Bethany Webster - Discovering the Inner Mother: A Guide to Healing the Mother Wound and Claiming Your Personal Power

This book is dedicated to all women who are feeling the hunger to embody their truth, to break the cycles of trauma in their families, and to more fully express their power and potential. As we heal our personal and collective trauma, we clear the way for more female power to manifest in the world. May you feel the support of all the brave women across time and space, with you, cheering you on.

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

Mend my life!

each voice cried.

But you didnt stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice,

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do

determined to save

the only life you could save.

The Journey by Mary Oliver

The nature of memory and perception is subjective, inherently rooted in the observers own experience.

The personal examples in this book are based on my own perceptions of people and events that took place in my childhood and how I feel they have impacted my life as an adult.

I've done my best to be accurate and fair when describing my recollections of people and events throughout this book and want to be clear that these perspectives are not statements of fact but of my own personal opinions and perceptions.

From a young age, I felt that something was wrong in my relationship with my mother, but instinctively I coped by keeping silent and obedient in the role of the good girl. Around nineteen, my symptoms became so intense that I sought professional help, and was fortunate to embark on a rare decades-long journey with a therapist specializing in in-depth, corrective, relational-based therapy, a journey that continues to this day. In the beginning, I avoided examining my relationship with my mother, but I felt determined to understand the root cause of my despair, which for years felt like a mystery to me. Week after week, year after year, decade after decade, Ive continued to discover insights, connections, and breakthroughs that I havent seen reflected in accessible works of personal development, psychology, or self-help.

In 2013 I started a blog, hungry to share all that I was discovering about the Mother Wound. No one seemed to be talking about this phenomenon, and I wanted to help other women who, like me, were struggling to identify the root cause of their symptoms. Almost immediately after I started my blog, my articles began to go viral and word spread quickly across the world. A steady stream of emails began pouring in from women telling me their stories and thanking me for articulating the experiences they didnt have the words or the courage to speak about.

Synchronicities began to unfold all around me. Several months later, I had just booked a trip to Barcelona, Spain, for a rare vacation when I got an email the next day from a teacher in Barcelona asking if she could translate one of my articles for a womens workshop. I replied, saying that Id actually be there at that time and would be happy to give a talk while Im there about the article. One thing led to another and I ended up teaching two sold-out workshops during a single weekend of that trip. By introducing me to her network of collaborators in Europe, I came back to Spain to do a teaching tour of cities from Barcelona to Bilbao, Madrid, Valladolid, and more. Women traveled from all over Europe to these workshops. Before I knew it, I was taking a train across the UK, teaching workshops in London, Totnes, Frome, Nottingham, and others. Then the invitations started coming in from Budapest, Berlin, Italy, Vienna, Croatia, Belgium, Poland, the Netherlands, and Austria, and from further afield in India, Bali, Japan, and Thailand.

In every city I went to, I would enter a room packed to the gills with women, curious, nervous, and eager to connect with other women and heal this issue. These women ran the gamut from business executives, therapists, academics, and stay-at-home moms, to college students, grandmothers, entrepreneurs, and millennials. By the end of each workshop, an initial heaviness in the room opened into immense lightness, spaciousness, and electricity in the air. I was amazed at the deep bonds that were quickly created as we explored this taboo issue together.

Later that year, I returned home from a womens conference frustrated by what I saw as a lack of depth in our discussion of womens issues. I saw how even at the highest levels of success the Mother Wound was hiding in plain sight but still being avoided. From this sense of urgency, I penned an essay called Why Its Crucial for Women to Heal the Mother Wound. This particular article appeared to rapidly increase awareness about the Mother Wound to a whole new level, with women starting to use the term more widely in news articles, podcasts, workshops, and on social media.

I knew that I wanted to write a book about the Mother Wound, but it stayed on the backburner as my business kept expanding as I continued writing, traveling, and teaching. Eventually I was able to leave my job as a university administrator and focus on this work full time. Over time, I noticed that one of the markers of women healing the Mother Wound is an increased willingness to disrupt and transform business as usual, a powerful desire to be true, authentic, and to live life on ones own terms. I saw women walking away from marriages, jobs, and relationships that didnt serve them, or begin transforming them from within, and in both cases, inspiring and galvanizing the people around them, moving things to a higher level.

When Trump was elected, I felt an increased urgency to write a book so that I could reach more women and teach them about the Mother Wound, how it relates to dismantling patriarchy, and why its important we heal it. One morning I woke up with a clear feeling it was time to get the book out as soon as possible; the world was changing and this message was needed more than ever. I had planned to reply to one of the publishers who had reached out to me, even without an agent. But it seems the universe had other plans as the very next day I received an unsolicited email from an agent interested in representing me. The result is the book you are holding in your hands.

In short, writing a book about the Mother Wound has been an organic outcome of over two decades of research and painstaking inner work. This is the book that I wish Id had at the time when I began my own journey. This is also a book for this time, a time when a global awakening of women is essential to our collective survival.

In this book I will share with you my own journey of how I discovered the Mother Wound and the tools I use to continue to work through it myself and with thousands of women. I will also discuss the profound breakthroughs that emerged from finding my own Inner Mother, and the resulting insights Ive gained about feminism, inter-generational trauma, and human potential.

Both men and women have the Mother Wound. Manifestations of this wound are personal, cultural, spiritual, and planetary. This topic is so endemic in our culture that it could and should fill several volumes: this book is only an introduction, and its focus is mostly on the personal level. I have focused here on what the Mother Wound looks like where you will first encounter it: in your own experience. I believe once we have each healed the Mother Wound sufficiently on an individual level, we will be better prepared to meet the demands of transforming it as a society. This work isnt about blaming our mothers but about generational and intergenerational responsibility. Its about owning our power as women and, consequently, creating a new balance and harmony between healthy masculine and feminine energies in our world.