10 Good Mother Messages Everyone Deserves to Hear
Was you mother there for you as a child?
Or was she was distant, caught up in her own internal chaos, or stretched so thin she didn’t have time for you?
If your mother was emotionally absent, you might have felt unloved, unknown, and unimportant.
In my own case, my mother was there for me physically on a day-to-day basis. She cooked, cleaned, and bought my clothes. She combed my long freshly washed hair to remove the tangles as I squealed in resistance.
But there wasn’t an emotional connection.
I didn’t know what was missing at the time. I just felt alone and unloved.
Under-mothering profoundly impacted my psyche. But I thought I was A-OK until decades later.
There were occasional hints.
Once I sat up on a massage table and found myself facing a Matisse portrait of a mother and child in loving connection. I felt deeply affected by the sense of love the mother exuded for her child. The poignancy in that moment was almost inexplicable.
That depth of love had been entirely missing from my childhood.
Once I became aware of under-mothering and its potentially negative impacts, I committed myself to self-healing.
Time to Build a Healthier Sense of Self
You’re here. You survived. But as an adult, you may not have a secure foundation of self-confidence, self-trust, resilience, and other positive qualities you need to function optimally.
Many people are unaware their current emotional challenges relate to an experience of under-mothering. Others deny any mother issues at all. Others even idealize their mother.
It’s just too difficult to face the pain.
But once you’re aware of your “mother wound,” you can make up for your deficits and build a healthier sense of self.
The point isn’t blaming your mother although you may feel angry at first. As I said above, she may have been unprepared to be a good mother for any number of reasons that are not entirely her fault.
There are many ways to approach healing a mother wound. In my experience, therapy is one of the best ways to effect deep healing. But there’s also much you can do on your own.
I worked with a psychotherapist named Jasmin Lee Cori for a while. She had authored The Emotionally Absent Mother, How to Recognize and Heal the Invisible Effects of Childhood Emotional Neglect.
I once asked Cori her single-most important advice for a person who had grown up with an emotionally absent mother.
She said:
“Stop asking why you were not enough. Stop looking for what’s wrong with you and see that you are like a plant that did not have good growing conditions and need more TLC because of that. Get serious about identifying those deficits in your early environment and making up for them now.”—Jasmin Lee Cori
She also said part of that work includes differentiating yourself from your wounded child in order to help her heal:
Often people don’t know it, but are blended with the wounded child inside and the thoughts and feelings of that child restrict them now. We need to learn to differentiate from this child, help heal this child, and build a strong adult self that is not caught in the old self-images and self-doubts.—Jasmin Lee Cori
But where do you begin? One place to start is by working with “Good Mother Messages.”
Working with Good Mother Messages
In her book, Cori shares ten essential Good Mother Messages you may or may not have received as a child.
Take a look:
“I’m glad you’re here.”
“I see you.”
“You are special to me.”
“I respect you.”
“I love you.”
“Your needs are important to me. You can turn to me for help.”
“I am here for you. I’ll make time for you.”
“I’ll keep you safe.”
“You can rest in me.”
“I delight in you.”
These messages are communicated through behaviors not just words. A mother doesn’t have to be perfect, never varying from the good mother script for even a second. She just needs to be attuned to her child more often than not.
Take a moment to consider how you feel after reading each one of the above messages.
How does it feel emotionally?
How is it received by your body?
Does it seem familiar or foreign?
Did you receive these kinds of message often or rarely at all?
I began healing by speaking these kinds of positive messages to myself, especially when I felt shaky, inadequate, or insecure.
But since these messages are communicated through behaviors as much as they are through words, I also use them as a periodic behavioral inventory.
For example, in relation to number eight, “I’ll keep you safe,” I use my journal to explore:
Am I keeping myself safe? In what ways?
Am I setting healthy boundaries? What are some specific examples?
Am I involved in risky behaviors? What is triggering or motivating that risky behavior?
You can create your own behavioral markers for each good mother message.
Working with these good mother messages has been just one element in my self-healing kit. It has served me well.
There are many other resources available to you like journaling, inner parts work, and connecting with good mother energy in forms like Mother Mary, the Buddhist goddess Tara, or the Earth itself.
Healing won’t happen on its own. You need to make a commitment to self-healing if you want to build a healthier sense of self.
“Children who are not loved in their very beingness do not know how to love themselves. As adults, they have to learn to nourish, to mother their own lost child.” — Marion Woodman
Closing Thoughts
It’s not uncommon for people to suffer from emotional neglect because their mother was emotionally absent. Mothers can be emotionally absent for any number of reasons from their own mental health issues to having too much to do to not being prepared or ready to be a mother.
An emotionally absent mother can leave you feeling unloved, unworthy, and unseen. You may have critical deficits in your ability to function as a healthy adult. But whatever those deficits might be, as an adult you can build a healthier sense of self.
One way I did that is by working with good mother messages—both repeating them to myself and expressing them through positive self-supporting behaviors.
Healing a mother wound takes time and consistency. Like peeling an onion, you may heal one aspect of your wound only to find, days or weeks, later deeper hurt revealed and wanting to be resolved.
But healing is possible. It begins when you take the first step and acknowledge your mother was not emotionally available to you.
[Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels]
Thank you for your presence, I know your time is precious! Don’t forget to sign up for Wild Arisings, my twice monthly letters from the heart filled with insights, inspiration, and ideas to help you connect with and live from your truest self.
You might also like to check out my Living with Ease course or visit my Self-Care Shop. May you be happy, well, and safe – always. With love, Sandra