The Role of a Mother

The role of a mother is to teach us how to be with pain.

From the first breath, followed by the first scream, she is the one who welcomes us into a world where loss and love live side by side. She weans us, she sleep trains, she lets us tumble when trying to walk. She holds us when we’re overwhelmed. Finally, she lets us out into the world. The mother guides us through the initiation to loss: the pain of growing up and becoming an independent person. The mother knows that the pain is unavoidable and she nurtures and cares for us through it so that we can then learn to do it ourselves.

A good mother knows not to run from pain or dismiss it. She doesn’t rush to stop it or pretend that it’s not there. She doesn’t shame us or turn away. She stays, calm enough to contain the storm without becoming a part of it. She’s not threatened by our pain herself and knows how to be with it with presence, care and patience. She also knows when to let go and let you stand on your own two feet.

At the beginning of life, the mother (or a maternal figure) is the child’s first environment: literally and emotionally. In infancy, she is the world. The infant’s nervous system regulates through hers: heartbeat, tone of voice, breath, scent, gaze. She teaches the body what safety feels like before the brain has language. When she’s attuned, the baby’s nervous system learns: stress rises and then it calms; I can trust the world. When she’s misattuned or unpredictable, the baby learns: stress rises and never quite settles; I must stay on guard.

When we’re distressed a good mother holds us with attunement and composure. She’s not agitated by our stress. She’s capable of emotional regulation and can teach it to us through touch: body to body, nervous system to nervous system. This is a skill we’re not born with. We need a regulated adult to provide that. We need an adult in our life who can do that for us, otherwise we never learn.

If our parents haven’t had that provided to them, they can’t teach it to us. So instead of emotional regulation we learn coping: dissociation, distraction, avoidance, blame. Coping works as a backup but it is not as effective and it prevents emotional growth and maturity. It keeps us alive but doesn’t let us fully live.

So the mother gives us a blueprint for how we relate to everything: our needs, our emotions, our sense of worth and the world’s response to us. That’s a hardwired map of love. Later, every relationship re-enacts that first bond: we look for the same regulation we once got from her, or we brace for the same absence that we remember in our bones.

The mother is the archetype of nourishment, containment, and creation. She is the field in which life arises.

• She holds: the womb, the home, the psyche.

• She feeds: physically, emotionally, spiritually.

• She mirrors: showing the child their own face, affirming their existence.

• She forgives: allowing death and renewal, endings and beginnings.

When integrated healthily, this archetype shows up in men and women alike as:

• Love without enmeshment

• Nurture without control

• Boundaries that protect growth, not imprison it

When distorted, she becomes:

• The devouring mother (smothering, infantilizing)

• The absent mother (cold, unreachable).

• The wounded mother (oscillating between both)

A loving mother doesn’t prevent pain; she guides the child through it. Her attunement says: pain won’t destroy you. I’m here while you feel it. That’s how a child lays the foundation for emotional regulation, resilience, and empathy. Without that, when the mother can’t hold pain (her own or ours), the child learns that pain is catastrophic. That it must be avoided, fixed, denied, or endured alone. That’s where trauma begins.

When a mother cannot stay with the pain because she’s overwhelmed, absent or never learned how, the child doesn’t know how to say: my mother cannot hold me now. So instead they say: I am too much, I am a burden, I’m not worthy of love. This is how the child learns to hide instead of express, perform instead of be, cope instead of connect. The personality gets built around those core beliefs and shame becomes the name of the game.

Healing doesn’t require blaming our mothers. It requires naming the problem, so we can fill the developmental gap. This means creating a balanced inner mother, one who can soothe without collapsing, guide without dominating, love without losing herself.

Reparenting yourself is possible and can come from three sources:

• Self-parenting: becoming the internal mother who says: you’re safe, you’re allowed to rest.

• Loving relationships: partners or mentors who offer co-regulation and consistency.

• Embodied practice: learning to feel held by breath, earth, our own body and community.

