The Mother Wound
Sandy Nguyen
I have to preface this by saying I love my mom. I really do.
However, I recognize that my relationship with my mom, and many mother/daughter relationships in Asian American households, can still be complex - as are my feelings towards my mom. In particular, I feel angry because, for a long time, neither of us learned how to have open or productive conversations and many issues were left unresolved. Confusion because I was jealous of all the “healthy, happy” mother/daughter relationships I’d see other friends have. Disconnected because I felt like there was a greater divide between my mom and me due to generational and cultural differences. Resentment, because I never felt like I was living up to her standards. Frustration because I always felt like my mother criticized me more harshly compared to other cousins and at times I felt like a punching bag for things she was insecure about.
I judged her for being too traditional, too conservative, always pressuring me to follow what I thought were oppressive gender roles. Sometimes I felt guilty because I thought I was responsible for times my mother was struggling. I always felt torn between “I know she wants what’s best for me” and “she’s too controlling, she’s suffocating me”. At the same time, I feel like I wasn’t allowed to be upset or angry at my mom because of what she sacrificed for me. But I also didn’t want to brush my feelings aside when people would say “that’s just how all Asian moms are, she’s been through a lot and she’s a tiger mom, you just have to get used to it,” making me question if I was a bad daughter or if I was ungrateful.
It wasn’t until I learned about the mother wound and understood that the problem ran deeper than I thought and I was seeing how our behaviors reflected a generational mother wound.
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.
Even if a mother is physically present, having a mother who is not emotionally attuned and available to you when you were a child can still cause pain.
Many mothers weren’t provided with the resources or support needed to process their own traumas in their lives and that plays a role in how they interact with and raise their children. How your mother treats herself and her body, how she views herself internally, what she teaches you to value or view negatively, traumatic events she experienced, the harmful beliefs she was taught, the dysfunctional coping mechanisms she became dependent on in reaction to those traumas, etc. all impact us as the children. Because mothers are oftentimes the most influential individuals in our lives and we are very dependent on them during formative years, we tend to internalize many of these beliefs and take on the unhealthy coping mechanisms as well.
A mother wound can come from:
Authoritarian filial piety
War
Immigration/refugee experience
Poverty
Racism
Colonialism
Emotional, physical, sexual, verbal abuse
Patriarchal societies/sexism and internalized misogyny
Untreated mental illnesses
How the mother wound manifests in us:
Not being your full self because you don’t want to threaten others
Not knowing how to set boundaries with yourself and others
Struggle connecting with/healing your inner child
Having a high tolerance for poor treatment from others
People pleasing
Emotional care-taking
Feeling competitive with other women
Self-sabotage
Parentification
Being overly rigid and dominating
Conditions such as eating disorders, depression, and addictions
This doesn’t excuse any harmful behavior that may have been inflicted on you as a result of a mother’s unresolved trauma. We are allowed to hold resentment or be angry and upset over how our parents raised us, while at the same time empathize with our parents’ upbringing and understanding why they behave certain ways. We are allowed to see our mothers as women and human beings first who have flaws and can experience pain and hardship AND still want to hold them accountable.
What we can do to work on and heal from the mother wound:
Seek professional mental health services
Understand that you as the child are not responsible for “saving” your mother or parent
Reject and dismantle the subtle, overt, and unspoken messages about motherhood
Embrace grief and allow yourself to grieve for what wasn’t offered to you as a child; if we avoid acknowledging the impact of our mother’s pain in our lives, we remain to some degree, children
Question the power dynamics in mother/daughter relationships or any parent/children relationship
Develop an entirely new relationship with yourself and your mother as an adult
This opened my eyes to understanding how many of my mom’s behaviors and how she communicates with me are responses linked to the unresolved traumas she’s faced in her own life. My parents were immigrants and refugees who faced a multitude of traumatic experiences, many of which they may never share with their children. They faced malnourishment, medical trauma, poverty, witnessed tragedies, didn’t have access to education, and grew up in a post-war country. I come from a family of war veterans, children in war, generations of women survivors, survivors of colonialism, and others who have been impacted by trauma but haven’t had the opportunities to heal from them, traumas which are inevitably passed down to their children.
So learning about and integrating strategies to heal from generational trauma helped me reduce the shame I felt about my own traumas and mental illnesses, instead of feeling like they were my personal flaws—and that’s when I knew I was breaking the cycle.
Sources
Mother Wound Healing: Why It’s Crucial For Women by Bethany Webster
What is Generational Trauma and How Can We Heal From It? By Natalie Boone
How I Broke Free of the 'Mother wound' Cycle by Katrina Trinh
Writing the Mother Wound Series by Vanessa Mártir