get to and uh yeah, knowing that that's that that's one of the most popular pages on the sacred womb site is Healing the Female Ancestral Line. So um I know that that lots so many, so many women come through this and struggle with this. So um we're gonna be talking today about that part one is healing the mother line and really laying the foundations um back to why we would need to do that and how we can do that, and then in the second part, um in in this part two, in the next video, we're gonna be talking specifically about the parentified daughter and how um from Bethany's article I'm gonna be asking her questions about how this plays out in our lives and what happens when, as female leaders, we heal this wound and really what can happen for us. So um I know there are lots of lovely, lovely women watching who'll be interested in that, so we'll move to that in part two. But Bethany, could you um describe a bit more fully then what the motherline wound is, what you mean by the motherline wound?

SPEAKER_00 5:53

Sure, yeah. So uh what I define as the mother wound is I really see it as having three levels. So the first level is our personal mother wound. So this is really anything, any limiting beliefs or patterns that we've internalized as a result of painful dynamics with our mothers. So the mother wound is something that's in us, and it's something that we heal from the perspective of being a daughter, right? So it's something that's in us, and it can be anything from you know, uh the patterns of caretaking, our mothers, um, you know, having to overfunction, or it could be also related to feelings of abandonment or neglect. Um, but basically, the mother wound is just how we've developed a limited sense of self based on the interactions with our mothers. So that's the personal mother wound. But there's also a cultural level as well. You know, the mother wound is really a product of the patriarchy. And what I mean by that is just that we live in this world where women are taught that we are less than. And so the mother wound is really um a product of that, of how women over time have had to process through the generations, you know, uh, the pain that comes from that, uh, living in a world that doesn't value us. Um and it creates kind of a distorted power dynamic between mothers and daughters, where there's this feeling of scarcity, you know, that there's not enough power or love for all of us. So it's like one of us, you know, it creates this kind of competitive scarcity dynamic that's very unconscious, you know, it's just something that gets passed down. So that's kind of the cultural piece is that we've all been metabolizing and trying to cope with um the kind of toxic backdrop of our culture, which says that we're devalued, you know, that we're not valuable. Um, and then the spiritual level, there's a spiritual component to the mother wound. And what I mean by that is that in those first days and weeks of our lives, we are one unit with our mothers. We there's no separation. So, you know, any uh pain and any limitation, any fears, whatever happens there gets really deeply embedded in us. And we begin to project this onto life itself. So whatever dynamics are there, we it's like, do is life trustworthy? Do I belong on this planet? Um, so the there's really deep existential impacts on how we see not only ourselves, but our place in the cosmos. So the good news about it is that as we heal the mother wound, as we heal our personal one, we also help to heal the culture and we also help to heal on a spiritual level our species. It's almost like there's an evolutionary gift that as we heal the mother wound, we also reconnect on this very deep level with um with life itself, and we become capable of feeling our interconnectedness and our unity with all life. So I think that for this reason, because this wound is so vast, both in its ability to limit us, it's also vast in its ability to liberate us. So I think as women, we're in this very powerful place of being able to do this deeper work and not only transform ourselves, but the earth, the our culture, our species as well. So it's I think a deeply sacred journey of healing. And I'm so inspired by what I've seen in myself and in others that um I really want to take away the taboo and the shame around it and help women feel truly um excited and inspired to embark on this journey.

SPEAKER_01 9:58

Awesome, awesome description. Thanks, Bethany. Um, could I really love you to expand more on um the taboo around challenging our relationship with our mothers? Because I I experienced that when I started to challenge my relationship with my mother, and I I noticed that friends uh who are my age would kind of really kind of shake at the thought of that them challenging their mothers, and I've really seen that spread out into our culture, and it seems like one of the hardest things for us to do to challenge our personal mothers. But could you talk a little bit about that that taboo, that shame that's kind of forms that keeps us from uh challenging and subsequently healing?

