Your mother was the perfect mother for you.
What is your immediate emotional response to that statement? The answer that comes without thought, defensiveness, rationalizing, or intellectualizing will reveal much about where you are along your emotional and spiritual healing journey in this lifetime.
Your mother is your source of life, and frequently, she is your source of healing.
Are you feeling positive or negative energies towards mother? Are you too close to mother – perhaps her confidante – or do you take care of her emotional needs? Did you feel like you got too much of mother energetically or not enough? Do you feel angry, resentful, or hatred toward mother? Do you feel that your mother should stop controlling your life? Do you feel like you have a good relationship with mother yet something is still missing in life?
The narrow perception of the child impacts the adult’s whole lifetime if it is not shifted to an adult big picture perception. The child can never fully understand the relationship between her mother and her father, or between mother and her parents. The relationship with mother will often indicate how the relationship goes with father as well. The child can only get to her father through her mother. This blog post generally pertains to both daughters and sons.
Give and Take
As mentioned in the last two posts, you learned your energetic emotional response patterns in relationship with your mother. As a baby or child, if you felt that mother was emotionally absent, life may not have felt like a safe place for you. If you were the baby or child that unconsciously sacrificed or martyred yourself to care for your mother’s emotional needs, you learned to GIVE rather than to TAKE from mother. Giving to the parent rather than taking from the parent is energy deadening for the child.
The natural order is for the baby or child to TAKE from the mother. The reaching out movement of the baby towards mother takes place at birth. The baby seeks to connect with mother, to know that the world is a safe, loving, joyful place to be. If mother is not present energetically or emotionally at birth, the baby’s attempts to connect are blocked and the baby’s body tightens in response. When the world feels like a scary place to the newborn child, the child naturally takes on an emotional response strategy to ensure survival. Hyper-vigilance may be that emotional response. Rather than easily taking love and nourishment from mother, deeply breathing in life force energy, and flowing with life, the child may begin lifelong patterns of rigidity in the body, the need to control, and giving to mother energetically for survival.
The daughter who attempts to give to mother by carrying or sharing mother’s emotional burdens, places herself above mother energetically. “I have to take care of her.” Life can’t fully enter someone who is feeling bigger than or superior to her mother. The child unconsciously feels “I will do anything to keep you well mother because I rely on you for survival.” “I will give you everything, even sacrifice myself for your wellbeing.” A child innately knows that her own wellness is connected to mother’s wellness. As a client recently stated it, “If mother is happy, everyone is happy.”
Give and Take as Adults
Family systems marry family systems for a reason. What childhood give and take patterns did you develop? How are these patterns impacting your life as an adult? In relationships, do you feel the unexplained energy of pushing others away or pulling others to you? Relationships of give and take develop early in life with your biological mother. For adopted children, if you feel as if mother abandoned you, you will likely carry the feeling of being abandoned physically, emotionally, psychologically, or spiritually in all your relationships. Healing comes in developing compassion for your biological mother and your biological father. They did the best they could with the emotional upbringing and support they received. It’s time to step out of your childhood energy and into your adult energy and to take care of yourself.
Give and take becomes a major issue within intimate partnerships. In a healthy relationship, the person gives only what the other can comfortably receive energetically. When the give and take is not somewhat balanced in a partner relationship, the one who gives too much will tend to damage or destroy the relationship. This happens when one partner constantly gives more than the other person can emotionally receive. Many people give as a means of control in a relationship or it may create a feeling of innocence. “I’m doing the best I can in this relationship – they are to blame if things go wrong.”
This lack of balance is felt emotionally in the body of both partners. These inner feelings come from the early relationship with mother. When we continually take, but we’re unable to give back in return, we are not fully able to receive what is given to us in a healthy, happy way. We begin to feel small in the relationship, we fail to thrive, and we feel weak in our role. It’s the energy dynamic we experienced with mother.
