Well-behaved lies: the mother wound
“How old are you right now?” I texted a client over Telegram at 9:30 at night. “Ten,” she responded. In that moment, a ten year old was parenting a ten year old. Terrified of her own thoughts. Terrified of the consequences on her child. Terrified she’s not a right fit for her daughter.
That’s the practical manifestation of the pain of not being chosen by our mothers, no matter how hard we try, no matter how many messes we clean up, no matter who we mold ourselves to become in order to fit in.
We never do, so we spend a lifetime seeking to measure up to an undefined standard that defines everything. It defines who we think we should be. The jobs we take on. The personas. The roles. The obligations. The “should’s”. The heavy burdens of taking care of everyone and responsibilizing ourselves for their so-labeled “failures”. The burden is heavy, and it shows itself when you least expect it, pouring out of you into the most vulnerable container that will take it, because they have no choice: your children.
What I’m talking about here is very, very painful. So painful, in fact, that most of us, even those of us who do the deep inner work, avoid “it” like the plague. We come up with strategies to manage our internal state as a way to convince ourselves that we fit in, when really deep within we know we don’t.
So much of all this is happening as a result of mothers seeking to mold their children (daughters) to survive their environment. In many cultures, including our own, being “too big” or “too loud” or “too much” rendered us in trouble. Why? Because of the beliefs that prioritize humbleness, the neighbors, and the terror that “the tallest poppy gets picked first.”
Obedience and obligation are valued over authentic expression. In fact, most women I work with have been punished for speaking to the truth of their experience. You don’t see what you see or hear what you hear — you see what I tell you to see.
So we learn early on to sacrifice our Self as part of the deal with the devil to survive. Our mothers model to us tolerance, and we repeat the cycle indefinitely because we buy into that Self sacrifice is inevitable. And because we believe it, we create it.
You may know that the mind is holographic, that quantum healing is real, or that the body processes information at unfathomable speeds. But knowing is not enough — you must choose to stay with the pain in such a way that the body will digest and metabolize the information. That’s when the undercurrents of the pain will integrate into the larger weave of your internal tapestry.
Otherwise all you’ve got is threads that seem unrelated, yet are deeply interconnected.
What I’m talking about integrating is intergenerational wounds carried by matriarchal lineages everywhere. So, yes, it’s fucking brutal. It feels like a treacherous death. Like a icky, yucky betrayal. Like a cutting of a cosmic umbilical cord that separates you from your lineage.
And therein lays why so few actually do it.
Individuation frees us to live a life of alignment, joy and abundance. It invites us to rejoice in moments of bliss. It pulls us into the mystery and magic of the universe and we know ourselves as whole. For those of us who dare to embrace ourselves, we know: wholeness reclaimed is wholeness perpetually emerging. After all, life is a series of unfoldings. It is not an outcome to be achieved, but a process to be lived.
The alternative is decay. A rotting of our insides that we pass along to our daughters to bear and pass on to their daughters. No, thank you. I would rather go to my grave knowing I have been the living expression of the sacred that I AM than a faithful servant of well-behaved lies.
In my now two decades of searching for the answers that are buried deep within me, I have come to discover that there is no pain more deep, visceral and avoided than that of the mother wound.
In truth, I do not “blame” mothers for any of it; I hold deep compassion for the world our mothers had to navigate with almost no support or an ounce of compassion. It brings tears to my eyes to bear witness to the unimaginable realities they were faced with. So this is not about good people, bad people, right people, wrong people. That’s a completely futile line of inquiry that no longer serves.
A far more potent line of inquiry is facing into the pain without losing ourselves to it. This what’s required for you to begin.If you don’t know how to unveil the masks you’ve been wearing your whole life, your truth will blend in with the mask and you won’t know who’s who.
For the woman who is unwilling to live masked to herself…
Who are you?
Beyond your stories. Beyond your patterns. Beyond what is effortlessly noticeable.
More than that, what are you?
If you are not your body, your thoughts, or your programming.
"Decloaking and Living Authentically is a conversation that will take you into the much deeper dive of who you are, as the thinker behind it all. Change that, and a whole new way of being emerges from a much deeper truth." — Louise LeBrun
The WEL-Systems® approach doesn't define you — it gives you what you need to redefine yourself.
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