SPEAKER_00 10:52

Yes, absolutely. This is a big part of what I teach as well is how to address those stereotypes and those myths that tell us that we're bad people if we look at the any pain that we have with our mothers, that if we ever get angry with our mothers, then we're ungrateful. Um so there's a lot of shame, there's a lot of guilt around uh looking at painful dynamics with our mothers. And that's really a cultural piece. It's it's part of the patriarchal view of women, right? It's like mothers are either idealized as, you know, can do no wrong, are always right, can never question them. And then women or mothers, you know, the exact other extreme, which is mothers are uh devalued, dumped upon, blamed, you know. So it's like we can't, mothers and women aren't seen as whole complex, multifaceted beings. We're either you know deified or devalued. So we live in this culture where we don't have any models, we don't have any place to have authentic uh uh uh relationships with our mothers. We have to hide and pretend. Um, and it's it's really a sad situation. And what I find that's really difficult for women, and I think this is what you were kind of alluding to, is when women contemplate looking at any pain they have with their mothers, there's this sense that, well, I'll be blaming my mother, and I don't want to blame her because we've all seen our mother struggle, right? And and be depleted by all different levels, right? And we don't want to be part of that. Um, and what I try to help women understand is that yes, your mother tried her best. You know, she's a human being, inevitably made mistakes and has flaws of her own. So, yes, your mother tried her best, and your feelings matter. So we try I invite people to hold those two things equally rather than say, well, my mother tried her best. I should disown and suppress my feelings, which is not an answer. That's what women have done for generations. The truth is that whatever we suppress does not go away. It it seeps in in insidious ways in our lives. And I think that's one of the big myths that we're dissolving right now in the world is that, you know, there's no such thing as a way. You know, when we try to hide things or suppress them, that's not a solution. But our our mothers and grandmothers, our ancestors really believed that, you know, they really believed that if we just push it under the rug, then it goes away. Um, and I think that's something that we're, it's an illusion that we're seeing through right now. And what I tell people too is that this ultimately is not about our mothers. It's it's ultimately not about her. What it's about is using whatever pain we feel with our mothers to heal it in order to really um have a healthy, true relationship with ourselves where we can see ourselves as we are, not through these like cluttered, toxic, limiting beliefs that our mothers have passed down to us, um, oftentimes very unintentionally. Um, so it's it's kind of exciting because we are the women, we are the women now that are stepping up to consciously reworking these wounds and seeing ourselves not as bad, ungrateful daughters, but really seeing ourselves as healing pioneers, you know, change agents that are working with wounds that have been passed down for centuries. And um, you know, there will be, there might be moments when it's challenging and really overwhelming to look at this. And you have what it takes. I really love to tell people that don't shy away from this, but really see it as a portal to your power and to owning. Um, and I really say too that we can't really embody the divine feminine as women if we haven't healed the unfinished business with our mothers. And by that, I don't mean we need to have a healthy, happy relationship with our mothers. Oftentimes that's not even possible. But what we can do is we can mother ourselves in the ways that we long to be mothered. And that is one of the most empowering things we can do as women. Um, and I think it also heals our relationships with other women as well.

SPEAKER_01 15:26

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:27

It's not there.

SPEAKER_01 15:30

No, no, I totally totally get what you're saying. Um, and I keep trying to like pick things, okay. Let's talk about that more and that more and that more. It's so rich because there's so much in that relationship with our mothers, there's the there's the scene, there's the unseen, there's the subtleties, there's the energy. I mean, we're so close to our personal mothers, and detangling ourselves can be difficult and painful, but um, yeah, what comes out in the process is very magical.

SPEAKER_00 16:04

Yeah, and I just want to say too that another way of thinking of it is that, you know, in some cultures, other cultures around the world, in some places, there's this idea that we get initiated. So a young man or a young woman would get initiated through some kind of ceremony where they would in that moment take an ownership of their sovereignty as an individual and no longer be a child. Well, we don't have that kind of place in our culture where we become acknowledged as our own sovereign being. Um, we often carry our mother's pain, we carry a lot of shame that's been passed down, and we don't get the chance to really step into our power and let go of a lot of things. So I really see this process of healing the mother wound as that initiation. Um it functions that way, um, where we really kind of do the sifting and the sorting of what is mine and what is not mine. And in that process, we can create space and access to our true authentic divine self and embody it. But without having done that work, um, we remain unconscious of a lot of it and can end up passing it on in different ways.