Too much taking that is not balanced with giving may create a sense of being emotionally overwhelmed and there may be the need to push the partner away or put distance between you. The constant receiver may also feel the need to do something to hurt the giver. They may cheat on the partner who gives too much or do something else that ends the relationship. The one with the energy of the child in the partnership feels the need to leave in order to grow up and mature. Often, they don’t consciously understand why they are hurting their partner.
The individual that feels like the small one in the relationship loses their self-esteem and self-respect, and they feel the desire to leave in order to regain it. For the constant taker two dynamics may present. The taker may not be able to easily receive and/or the taker may not be able to easily give. Receiving may be difficult if the person feels energetically depressed or sad. Giving might be difficult if the individual unconsciously gave too much energetically to their mother in childhood. The unconscious energy and belief behind the actions of the taker might be, “This feels like the emotional neediness of my mother. I gave everything I had to my mother and I have nothing left to give to you (the intimate partner).” Not surprisingly, this is a common dynamic for sons and daughters. This is energetically unhealthy in a relationship. Healing comes in giving these burdens that were taken on in childhood back to their rightful owner, which in these situations is mother, although the unresolved emotional trauma may also belong to others in the family system. These burdens are successfully passed back with love, without blame or judgement, and with the inner conviction that mother is strong enough to carry her own emotional burdens.
Family Balance
How does all this taking and receiving from the parent balance out? It appears to be so out of balance. The grandparent gives to the parent, who then turns around and gives to the child. Each sibling gives to the siblings that follow in descending order of age, not the reverse, unless there is a family dynamic such as someone with a challenge in the family that requires extra care. If you are meddling in the life of an older sibling, it’s time to stop. You will only suffer. Again, if this care is given out of duty or obligation, or with resentment and not love, it is energy deadening for the child that helps. As the child shifts into adolescence and then adulthood, they may become a parent and balance the energy of the family system by giving to their children. If the adult doesn’t have children they may care for an aging parent or others in the family system or greater community, and in this way, bring give and take balance into the family system.
When there is an inappropriate energetic giving to mother created, an unconscious energetic separation may occur with her. The child doesn’t feel mother’s love even if mother is consciously doing a pretty good job. The child feels something is missing. The child may feel energetically abandoned. An emotional separation from mother may set up an energetic merging with mother or a rejection of mother as discussed in Part 1 and Part 2 of this series of posts. The child, perhaps now an adult, needs to acknowledge their unconscious role in setting up this dynamic and take responsibility to shift it.
Feelings of Failure
A child can never be successful at giving to the parent, unless it’s in giving gratitude, returning love in a healthy way, or giving when the parent is in old age and requires care. As mentioned above, caring for a parent needs to be done from a place of love rather than through resentment, duty, or obligation. It’s energy deadening to give to a parent through a sense of obligation or while carrying a feeling of resentment – it’s called living in agency. If the adult child is expecting a parent to change in some or expecting a parent to apology or is expecting some other shift to occur, they need to stop waiting. The adult child can only change him or herself. How can you begin to give through love not resentment?
The daughter who gives rather than takes from her mother will feel uncomfortable in her body. She will feel uncomfortable when she attempts to stay in her body energetically. The child who gives energetically to a parent or the child that attempts to hold the parent’s relationship together will tend to feel like a failure within themselves. Giving, rather than taking from the parent, goes against the energetic flow of the universe. This lack of success may create a feeling that you are not successful in other areas of life as well. It may feel like a barrier is holding you back. You may feel like a failure much of the time, even when you are reasonably successful in life. You may feel like you are not enough. It may be time to shift this energetic dynamic in your life.
The Mediator
I have discovered that many women are the mediators of the family. This dynamic frequently creates unwellness. Since childhood, the daughter has been energetically standing between mother and father, unconsciously or consciously attempting to hold the marriage of her parents together. She attempts to mediate any conflict. She takes care of mother and she takes care of father. These dynamics place the child in a dangerous position energetically. The child will suffer. The child becomes too big energetically in the family system. The child stands energetically superior, judging mother and/or father.
