The Unspoken Wounds of Motherhood

Content Note: This post contains reflections on motherhood and the impact of maternal wounding. It is written with deep reverence and may stir tender places. Please read with care and self-compassion.

This is one of the most personal things I’ve ever written.

Not because it’s about theory or abstract truths, but because it lives in my body. In my family. In the stories that shaped me, and in the ones I’m still rewriting.

There is a silence we rarely name.

A silence that lives in the hearts of many—sometimes as confusion, sometimes as guilt, sometimes as unexplainable grief. It’s the silence around the harm that can come from mothers.

And I want to tread carefully here. Tenderly.

Because I am a mother. A woman who has known the ache of getting it wrong, of reacting from old pain instead of present love. A mother who continues to sit in conversation with her children, owning what needs to be owned, and asking for forgiveness when my humanity has left bruises on their hearts.

So this is not a blog written from a pedestal. It is written from the floor. From the ground of humility, reverence, and responsibility.

Around the world, we hold mothers sacred. And rightly so.

Mothers give life, carry generations, nurse wounds, anchor families. In many cultures, to question a mother is to break a taboo. We create entire languages of softness around them—She did her best. She was a good mom. She meant well. And often, those things are true. But not always. And even when they are, harm can still be done.

The challenge is, when we revere mothers to the point of sanctity, we can unintentionally silence truth. We create a space where the stories of pain inflicted by mothers—especially by wounded, overwhelmed, or emotionally unavailable mothers—become difficult to tell.

Even dangerous to tell.

I have heard this countless times in my work and in my life: people—especially men—speaking in whispers about the ache their mothers left in them. The emotional abandonment. The coldness. The control. The manipulation. The unmet needs. And yes, even the physical and sexual abuse. And almost always, they speak with guilt, with shame, with internal conflict. But she was a good mom…

There are deep mother wounds in my own lineage. Wounds passed from my grandmother, to my mother, to me, and from me to my own children. Wounds passed to my grandmother, even if I don't know those stories.

So I write this not from judgment, but from lived experience. From the humility of someone who has behaved in ways that did not work. From the responsibility I hold to face that truth, to heal, and to love more clearly. I continue to sit in conversation with my children, seeking to be accountable for the harm I’ve caused and to remain open to the fullness of their experience.

And what I’ve come to realise is this: if we can be honest about the ways we have passed on pain, then surely we must be allowed to be honest about all the pain that was passed to us.

Yet that doesn’t always seem to be the case.

Why can we rage against absent fathers, but not grieve the complex, sometimes painful presence of a mother?

Why do we only make room for one story—the sacred story—when the full story might also include harm?

What if the sacred story of motherhood isn’t diminished by the truth of harm—but expanded by it?

What if truth, when told with reverence, is not destructive, but regenerative?

We have been taught to fear truth—as if truth and love are opposites. But they are not. Truth is what deepens love. It is what refines it. It allows us to move from idealization to intimacy. From pretending to presence. From silence to freedom.

When we dare to speak what happened—not to punish, but to be whole—we allow love to become something more than duty or performance. It becomes real. It becomes trustworthy.

This is why we must make room for these stories.

Because when we cannot speak truthfully about where our wounds came from, we cannot fully heal. And when we cannot heal, we keep recycling those wounds—especially in our relationships with the feminine, with women, with ourselves.

I have seen how unresolved pain with the mother can ripple into a man’s entire life. Into his romantic relationships, into his sense of worth, into his capacity to trust, to soften, to love. I’ve seen women carry the unacknowledged wounds of their own mothers into their parenting, repeating patterns they vowed to break.

And still, I hold mothers sacred.

This is not a call to topple mothers from the pedestal and vilify them. No. This is a call to hold the whole truth. To let reverence and reality walk hand-in-hand. To say: Yes, I honor the life you gave me. Yes, I grieve the love I didn’t receive. Both can be true.

This is how we return to wholeness.

This is how we remember.

By allowing space for the full truth of our stories. Not to blame, not to shame—but to see clearly. To feel fully. To integrate what was, so we no longer need to repeat it.

We are not here to perfect motherhood or to perfect being mothered. We are here to heal the rupture. To become the first in our line who chooses honesty over silence, wholeness over performance, and truth over taboo.

I stand in deep reverence for the mothers who came before. I stand in responsibility for the mother I have been. And I stand with all those—sons and daughters alike—who are trying to make sense of the love and the pain that came from the same hands.

May we walk each other home, one truth at a time.