SPEAKER_01 17:27

Yeah. So for those watching, how how do you recommend just starting to work with this and starting to heal this?

SPEAKER_00 17:40

Yeah. Well, the some of the ways that I invite people to begin the process is to look at what your mother's beliefs are uh or were if your mother's not um present. You know, what were your mother's beliefs about her body, about sexuality, about food, about uh, you know, her career or her potential in the world, what were her beliefs about relationships or about women, about men. Um, and this can be just, it's I call it like the mother belief inventory where you just really contemplate, and it wasn't not necessarily something she said overtly, but just something you can surmise through her choices and decisions what her beliefs were. And some people think, well, this is kind of a basic exercise, but I find people are like, wow, you know, when you actually sit down and look at this, it does a couple things. It gives you clarity on what were the beliefs that shaped you as a child that you made of internalized unconsciously, just you know, as a matter of living in with your mother in that environment. And it also gives you the opportunity to decide, you know, or see where have I taken on beliefs that really aren't mine, that really don't that don't sync up with how I want to be in the world, with how I want to live my life. So it gives us a place of um clarity where we can actually see where we may have been taking on beliefs that aren't real and actually create, you know, decide what beliefs do I want to live in alignment with, and to start taking action in alignment with those. Um, so that's that's a beginning beginning exercise that I suggest people do. Um, because and then alongside that, you can do, you know, what are your beliefs on those same areas? Um, and where have you taken on those beliefs? Sometimes we take on limiting beliefs from our mothers because there was some kind of pain in that situation, and we had to take that on in order to be safe. You know, a lot of this work uh on healing the mother wound is ultimately about healing the ways that we feel safe in the world. Safety is one of our most primary needs to feel safe. And even scientists and neuroscientists are saying now that we can't be creative or we can't learn. You know, our brains are set up that we have to feel safe first in order to expand and you know, this way. So I see my work here a lot about transforming those algorithms of safety. You know, what you mentioned earlier that struggle was mother, you know, struggle became fused with being safe for many of us because the more we struggled, the more we felt safe because there was an absence of a strong mother figure to help us. Um, so a way to transform that is into struggle, into um safety equals ease. So, how do we change that so that you can feel safe in a place of ease and openness? Um, so that's just one example. Um, but looking at the ways that you feel safe and that the ways that you don't feel safe, you know, what triggers you in those areas? That's another kind of thread into this work is looking at, you know, what freaks you out, what triggers you, and seeing how you may have taken on a limiting belief in order to feel safe.

SPEAKER_01 21:10

Yeah, yeah, I understand, understand. Um, another thing I've I've experienced and uh worked with people and get questions sometimes is that in this in this process of healing, um, women sometimes can become worried that this will distance them from their mothers or they will no longer continue to get love or approval. And I find that that's often the the kind of the most painful part, the first third, let's say, let's it's not a complete process that you go, yeah. Well, I've healed my mother line now. I mean, it'd be quite lovely if it was like that, right? Yeah, but um you know that that those first few months or those first few years depend. Depending on how on how it goes. Can be uh quite a testing time and it doesn't, like you said, necessarily end up with this lovely flourishing relationship with your mother who's also doing her work as well, you know. And quite often it doesn't go like that. But um yeah, could you talk a little bit about that that uh fear of the I mean it's part of the taboo, but uh kind of breaking through that and then what happens when it kind of that illusion falls apart falls apart, really?