As well, the child may energetically step into the marriage as either mother or father’s partner. For example, if the child determines that father is not doing a good enough job supporting mother, the child unconscious says, “I will be there for you mother.” The child sacrifices her own wellbeing to care for mother’s wellbeing. The child tends to side with one parent or the other. The child may reject one parent and merge with the other. Sometimes the child becomes a parent’s confidante. The child does not see the big picture. All of these situations are energetically deadening for the child. The child is meant to remain outside the marriage or partnership of the parents. The relationship of the parents is not the business of the child. The child is meant to be the small one, not the big one. To discover this can feel like a rude awakening for many individuals. To discover that you are energetically the small one in the family can also be very liberating emotionally.
Symptoms of unwellness for many children carries this energy dynamic. The physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual burdens of the parents are weighing down the child. When mother and father do their own emotional healing work and take care of their own emotional needs, the child no longer needs to fulfil this role in the family and is free to live his or her own fate. The child is free to let go of these burdens and to simply TAKE from the parents rather than to GIVE to them.
Dates and Anniversaries
Be aware of any significant dates or anniversaries in your family system. I’m not just speaking of formal wedding anniversaries, but also of anything that occurs on the same day as something that occurred earlier, perhaps years apart. An anniversary may be an event that occurs in your life at about the same age of another emotional trauma for another family member. Dates may connect an emotional trauma to the onset of physical, emotional, psychological, spiritual, financial, or relational symptoms. Symptoms that reveal an energetic entanglement often occur within about a year of an unresolved emotional event or trauma. Perhaps mother died and you carry feelings of regret or guilt. “I will remember you mother by not living life fully.” Perhaps mother died of cancer and a year later you are diagnosed with another form of cancer or another symptom. “Mother, this is how I will show my love and loyalty to you.” Perhaps mother was in a serious accident at age 25 and then you lost a job at age 25. These timely events don’t tend to be a coincidence. They tend to have meaning for you if you pay attention to them.
We can connect to our mother unconsciously through carrying or sharing her emotional burdens, following her energetically, or taking on her qualities and behaviours. We may even get to atone for her if harm was done to another. This is how we unconsciously show our love and loyalty to mother when we have unconsciously or consciously rejected her or merged with her. As well, if you find yourself attempting to do the opposite to mother, hence emotionally and energetically rejecting her, mother’s patterns may show up in your life or in the lives of your children or grandchildren. The family system doesn’t tolerate the child rejecting the parent. Rejection of mother shows ingratitude for receiving the gift of life. The child will struggle until they heal their own emotional wounds and acknowledge the big picture of the family system.
Symptoms
Persistent conditions, chronic illness, and repetitive life patterns do flow transgenerationally down from great grandmother to grandmother to mother to daughter. Some women fit into their family system by being unwell in some way. The daughters in this family system are sad and depressed. The daughters in this family system get cancer. The daughters in this family system have their first child die. The daughters in this family system carry fear around childbirth. The daughters in this family must remain vigilant or something terrible will happen. Some women identify themselves with their symptoms. They refer to their symptoms as my cancer or my arthritis. They have let the symptoms possess them. If each generation of the women in the family develop a particular condition, it may reveal the tendency in the family to carry the emotional burdens of others, or to live in agency with mother or others.
In a systemic constellation, the representative for a symptom frequently supports a woman in some way or it may morph into a person in the family system who is attempting to be seen and acknowledged. The symptom may be mother, an institutionalized aunt, a mourning grandmother, or a missing child in the family system. Remember that missing children include those miscarried, aborted, those given up to adoption or fostering, those institutionalized, and those that die young or tragically. Many symptoms may be serving to entangle you with unresolved ancestral emotional trauma. As the family system seeks balance and seeks to heal, you may be drawn to those who have died and/or to those who are simply seeking to be acknowledged or seen by the family system.