When we grow up without a mother who could model staying present in pain, we stay developmentally young. We might gain strength, intellect and even power but our capacity to suffer consciously with awareness stays underdeveloped. A mature psyche learns to metabolize pain into wisdom through grief. A good mother teaches this early by staying with us through discomfort rather than rescuing or abandoning. She communicates: this hurts, but you can survive it; you can feel it and learn from it.

As adults, this becomes our work, to mother ourselves through our pain the way we needed to be mothered. To sit with trembling, panic, or grief and say: you’re not broken; this is what growth feels like. When we can do that, pain stops being the enemy. It becomes the forge of character and meaning.

In adulthood, a good-enough mother’s influence evolves from regulation to resonance. She becomes a secure base from which you can explore the world. Her role shifts from protection to witnessing. Her love becomes less about doing and more about being with: the quiet faith that you can handle life.

On the spiritual plane, the Mother is the principle of unconditional acceptance and belonging - the Earth itself. She says: you belong because you exist. Her love is like gravity, the force that keeps all things from floating into oblivion. Every true act of creation: writing, art, healing, parenting is an expression of that same principle: to hold something fragile long enough for it to grow strong.

More thoughts on pain and how to handle it from prior posts:

Scarcity to Abundance, Through Hell (but gamified!) (A walkthrough through the dark night of the soul)

“Our culture teaches us to run from pain. We fear it, we hide from it, we push away the people that seem to cause it. But pain is just an alarm bell, it’s heightened sensitivity to a stimulus. There is no punishment inside the pain--only information. It’s just your nervous system shouting: this is important, pay attention. And you don’t, so it cranks up the volume until something breaks and you find yourself in a hospital bed with no distractions so you can listen and learn.

You need to know that pain is your friend, your mentor, your compass. But you don’t have to delve into it with reckless abandon (like I do). You approach it slowly, gently, carefully, with love. You stay where it’s tolerable and focus on it. There is no difference between physical and emotional pain. None. You treat it the same. As you spend time with it, and often it only takes a few seconds, it starts receding and taking shape.

Suddenly, what seemed like a giant abstract flare, starts showing a topography and an architecture. And you are able to get even closer to it. Get curious and get caring. Cry, it’s called grief. Grief is how you digest pain.

As you increase the capacity of your nervous system through discipline and practice (physical exercise can do wonders here) you can go faster and take on more. You will see it shrink. Until one day it will be just a tiny little poppy seed, ready for the last round and then you will hold it with gratitude, even nostalgia, because the next moment it will be gone. Forever. Until next time.”

Unfurling (Shaping Water - part 1)

“As you practice holding pain
with presence
and discipline,

Pain becomes sensitivity,
Discipline becomes curiosity,
Presence becomes movement.

The architecture of tension reveals itself
as a symphony of interconnections.
A fractal wave of coherence unfurls.”

Resurrecting the Lost Technology of Grief (Shaping Water - part 3)

“Pain just just comes when it comes.

I used to always have something to point to that caused it. Someone spoke angrily, or rejected me, or their face showed contempt. Someone didn’t do what I wanted them to do. But most of the time it was just a trigger. The sensitivity was from before not from anything in the current situation. The association brings up what was left unprocessed. When given attention and presence it gets transformed. When avoided, it comes back unchanged or stronger next time.

The trigger is a gift.”

“When I began therapy, I told my therapist: “It’s like an ocean I’m trying to scoop out with a teaspoon.” For over a year, I cried every day. I didn’t know capacity could grow. It took years. It’s still ongoing.

Even now, the pain descends like a shroud — crippling, paralyzing. The temptation is always to blame, abandon myself, or dissociate.

But when I stay, it works. What once took me out for days now lasts minutes.

It’s worth it. Not because I will ever erase what was lost. Not because my spoon will ever be big enough.

But because now I know:

I contain this ocean.

I don’t need a bigger spoon.”