Healing the Mother Wound: From Rejection to Reconnection + Meditation

There is a unique kind of ache that comes from longing for a mother’s presence, comfort, or love — even when she did her best. In this episode, I explore the emotional imprint of the mother wound, how it shapes our nervous system, our relationships, our sense of worth, and the surprising ways it shows up in adult life.

Together, we’ll gently unpack what rejection and emotional misattunement can create inside us… and what reconnection really means. Healing doesn’t require reconciling with your mother — it begins with reparenting yourself, meeting your unmet needs, and remembering that you were never “too much” or “not enough.”

This episode also includes a deep, soothing healing meditation to help soften old imprints and bring warmth, safety, and compassion back into your heart.

You deserve to feel wanted, seen, and loved.
 Let’s take this step together.

With love,
 Dr. Evette Rose

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Intent
• 0:54 Naming The Mother Wound
• 2:12 Personal Story And Early Imprints
• 4:12 Patterns: People-Pleasing And Perfectionism
• 7:12 Biology Of Attachment And Survival
• 9:55 Reframing Worth And Rejection
• 11:35 Where Healing Begins
• 13:02 Generational Burdens And Reclaiming Worth
• 15:12 Guided Inner-Child Meditation
• 23:54 Closing, Affirmation, And Share

Transcript

Speaker: 0:06

Hi and welcome! Welcome here to Heal Within with me, Dr. Evette Rose, trauma therapist and also creator of Metaphysical Anatomy Technique. And remember that this podcast is your safe space to explore emotional healing, nervous system repair, and also deep inner transformation. And if you are ready to go deeper, then you can also book a one-on-one session with me or connect with one of my certified metapsychology coaching practitioners. And if you feel called, you can also join one of our live healing events, workshops, or retreats at metaphysicalanatomy.com. And let's begin your journey back to wholeness. One breath and one breakthrough at a time. And today's podcast episode is a big theme lately. I've noticed when I work with my clients, there's a lot of mother wounds that seem to be coming up. You see, the reason for that also is that the mother wound is one of the deepest emotional imprints that we carry. You see, it forms in the very early stages of life, often before we have conscious memory. And it comes also from moments of emotional misattunement, neglect, it can be rejection, it can be from unmet needs. And not because your mother was necessarily inherently harmful, but because maybe she was also carrying her own unresolved trauma, right? Limitations, her own dissociative challenges, her blocks, her emotional numbness. But what this wound teaches us very early on is that what I'm seeing when I work with people, including even myself, and I have a great mom. Let me just put it like that. My mom was just highly stressed, and unfortunately, she had to work when she had me. So she I was with her for three months after I was born, and then I literally grew up in daycare centers from as early as three months old. You see, so for me, I I felt growing up that my needs are too much. Um, I am unlovable and useless. I perform or I have to please. Um, and especially for me, it was connection is unstable and unsafe because I was raised by people that I did not know, and of course, people who would not necessarily have that same mother's compassion and patience and care the same way as what a mother would for her child, right? So, and for me, also what struck really strong was love equals self-abandonment because I felt abandoned when I needed love the most. You see, and the challenge now with these wounds, I mean, what I mentioned so far is not all of it. And this is a podcast episode, not a course, right? So we're gonna touch on some elements that I notice as being quite strong themes. Now, this wound, it doesn't just stay in your childhood, it shapes how we love, how we attach, and how we self-soothe, and how we move through the world as well. And a lot of signs that I see in my students and and you know, challenge that I myself worked through when I started my healing journey is um it's almost like a for me at least, was a very strong chronic rejection sensitivity, right? Very strong people-pleasing strategies. I was always about how happy can I make this person, you know, how much can I contribute to their life? Always feeling like I'm needed, um feeling like I have a purpose, that I have meaning. And but but that also came with feeling invisible, feeling unheard, because everything was always about other people. And not that it's other people's fault. I allowed that. This is how I my trauma set me up, right, to to show up before I consciously became aware of it, before I could consciously step in and create changes, necessary changes as well. And I had a lot of difficulty setting boundaries, so much difficulty, and staying in relationships, or not even staying, at least creating, having relationships where you feel um unvalued, right? And staying in that and subconsciously feeling drawn to that because that is what you're used to, and a lot of self-criticism as well, or um perfectionism. Can you relate? I had that. That was tough. That was a tough pattern to break because perfectionism it creeps its ugly head in every area of your life, not just relationships, just not just your relationship with yourself, your career, the way that you wash the dishes, the way that you you you know you put your clothes on, everything. That's a tough one. And then difficulty also receiving love. And for me, there was also um like a deep sense of emotional desire, and it just wouldn't ever feel fulfilled. It's like it felt like this. The best way that I can describe it is that it felt like this um this bottomless pit. And then feeling like you're too much or not enough. You see, underneath all these is the same emotional imprint, and that is a deep, deep longing for the mother who could not necessarily give you what you needed, and not because she necessarily didn't want to. Sometimes, you know, we all have our traumas, we all have our blind spots, and sometimes a mother's lack of worthiness of being a mother can sometimes cause her to hold back because who I am is not enough. What I give is not enough. So I have a fear of even trying. A lot of moms I've seen felt frozen in themselves as well. Because when we look at this from a biological perspective, right, the mother is what? She's the first regulator of your nervous system. Her tone of voice, her gaze, her availability, her touch all shape your vagus nerve. That amygdala and that stress response. You see, when attunement is missing, the child's brain wires for hypervigilance, um, distrust, emotional shutdown, or insecure attachment. And remember, I really want to share