A symptom or condition that may have some origins in genetics may also have a strong epigenetic emotional origin. Some emotional or energetic patterns may be travelling down transgenerationally through the family system. Is arthritis, depression, anxiety, vigilance, immune issues, conditions or disease, sadness, anger, guilt, shame, or losing a child your way of remaining connected to your mother?
Emotional response patterns may contribute strongly to conditions such as breast cancer. Is breast cancer your unconscious way of remaining connected to your mother or grandmother? The messages of the body about breast cancer may reveal that you are living in agency with others. Alternatively, you might be carrying heavy negative emotions such as rage, hatred, regret, sorrow or resentment. You may be creating a malignant soup for the cells of your body. Living in agency is energy deadening. Agency is taking care of the needs of others before you care for your own needs. Your own needs seem to come last on your priority list. For those who have died, in this situation an obituary might say that the individual was always thinking about the needs of others and always caring for others. Many in society today mistakenly believe that self-sacrifice and martyring oneself are virtues. In reality, they are a form of self-abandonment and this behaviour will make you unwell in some way. Self-sacrifice and martyring are points to be experienced on a spectrum of duality, however, wellness comes in shifting out of victimhood to caring for self first, then giving to others.
If you are living in agency, the message of your body through a symptom may be saying, “Take care of yourself first, then you can assist or help others!” A client used the example given by the airlines in their safety talks about what to do if the oxygen masks drop down in front of you. You are to put your own oxygen mask on first and then help others. This is the same philosophy. You can only help others in a healthy way if you take care of your own wellbeing first. Once you take in your birthright – breathing in your full life force energy that was passed to you through your mother – then you can give to others in a healthy way. Your body may be waiting for you to stop abandoning yourself. One symptom after another occurs in your life and your body is simply waiting patiently for you to give it unconditional love. It is time to stop living in agency with others. It is time to learn how to say “no” when your body wants you to say “no,” and to do it without carrying any feelings of guilt. It is time to develop a healthy energy boundary with others to support your own wellbeing.
Some symptoms may send you to bed for much needed sleep or down time, and other symptoms may set up an energy boundary for you if you don’t have a healthy boundary with those around you. The symptom may keep you at home or keep you from participating in your activities with others. It is time to live with a healthy boundary so your body doesn’t need to create a boundary for you. For some, the body provides this boundary through weight gain and for others the need to have abs of steel. We begin to shift our world when we take responsibility for our own wellbeing and seek to understand how we might be unconsciously or consciously contributing to our own lack of wellbeing.
Gender Bias
Let’s look at gender bias in the family system. What happens when there is a gender preference in the family system? Many cultures favour the boy child. Many pregnant women carry a longing for a child of one gender or the other. They may fear having a child of the “wrong” gender. This fear transfers to the baby as a feeling of not being wanted or not being good enough. Many women around the world abort children of the “wrong” gender. For example, many pregnant women may feel like a failure, or threatened and unsupported, if the boy child they longed to present to their partner turns out to be a girl child. The opposite may also happen. The child feels this rejection from the time of conception energetically.
In some families there is a sense that it is not okay to be a girl or it’s not safe to be a girl. Perhaps the family feels that girls need to be coddled or protected. These daughters may grow up feeling unsafe in everything they do. They may literally fear life. Other families may openly express that boys don’t cry. In some families when dad is away, little boys are expected to be the man of the house. These dynamics may create energetic entanglements for the child. They may impact the child’s sense of wellbeing and safety, possibly affect the child’s comfort with their gender of birth, or create relationship issues throughout life.
Figure out what gender bias you carry inside. How did your mother and grandmothers speak about or act toward men and women? Did they favour men or women? Was one gender or the other considered weaker and in need of care by the other? Do you consider men to be the weaker sex – unable to look after themselves without a capable woman around? This may indicate a male gender bias. As a daughter of the household, was the big goal to find a great match to marry you off – someone who would take care of you? You can have a gender bias against men or women. If you are a woman, do you consider yourself to be an exception to the stereotypes you carry about most other women? This will tell you that you have a female gender bias. You carry an unconscious bias against yourself. You will need to address this family gender bias and minimize the impact it has on your life and relationships if you want to learn to love yourself unconditionally and relate well to your intimate partner. This gender bias will also pass down to your children.