SPEAKER_00 22:33

Yeah, absolutely. It's an important point. Um and as I mentioned earlier, you know, this wound is in us, so we do the healing work within ourselves, and it's not about trying to change, convince, or persuade our mothers to be a different way. Part of the healing is actually letting go of that attachment to our mothers changing or transforming the way that we wish that she could. Um so yeah, so when we start healing the mother wound, yeah, there's this fear of what will happen to my actual relationship with her. And what I like to explain to people is that we can't know that in the beginning, right? That's the that's the scary part. It's the unknown. Um and I really think it's important to get support, you know, get support with this. Don't try to do this on your own. Um, get support in some form. I'm a real, you know, advocate for self-care and for getting one-on-one support as you're doing this work. Um, the truth is that at the end of this process or when you get to a certain point, your relationship with your mother could improve or it could devolve in some way. Um, but the the point of healing is not an outcome either way. It's really um that wherever it is on that spectrum, whether it's a close relationship or a more distant relationship, that you are okay and you know that deeply in in your heart, that you are centered in a place where you feel safe, no matter what your mother is doing, whether she's mad at you and upset, um, or she's um working to connect with you. And it's possible, you know, sometimes um mothers on this journey really adapt, adapt to the boundaries, a new boundary, a new way of interacting. And it's beautiful. And that I've seen that happen. And then I've seen it in other situations where a daughter is working deeply on herself, wants an authentic relationship with her mother, but the mother refuses to do her own inner work. And so it becomes really hard to connect. It's like talking two different languages. And the the powerful part is when we can grieve that our mothers aren't gonna change. They're not gonna be the mothers we've always longed for them to be. And many of us as women know that. You know, we might be like, well, I know she's gonna be who she is. We're intellectually, we get that. Yeah, but it's usually the little girl inside of us, you know, the little inner child inside of us that's like, but I want my mommy. I want to be seen by her, I want to be loved by her. And that that's real, and that's a powerful force, you know. Our inner child is a living energy inside of us that really has an influence on us because it's all about safety for the inner child. So um the process is a couple different things. It's stepping into that inner mothering role and mothering your inner child, um, allowing yourself to grieve. Um and yeah, so it's like being that inner mother and being and allowing for that grief to happen, all in the context of support. Um, and it's like as we let go of that impossible dream is what I call it, you know, the impossible dream that your mother will finally change one day. When we really let that settle in, that that's not gonna happen, we really get so much of our power back. Um, we get power, we get a sense of self, we are more able to see our own magnificence. We feel more grounded, more capable. We're we're more in reality, is it's what's happening. And we start to cultivate an inner trust in ourselves and a deep sense of integrity. You know, this work isn't for any, you know, just people who are just like just new to self-help or something, you know. I find that the women who are attracted to this work are usually women who have done a ton of work already on themselves and they're finally ready to address this wound. You know, you've gone around it many, many times and you finally feel like it's time. So, um, but I think it's it's one of the most empowering and transformational things you can do in terms of inner work. And I think all else is like preparation for this really big, uh powerful healing journey.

SPEAKER_01 26:54

Yeah, yeah, I totally, totally agree with you. I know I've kind of sort of danced round it in it a little bit in therapy for a couple of years and kind of built my skills, my myself up really, in order to really be able to just let it dissolve because there was a lot of illusion there. So you know, I'm I'm I'm putting this on video because I think it's really important um for women to know that you know it doesn't end up perfect, and uh it's it's not a it's not a process that takes two weeks or do a little bit of this and that. It's uh it's a totally an ongoing journey, and um yeah, it takes prep. It takes a little bit of a few.

SPEAKER_00 27:41

It takes prep. And it's not something we would want to rush through either. I mean, because what you're doing is you're actually revolutionizing your own blueprint for your sense of self.

SPEAKER_01 27:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:55

And you're becoming capable of it's like it is like a new birth because you are becoming consciously aware of your power and realizing yourself as much more vast than you ever imagined. And it becomes, at the end of the day, it becomes less important whether your mother gets you or not. That's the cool thing, because you've developed all these inner resources where you feel safe, seen um and held enough within and and in other areas of support that your mother becomes less and less critical to you feeling okay. And so you're more capable of seeing her with compassion. Um, you know, you it's like instead of feeling shame or judgment or just tension around her not showing up for you, um, you can actually feel compassion for her in that place and a sense of non-attachment and peace with how things are.