this, and and I hope that you flag this in your mind, that you're not broken, that this is not a flaw, this is the body adapting for survival. It's adapting for survival. But the truth also is that the nervous system can almost say, you know, just loosely speaking, is plastic. It can rewire, it can learn safety again, and it can experience nurturing later in life. You see, the reason why for us or for people who have very strong mother wounds, rejection cuts deep. It it hurts deeply. Because rejection from a mother figure, it just hits different. Um, it's like it isn't just emotional, it's primal. Because our biology expects the mother to be our source of survival and co-regulation. That's programmed right here. So when she's unavailable, when she's overwhelmed, when she's distracted, when she's emotionally shut down, the child internalizes the pain as I must be the reason. I must change myself to be accepted. And or I'm not worthy of love. And healing means challenging this inherited narrative and then rewriting that story with compassion. And a lot of people ask me, okay, so I have this wound, I have this awareness. Where do I begin? Do I do I start in my childhood? Do I regress back to the womb stages? Where do I go? What do I do with this? That's a really great question. And for me personally speaking, what I learned and what I also learned working with a lot of my clients is reconnecting does not always mean reconciling with your mother. Healing doesn't mean that you have to reconcile with your mother, uh, your biological mother, right? It means reconnecting, it means healing your unmet needs, it means healing your inner child, it means healing your emotional boundaries, and it means healing your right to receive love without feeling that I have to earn it. You see, healing is actually about reconnecting back to yourself, back to yourself. And it starts really with reparenting the nervous system, not just you, but your nervous system. And that's learning to offer yourself the safety, the softness, and also attunement that you didn't receive. It means um, oh, this this point also is important, it means releasing these inherited imprints, understanding that many wounds did not necessarily begin even with you. In many, many cases they're actually passed down through many, many generations of women carrying a lot of emotional burdens alone. And when we start to heal, it also means reclaiming your worth. Well, my mother rejected me, or I felt rejected by her, therefore I must be unworthy. You see, releasing this belief that you must shrink to please or to overgive or to be loved or feeling that you're too much out the door. That needs to go. Because when I started to go through my healing journey and learning to understand, especially that a lot of ways that caregivers made me feel, it wasn't my mom. It was people that I didn't even know. But consciously speaking, at the time, I didn't know that. So all that I know is that whoever was taking care of me didn't love me, didn't really care about my needs, didn't attend to me when I needed them to. And this imprint was was was carried with me. And this was woven into my dynamic with my mother, even though she tried her best. So that was a journey all in itself. So I hope that these points that I shared, as simple as they are, I hope that some of them really hits home. And that that is a very gentle, a very safe, a very graceful starting point for you to gently start to create changes within yourself from a dynamic that could have shaped probably a big part of who you became as a person as an adult. But I always believe that wherever there's a will, there's a way. And so now having said that, I would love to start my healing meditation with you. And when you are ready, I invite you now to take a nice slow deep breath in and exhale very good, allowing your body to settle, allowing your thoughts just to wander off, and just allowing your heart to soften, allowing yourself to arrive right here, right now. And a nice graceful way to come back into the present moment is by just focusing on your breath, and also by feeling the surface beneath you, supporting your body, feel how the earth just holds you without asking you to do anything, allowing your breath to just become slower, warmer, and deeper, and with each inhale, feel nourishment entering your body, with each exhale, release tension that doesn't belong to you. And feeling disbelief, or even saying quietly to yourself, it is safe for me to be here, it is safe to feel what I feel, and imagine now a small gentle light appearing in front of you, and this light grows into the shape of your younger self. The child who longed for softness, presence, or love, looking at this child now with compassion, and seeing this child, they're not dramatic, not demanding. They are simply carrying unmet needs that were never their fault. And I invite you now to walk closer. You can even kneel down if it feels right to you. You can even offer your hand to this child if it feels right for you. And say softly in your heart, I see you, I hear you, and you never deserved rejection. Let the child now respond in whatever way feels natural, maybe through words, silence, or emotion. Notice what they needed most. Was it love, safety, approval, warmth to be wanted, and you can gently say to them now that I am here now, and you matter to me, you are enough exactly as you are. Feel a warm, nurturing energy flowing from you into them a kind of love that does not overwhelm but heals. See their body relax, see their eyes soften, and see their heart open up. This is reconnection. And you can invite this child to come closer, and when they and you are ready, imagine them stepping into your heart, merging with you, softening inside you, feeling so divinely held and protected by you, becoming a part of your strength, and no longer your pain. Noticing and feeling your chest expanding, feel warmth growing, feel the beautiful truth settling in your heart, and realizing now I am my own source of safety. I can receive love. I am whole. I reclaim the love that was always meant for me, and gently bringing your focus back to your breath back to you and notice as you do how you're starting to gently feel the surface beneath your body and bringing your full focus and awareness to the bottom of your faith. And then gently giving yourself a nice big stretch. Well done, well done, and welcome back. And remember that you're not alone, that every day you're healing one breath at a time, one step at a time, and remember if you love this episode, then you can always share it with someone else who's also on their journey of healing. And our affirmation for today is to remember to reclaim the love that was always meant for you. And I look forward to seeing you in our next um podcast episode. I love you, and until next time, be the light that you are. Bye for now.