**this is an adaption of piece I wrote in May 2024 on Mothers’ Day. It’s updated and tweaked to include new ideas, thoughts, perspectives I’ve had since then. Hope you enjoy this version on Mothers’ Day 2026

Today, on Mothers’ Day, (and honestly all my days) I have been thinking about our relationship to Mother.

As I wrote the cards I sent to my mother and my mother-in-law I was struck by the continuum of mothers who allowed me to become a mother.

If either of those two women had not become mothers I could not be the mother I am today. And if their mothers before them had not become mothers… and on back.

This is the red thread. The mother line. The line of the blood.

Fun fact: only women and their children live on Earth.

Parent Blaming

There is a trend in the collective of parent-blaming.

There is a trend of looking at the way we were parented and holding it to a current standard and calling it ‘toxic’ or ‘traumatic.’

This is not to say some of us weren’t hurt by our mothers. It’s not to say they did it all right. It’s definitely not to say we should lower our standards for motherhood. It’s not to say it was ok.

You may fully deserve to be victimized by the way you were mothered.

You may legitimately and fully be a victim of your mother’s pain. You can experience this as true. You are allowed to.

And I hope you really do feel it because the only way to not pass it on is to feel and integrate your experience.

When one person in unwilling to feel their pain, they will put it on the people around them. This is an energetic law.

Sometimes the most vulnerable people are the easiest targets for passing down pain. An awful truth of humanity is the unprocessed pain we are all walking around with and subject to.

But, when we are fully grown adult women, it’s time to stop asking “Why did my mother do this to me!?”

And start acknowledging, “Wow. My mother was in a lot of pain.”

It’s not even necessarily about forgiveness (although, remember, forgiveness isn’t for the other person, it’s for you), it’s about realizing that people, even our own mothers, are multifaceted beings.

They could have a part of them that deeply loved us, but another part that was deeply wounded and instead of feeling, integrating, and dealing with that wounding themselves, they passed it on. This is how pain works. It moves through families until someone is willing to feeling it.

It may be we were just innocent bystanders of their wounding.

So many women were/are just surviving. The saying goes, “You cannot teach a starving man about God.” And you cannot expect a woman stretched to her physical, mental, and emotional limits to process or integrate generations of trauma and pain.

Acknowledging this doesn’t make it ok that we were hurt. It just takes out the blame and the shame.

Mother Wounding

Holding a grudge towards our mothers, I believe, results in holding a grudge against The Mother.

The Mother can hold it.

However, holding this grudge will result in our mommy wounds being played out with other people in our lives.

If you find yourself constantly looking for approval and validation from, or you’re constantly in conflict with, women you perceive as more powerful than you, you may have some mother wounds.

If you feel like you cannot open, reveal yourself, or connect with people who deserve your trust and vulnerability, that could be rooted in mother wounding.

If you feel like you can’t nourish yourself, don’t take time rest and fill your own cup, feel very uncomfortable simply being, feel a lack of innate worthiness, that could be related to your relationship with the Feminine principle or The Mother.

When I read Elayne Kalila recent article, What Happens When the World is Motherless, I was struck in the gut by a few of her descriptions of what it feels like in the body to be motherless.

Here are the quotes about that especially pinged for me.

“You have never once in your adult life laid your head in someone’s lap and been stroked until you fell asleep.

When you are sick you manage it. You order the soup. You cancel the meetings. You text your mother an update if you have one. Nobody comes.

When you cry, you cry alone, usually in the bath, usually at night, and you clean yourself up before you come out.

Your own mother is aging and you do not know how to be near her grief, or your own, so you phone once a week and keep it light.

We do not know how to grieve, or how to descend, or how to rest, or how to belong.

We are ashamed of what makes us alive.”

The reason our mothers were/are in pain is because of a lack of what I’ll call the mother nutrient or feminine nourishment.

The same reason we feel pain and hurt in this place because we were/are missing that too.

See how the solution is not pointing fingers? It’s not making them see their mistakes. It’s not holding on to all the ways we were hurt as if holding on to to our hurt will save our life.

The solution is to feel our pain. To let it move through us. To be with it. To orient to the Great Mother as mother. To let ourselves be seen by those that can be trusted with our vulnerability. To reveal ourselves to ourselves first. To reach into our hearts and remember we belong here.

To allow ourselves the simple joys of living, mothering, and nature.

What I do want to invite is an appreciation for all that was overcome for us to exist as we are, the mothering we received and the mothering our mothers received, from the women in their lives, from their aunts, and from the Earth.

Everyone has dealt with some pain. Everyone alive has prevailed over something awful in their life time.

For those of us who are also mothers ourselves I want to point to the joy of our own motherhood that we would not be able to experience without the life of our mothers and grandmothers before us.

Respecting Our Mothers

You exist because they exist/ed. This is the level of respect and honoring for all mothers that this day invites us in to.

Humanity is messy. It is complex and nuanced.

I have the experience that the harder I am on the world, the more I judge and find wrong in it, the harder I am on myself. The more I judge my own choices. And the more I judge myself.

There is so much joy available in motherhood if we move away from this harshness. There is so much depth available when we’re willing to go into the darkness and look at what’s there.

There is so much beauty in feeling these soft warm small bodies on ours. The little voices figuring out how to communicate and be heard.

Can we let that open us a little wider today?

And if you don’t have children, can you let your little one feel your joy at being the one that gets to hold her now? Can we all lean on female friend or friends to hold us in our grief? To share in our joy? Can we let ourselves our be mothered? Can we mother those around us?

Can we let the tasks list, the exhaustion, the ideas of should, the ways we are doing it all wrong, go today and drop in with our children/inner children and feel the pure joy that lives there?

Our creations! The creation of mothers back and back until the beginning of time!

It is awe-worthy. It is worth celebrating.

Thank you to the Mothers.

Thank you to The Mother.

Thank you to my mother.

Thank you to my husband’s mother.

Thank you to all the mothers that hold me and mother me while I mother (because we NEED that so much).

Thank you to my grandmothers and my great grandmothers and on back.

May we all find our joy in mothering today. And if not, may we start to get clear on the changes we need to make in our lives so that our joy can shine through.

Because a mother’s joy will heal all wounds.

Happy Mother’s Day to all.

I would love to her from you in the comments or by replying:

What is your relationship to mother?

What brings you joy in motherhood?

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit clarabelize.substack.com/subscribe