And sometimes this may mean being wounded because of our early environments and relationships. Including with our father and our mother.

Specifically, when it comes to being wounded in our mother relationship, this can often arise when we have/had a mother in our childhood and adolescence who couldn’t meet most or any of our mental, emotional, or physical needs.

Perhaps she was neglectful, or avoidant, or dealing with mental health challenges and emotional limitations of her own. Perhaps she passed away when we were young and still growing up into adulthood. Perhaps she was outright abusive in some way. Perhaps she was dealing with her own overwhelming inherited pain of being a woman born into a time when it was even harder to be female in a patriarchal, largely still female-denigrating world. Or perhaps she was like so many women out there, struggling to do the best she could in what is largely regarded as the world’s hardest job and sometimes (or often) fell short despite her best efforts.

Whatever the case was for you, almost ALL of us have places inside of us that need to be remothered. Or, in other words, healed through reparative experiences of relationship that we simply couldn’t get from our family-of-origin, flesh-and-blood mother.

And the good news is that with awareness and a different kind of relational experience, whether that’s with yourself or with others, there’s opportunity to heal and strengthen any of the gaps. Wounds you may have unconsciously or consciously developed in response to your childhood experience.

So this post is not meant to lambast or denigrate mothers out there — far from it!

It’s simply an acknowledgment of our mother’s humanity. (in other words, her limitations.) And the reality that many of us could benefit from more conscious, active psychological re-mothering work in our lives.

And it’s our responsibility now as adults to do this work for ourselves. To grow, to heal, and to show up for our lives as fully as we can.

(And please note: Men can possess the qualities of an archetypal mother, too. So while I use the feminine pronoun throughout this article, this post still applies to you. If you grew up with a single or multiple fathers and no female-identified or female-gendered figure(s) in your life.)

So why is remothering work so important?

The point of remothering work is to have different experiences with yourself and with others. To help you fill in any developmental gaps or unmet needs from childhood that are getting in your way as an adult and sabotaging your ability to engage with and enjoy life.

The way that mothering wounds manifest for each of us is going to be unique and complex.