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.
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.
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 …
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 …
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 …
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.
Outlined in my book Ready to Heal are four beliefs about love and sex that women inherit from Disney land culture (McDaniel, 2008, pp. 29-40). In chapter two, I explain how fantasy images of women create an “inescapable” impasse, a sexual double bind. When conflicting rules collide, and choice A or choice B is wrong, …
With the approach of autumn comes a season of beauty…a time for walking in nature’s jewel tones. Consider outdoor moments so the changing leaves can penetrate places you feel achy or alone.
Young neurological systems can’t develop without the gentle gaze of a loving adult. The infant brain requires programming from caregiver facial expressions to develop healthy neurons. So if your mother was depressed, often angry, always distracted, or couldn’t stay with you, your brain is accustomed to suffering. Suffering is normal—sending you strength to curate the …
Did you know that beauty is a basic pleasure? Our body responds to it viscerally … if you see something beautiful today, notice how your body responds, and prolong the moment if you wish.