Time to Transition
If you are an adult daughter still expecting more from your mother, or you still yearn for your relationship with mother to be different, then it is time for you to take action. It is up to you to shift the unhealthy relationship with mother into a healthy relationship, whether mother is still alive and well on the planet or whether she has passed to the other side. It is never too late to shift this relationship. You are the one who needs to change. You need to address your own inner wounds from early childhood. Many of these wounds may be unconscious. It is up to you to make an intentional decision to transform your own life and the world around you. You are not going to change a parent unless they choose to change themselves. You chose this parent to behave in this fashion towards you. They are doing what you asked them to do for your own spiritual development and growth. We all have spiritual and development goals. Learn the lesson and move forward with the knowledge. Sometimes it’s about deciding whether you want to continue feeling right and superior, or whether you want to live with wellbeing. This is a sticking point for many and the place where many get stuck in life.
Develop Compassion
A significant dynamic of the systemic healing process for a daughter is to develop compassion for the life journey of her mother regardless of what mother may have done or not done. It’s in developing an understanding that mother did the best she could with the emotional upbringing she experienced. If you were raised in a home with addictive behaviours or abuses, there are family wounds ancestrally behind your parents still waiting to be acknowledged. If a daughter continues to reject her mother, or to blame or judge her in some way, the daughter tends to struggle in life in some way. Healing comes for you when you learn to take in the full love of mother and father in a healthy way – JUST THE WAY IT IS OFFERED TO YOU. You transform your world when you stop expecting more from your parents. Healing comes for you when you develop compassion for mother and father and their respective life journeys. What happened in the earlier generations? What you reject or judge in mother and father, you reject and judge within yourself. You develop compassion for yourself when you have compassion for mother and father.
Release the Unconscious Burdens
If you are still energetically and emotionally giving to your mother, unable to take from her, you may be carrying her emotional burdens. Systemic healing work needs to be done to pass the burdens back to her. If you want wellbeing this cannot be avoided. You may go through adulthood unaware that you are carrying this emotional burden or the fate that belongs to your mother. If you have back, shoulder, or neck issues, you may want to sort out whether you are carrying a heavy emotional burden on your back for your mother, your father, or someone else in the family system. That seems like a figure of speech, however, it may be your reality. In some situations, you may have selected a life path or a career that allows you to continue caring for others, the lifelong emotional response pattern you developed with your mother. You may select a life path where you seek justice if life didn’t or doesn’t feel fair. You may select a life path in healing if you feel hurt inside.
Part of your healing process is learning to work with others without being in agency with them. Many seek to heal themselves through helping or healing others. Be forewarned that many healing and helping professionals set up co-dependent relationships with their clients or patients. If you are attempting to fix your client or patient, you are living in one of these relationships. No one is broken. Individuals need to take responsibility for their own wellbeing – a second party cannot do this for them. If the practitioner is stuck attempting to fix the client, the co-dependent relationship may continue for years with little energetically shifting. If you connect with a body focused Integrative Wellness Practitioner, they will be able to guide you through a process to release these emotional burdens from your body. This is one of the best investments you will ever make in your life. You will then be free to live your own fate, assuming you don’t have more emotional burdens or energetic entanglements to address. We peel back the layers of the onion, one layer at a time.
Living Gratitude
When you are ready to transform your world, you look to your mother, whether she is living or transitioned to the other side and you say, “THANK YOU FOR GIVING ME LIFE!”
You set aside your narrow childhood perception. You are not forced to forget anything that happened to you, however, you take the time to look at the big picture of your family system with many of your ancestors to understand your place in it, your mother’s place in it, and your father’s place in it, and acknowledge how you are impacted by it.
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Most insightful! Thank you, Patricia.
Thank you for your kind comment Susan!