Perhaps you find that in your relationships you keep meeting the same coldness, the same criticism or the same need to prove yourself. Or you notice a restlessness you cannot explain when it comes to money, closeness or your own body. Behind this there is often something old and deep: the relationship with your mother.
In systemic constellations, a mother is not only the person who gave birth to us. She is the first source of life, love and security, and the way we received that source stays written within us long after childhood. That is why the relationship with our mother does not end when we move out or when she grows old. It goes on living in us, in every relationship we build.
In this article we will look at how that relationship shapes adult life and what can help to ease it.
Mother as the first source of life and love
In the order of love, as Bert Hellinger described it, parents are ‘big’ and children are ‘small’. Parents give life, love, protection and care, and children receive. This asymmetry is natural: a child can never fully repay what it has been given, so it passes on what it has received, to its own children, to the community and to its creative work.
Our individual unconscious encompasses all experiences from conception onwards, and these are mostly connected with two key figures, mother and father. The relationship with the mother begins even before birth: pregnancy and childbirth, with all the fears and joys that accompany them, are part of the child's first experience of life.
When a mother was able to be a source of warmth and support, life is more easily experienced as something safe. When this was difficult, because of her own fate or the wounds she carried, a child often grows up with the feeling that love and security have to be earned.
How the relationship with your mother repeats in adult life
In systemic work there is the notion of blind love. Out of a deep need to belong, a child unconsciously repeats the lives of its parents, not only what was good in them but also the suffering and the mistakes. A daughter who witnessed her mother's unhappy divorce may, out of loyalty to her, enter into a similar fate.
This pattern is most often seen in:
- partnerships in which the same emotional dynamic that existed with the mother repeats itself
- a need to look after a parent as though they were ‘small’ and you were ‘big’
- the expectation that a partner will make up for maternal care that was lacking or excessive
- the burden of other people's emotions, fears and unfulfilled dreams, which you carry as if they were your own
However far we move away from our parents, until we become aware of the basic model of relationship we had with them, we will keep repeating the same situations, so that we may live through them again and heal them.
Mother, abundance and our relationship with money
One less expected aspect of this theme is money. In the books Codes of Success and Codes of Love, money and abundance are described as a manifestation of the feminine principle, which in the family unconscious is most directly connected with the figure of the mother. The way we experienced our mother, and her ability to provide support and safety, can significantly influence our relationship with money.
If our mother was a source of love and care, we approach abundance more easily, experiencing it as a natural part of life. (from the book Codes of Love)
That is why it sometimes happens that we have money but not closeness, or closeness but not health. Behind this there is often a deeply buried fear of life, and in symbolic terms life is precisely the Primordial Mother. Integrating the mother therefore also opens space for receiving abundance.
Accepting your mother as she is
Healing the relationship with your mother does not mean you have to approve of everything she did, or forget what hurt. It means seeing her as your mother, the only one you have, and accepting the life that came from her. Not accepting our parents creates emotional barriers that are then carried over into every relationship in life.
In constellations, simple sentences are spoken that restore order: ‘You are my mum. I have no other mum.’ When we have taken on a burden that is not ours, her fear, sadness or unfulfilled dreams, this sentence brings release: ‘So now, with great love, I give back to you everything that is yours. It is too much for me.’
Sometimes anger needs a little more time, and that is all right. One of the sentences from constellations reads: ‘I will be angry a little longer, and then I will let you love me.’
How to begin working on this relationship
Integrating our parents is one of the most complex challenges, because our entire experience of life is based on our relationship with them. That is why the work unfolds gradually. Systemic self-exploration begins with simple intentions, such as ‘I wish to become aware of my mother within me’ and ‘I wish to optimise the energetic order with my mother’, along with contemplation of the questions: What was my mum like? Who is my mum?
Exercises like these work best in combination with systemic constellations. Self-exploration helps to ease inner conflicts, while constellations show the wider picture of the family system and the deeper causes of patterns. If you carry a serious hurt or deep sorrow in this relationship, systemic work does not replace professional psychological or medical help when it is needed.
When our mother takes her place within us, as the big one who gives, and we as the children who receive, something settles. From that place it is easier to love a partner, to receive abundance and to live your own life, with gratitude for the life that came from her.