Mother Strugglers

Motherhood, and our relationship to mothers as a society is complex to say the least.

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We love them, we wouldn't exist without them, we honor them. We neglect them, disrespect them, and expect the impossible from them. What's going on with that?

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As society undergoes its inevitable shifts on large scales, individual people experience pressure and discomfort while they maintain, or break from, existing cultural norms. We want to please our attachment figures, but we also want to distinguish ourselves from them, and those two desires are at odds.

 

We feel this as members of families between generations when we feel frustrated with our elders. We express this by fighting, distancing, fixating, performing, pleasing, blending or protecting.

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Being a mother, having one, not knowing how to be one, not feeling like one, losing one, becoming one, wishing to be one, needing one... sometimes all at once... is a big deal.

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What will you discover in therapy about your relationship to the mother archetype? I'd be happy to explore that with you.

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Here's how we do the work:

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We check out the history of your relationship to attachment figures, and seek to understand them more deeply.

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We examine the pressures you're under in your family role, and find ways of sustaining, if not growing, through this life moment.

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We gather up to exchange support in groups. Join the Group Therapy Interest List to be informed when new group offerings come out.

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We find a way to advocate when we notice needs going unmet. Check out my work with breastfeeding breadwinners here.

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The generations beyond ours will thank us for doing this work.

Thank you for choosing therapy.

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As a note on gender, I acknowledge the reality that one need not be "female" or a "woman" to have mother stuff as your primary concern in therapy, nor to take on an identity of "mother," or to birth humans. I work with parents and non-parents of all genders.