the Good NEws about the Mother wound, Attachment and the Somatics of Nourishment.

Our bodies are designed to be mothered.

The good news about the Mother wound, attachment and the somatics of nourishment.

The very action of suckling not only brings nourishment and nutrients, but pulsing the jaw stimulates blood and cerebral spinal fluid around the brain. The suckling rhythm and the skin-to-skin contact swings the nervous system into rest and digest, a deep immersion in oxytocin and other bonding hormones flood our system with safety signals. Our connective tissue expands and contracts likes tides and we become whole and embodied through that unified field. Our bodies are designed to experience these innate somatics of secure attachment from birth right through our early childhood years.

If a rupture in this bonding process occurs, a Mama may develop post-partum depression and the child may spiral into low-self esteem and a life time of uncertainty about where and how you belong, an inability to foster secure relationships and continual patterns of disregulation and isolation. Those who do not bond are more likely to get bullied, scapegoated and ostracised from the family unit.

It’s wonderful to celebrate the role of Motherhood in our yearly calendar. But for many, across all genders, the lack of adequate mothering can manifest as a painful wound. It’s common for those whose mothers were unable to adequately nourish them to self-stigmatise and internalise this wound as shame and unworthiness. Underpinning the psychological maladies of the mother wound though, is a soma left in deficit of bonding hormones, nutrients, and a self-regulating nervous system.

On the day of my birth, my mother’s GP advised her not to breastfeed me. As I was her 6th child he felt she needed to save her energy for the wider clan. I’ve rarely felt safe in my mother’s presence, or experienced being nurtured by her. I'm not particularly unique with this story. Like many with the mother wound, my life rotated through cycles of over achievement, striving and exhaustion, disembodiment, shame, isolation, and low self-esteem. I was often told that the time of mother bonding only came once and if you did not receive proper bonding at birth it could not be repaired later. A mother wound can seem like an irredeemable stigma of unloveability, the remote frontier of attachment trauma, a far flung psychic wilderness of no return.

Yet where many therapies have no strategy for resolving the mother wound , cranio sacral therapy is naturally attuned to embryology, birth and nourishment. My own healing journey through a mix of meditation, craniosacral therapy, and holographic breathing has confirmed that not only is the body designed to be mothered, but that we can remother our own bodies through the soma, from moment-to-moment, through a practice of self-attuning. We don’t need to rebirth as remothering our bodies is entirely possible through reactivating the same somatic pathways of receiving nourishment, calm and nervous system regulation that we were designed to receive as a baby and throughout childhood. As we attend to the mother wound as adults we can discover wider coordinates of safety in any act of deep surrender. Any reactivation of vulnerability which results in acknowledging, allowing and letting go, the dropping of defences and surrender, is an activation of a biological signal that is absorbed by the connective tissue into a dynamic expression of buoyancy and resilience. Our bodies can float in our own inner oceanic dynamism and find soothing and deep calm that feels amniotic and familiar. The subtle pulsing of the jaw in holographic breathing increases blood flow around our brains but also initiates a subtle body gateway that draws upon frequencies of energetic nourishment through the quantum field. This is the power of feminine somatics, our innate drives to heal and regenerate are available to all. We can heal through committing to ourselves over and over again and retraining our somas to float and relax into the safety of our fluid momentum and our own self regulation. As a daily practice we move more and more into a pleasurable self intimacy towards secure attachment with self. I see this process more and more in my practice and I deeply honour anyone wanting to attend to this healing process. The mother wound is so deeply primal and painful, yet it is a powerful journey of renewal and self-embodiment. It provides renewed possibilities of finding co regulation with others that is sustained by our own somatic grounding. It is more common than we are led to believe and the stigma of the Mother wound should not be internalised but held with empathy and kindness. By attending to our own mother wounds we also heal our feminine lineages from the impact of systemic cultural norms that make pregnancy and mothering traumatic for far too many.

Jaqs Clarke

Image by B K Lusk.