
Some of the hardest wounds to heal are the distortions that come through the mother-line. If as a daughter you lacked a mother’s love through your own mother’s absence, trauma, and fragmentation; or if she loved you in the only way she knew but either consciously or unconsciously handed you her unhealed pain… and the pain of all mothers… if you carried it in quiet desperate smiles, in fevered rages, placid resignation, and lonely spaces then you have lived the mother wound.
If- as daughters do- you absorbed your mother’s wounds and carried them as your own, as she did for her mother (whether she knew it or not), the burden getting heavier with each unacknowledged generation. If you lived the pain and felt the deep knife of intergenerational trauma cut your soul like shards of broken mirror; when the person who should have been your foundation, the matrix out of which you rooted was damaged at the core, as you believed you were too, you know the pain of the mother wound.
If you found The Mother…
in hidden forests; musky damp earth; the smell of rain; the silver trail of snail, and the serenity of the moon; your stirring animal soul; coloured stars like street lights calling you home; shy lips of your first love; the smell of your knees as you lifted them to your chest; feet that begged to be free… and to dance; bells from a distant time; flickering candles and exotic smells; night trains certain that other places exist; strange dreams and the daimon who courted you; endless days of hazy sun and lapping sea, perfectly at peace in your red and white polka dot swimsuit; trees that knew your name; mysterious sap that flowed in dark rivers inside of you; darkness that wrapped you in her arms as you learned to not be afraid; laughter that hurt your head and made you cry; the taste of tears, yours and his.
But still there was the world, the unmothered world that hid its pain and asked you to do the same. Maybe you forgot and remembered The Mother many times over.
If after living the wound- or the wound living you- you found a way to heal, not by being “fixed” by some textbook model unable to guess at let alone know what feminine wholeness looks like, but by rebirthing yourself through the Womb of your Soul, by repeatedly falling into and through the valley of shadows… if you survived… if you rose… if you learned to see in the dark… many beautiful flowers bloom at night. Night rose.
If you followed your inner light no matter how dim… if you set out on your Grail Path… yours and no one else’s and if somehow, piece by piece you put yourself back together and, in that strength, sent love back down the line on the wings of Venus’ dove… through webs and spirals, pumping new life from the sacred heart, purifying the waters of life, the blood… your blood line.
If you forgave; if you saw and came to know the true face behind the pain, the fear, the sad tear of God, and the love of Sophia; If you did that, or are doing that, you are among the strongest this world has known and through you there may yet be redemption.
Words by Karen Mullen-Smith- International Women’s Day, 2022