On the journey to heal heartache, a moment of beauty is sometimes impossible to find. But if you stumble upon it, soak up the glimmer of warmth.
Author: Kelly McDaniel
What is Mother Hunger™?
“Mother Hunger™ is part Mythology, part Biology” – Kelly McDaniel
Cultural Beliefs
Chapter Two of my book Ready to Heal discusses a confining, cultural impasse that exists in our culture for women. If your romantic and relational choices regularly leave you cold and empty, exploring the inherited cultural/sexual double bind that sets you up to feel this way will help unravel unwanted beliefs driving your choices. You might be able to discuss the Four Cultural beliefs in a group of women. Identifying shared pain and confusion is both healing and bonding.
Being Still
Be still…what do you find inside your heart? Is there fear? Restlessness? Anger? Hurt? These emotions can be intolerable to “sit” with. Emotional pain is physical: our body resists it. It’s challenging to find the sweet spot deep inside us, the silence that comforts our being. Can you sit with yourself and invite your deepest emotions to join you? If you’re like most of us, you may not have tried, or you tried, but gave up after a few minutes feeling hopeless or ridiculous. Isn’t it ironic how often we expect friends, family, or lovers to “be with” us when we can’t “be with” ourselves? Try a moment today…even if it’s simply 2 minutes of silence. Light a candle, curl up in a blanket and see what happens.
First Love
A mother’s love guides our “inner compass”, letting us know when we’re safe and when we’re loved. If her needs engulfed us, we struggle to identify our own desires and ambitions. If she was abusive, terror is our baseline “normal”. If we lost our mother (early death, adoption, or lengthy hospitalization), our normal is abandonment.
Solitude vs Loneliness
Do you feel the difference between solitude and loneliness? How do you distinguish? Sometimes, solitude is nourishing, a time to reflect and enjoy your own company. However, for women healing from addictive habits and mother hunger, loneliness feels cruel, confining, and punishing…an inescapable cavern. May you find comfort in the cave of loneliness today.
Self-Awareness
The concept of a “self” is foreign country for women healing from Mother Hunger. Without a safe early attachment relationship, forming a “self” is congested with survival strategies. As a result, many women are without an “inner compass” to direct life choices. We flounder through life responding to the needs of others, addictively chasing happiness without self-awareness. Unfortunately, there is no short cut to well-being…the “persistent nagging” will stay by our side until we lean into healing mother hunger, and reclaim our buried “self”.
Trust
One of the saddest legacies of Mother Hunger® is that women aren’t to be trusted. As much as you long for connection, the work it takes to cultivate a female friend is too taxing. Pictures like this may create feelings of irritation or longing. This is normal. But as you heal, this will change. You can measure your progress by noticing the women around you. Do you have a friend who knows all your secrets? Do you have a friend you admire without feeling threatened? Do you have a friend you can laugh with?
Heart Break
Dear broken hearted,
It is said that time heals all wounds. Time may dull the pain of a broken heart, but it cannot fully heal the wound. Unlike a broken bone, heartbreak has no cast. Most of us recognize that healing a broken bone requires a “time-out” from routine, but life rarely permits anyone the necessary space to tend a broken heart.
This leaves us each with the monumental task of finding and taking time to heal. Usually, we’re drowning before we find a refuge.
How do you allow yourself room to cry? To rage? To grieve? Do you retreat into food, exercise, work, or sex? Or do you find a trusted friend who will hold you while you mourn?
When we face the death of a loved one, a community mourns with us. We have a service, a funeral, a meal, a memorial of some nature. But when a lover betrays us, or we betray ourselves in love, where do we turn?
Perhaps you haven’t felt the comfort of an unbiased witness, someone who sees the best in you without a personal agenda. You haven’t known safety in a relationship. You’ve been used, shamed, or forgotten. Perhaps you’ve misused another for your own gain, hiding from the insecurity deep within your soul.
Living in isolation is like treading water without a raft. You may stay afloat, but daily, it takes such energy and effort that giving up sounds like a relief.
When you no longer want to tread water, it’s time to reach out for help.
With love
Kelly
Chronic Heartache
Healing chronic heartache requires you to be an artist…an architect of your brain. Find moments of beauty to stir the stagnant parts of your frozen mind. As you consciously make choices that support your health and healing, your mind will respond to your tender care.