SPEAKER_01 28:49

It's kind of it's a relief. I felt as a relief. I mean it still comes back sometimes, and I feel myself clench up, you know, and go, and I think, oh, there it is. And I just relax back in. But yeah, I've found it um has really working with this with with it to heal this wound has really helped heal my relationships with other women. Um because I found as I don't expect my mother to be in a certain way, I don't expect other women to be in a certain way. You know, I don't spread that blueprint out into the world, it it shifts shifts internally. So that's one that's one really, really lovely benefit I get across. So um so what would I like to ask you? You know, like everything, like this uh this video would be three hours long if we could.

SPEAKER_00 29:45

Yeah, I know we gotta go on and on.

SPEAKER_01 29:49

So to kind of close this this part on the the mother line, the mother wounds, could you give those watching a a quick exercise to do? I know if you gave people like an exercise if they're just starting. I mean, I think that's a really cool exercise to do at any time, to be honest, and review. Um but what would be like one really cool thing that people could do after they've watched the video just for 10 minutes to just kind of have a look at whatever's present at whatever level?

SPEAKER_00 30:23

Yeah, I would look at what are the situations if your mother's living, assuming she's living, imagining or just reviewing in your mind what are the situations with your mother that cause the most tension for you.

SPEAKER_01 30:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:37

And if your mother is past, you can think about it, you know, um, when she was alive, living. What were the situations that caused tension for you with her? Um, and really flesh that out. Um, you might just recall it in detail, you know, what were the situations? And typically I found that a lot of the tension is often about our mothers expecting us or needing us on some level to be a certain way.

unknown 31:04

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 31:05

And needing to suppress our true authentic authentic needs and observations, impulses, whatever. So I want so after looking at, you know, just take one example of um a tense situation with your mother, what is the source of tension for you? You know, what do you feel like is the source of tension? Um, and if it's around this sense of pressure to be a certain way around her, yeah, what is one step that you can take where you can be more authentic? What's one little thing that you could do to be more of who you really are with your mother? It could be a tiny baby step. Um, you know, it could be waiting a day before you call her back, or you know, letting go of the pressure of having to be immediately there. Or it could be, you know, saying what you really think when you know she's expecting a certain thing. Um, and just practice, you know, doing that one thing, taking that baby step and see what happens. Um, because a lot of this is about boundaries and about um being real. A lot of us are craving authentic, real, honest connections with all people in our lives, including our mothers. So if we can take a step like this to be more authentic with our own mothers, that translates into all these other areas of our lives. So it's really a way of affirming yourself. Um, and if for some reason it doesn't go well, if you you know, that's more information, and you're always capable of soothing and reassuring yourself in that moment. Okay. Um yeah, so that's something I would try.

SPEAKER_01 32:37

That's really that's a fantastic thing to do. Yeah, okay, thank you. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 32:42

You're welcome.

SPEAKER_01 32:43

And um, I just wanted to close by letting everybody know that they can read your articles at womoflight.com. And Bethany also has a lovely free ebook. I think what's it called, Bethany?

SPEAKER_00 32:59

Yeah, I have a free e-book called Transforming the Inner Mother. And um, it gives you kind of a whole overview and also lots of concrete practical tips on how to be the a really good mother to yourself.

SPEAKER_01 33:13

That sounds beautiful. Okay. Well, I will see you for part two, uh, which is on the parentified daughter. Okay, cool. See you soon.

unknown 33:24

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 33:25

Thank you, Bethany. Bye. I really hope you enjoyed the podcast and that you got some useful tips out of it that can make a genuine difference in your daily life. And if you'd love to work deeper with this stuff, then do head on over to thesacredwoom.com where you can sign up to receive the weekly newsletter and an invite to our private Facebook group where you can share, learn, and grow with like minded women in a safe, supported space. Thank you so much for tuning in. Do leave us a rating, and your comments are very, very welcome. And I'll see you next time.